Posted on September 25, 2021
After two years of being utterly focussed on my Masters, it’s definitely weird not having something specific to work on, having no deadlines to meet, and so on. It’s strange but also a welcome relief: between working on the module of the moment and dealing with whatever the pandemic threw up, plus my health stuff, it’s been an exhausting time. While I’m excited to start working on the next project, whatever that may be, I do need a break first – to rest, recover, and recharge my body and brain – and there’ve been a handful of things I’ve been looking forward to doing for when I finally reached this point.
These are some of the things I’ve held on to when I really felt the exhaustion or my motivation dipped:
There are also things that I’m less excited to do but they are important and I’ve been putting them off, either because they took too much time and energy away from working or because I was worried about how engaging with them would break what felt like the very fragile hold I had on my concentration, like it would be impossible to concentrate on my project again if I stopped, even for a little bit.
So things like continuing my Pain Clinic appointments, getting the prescription for my glasses updated (my current pair are at least four years out of date or whatever the phrase is – it must be doing a number on my eyesight and it’s probably not unrelated to all of my headaches), figure out what’s going on with my therapy situation, make a definitive decision about my medication, and try again to tackle my Trichotillomania. None of these will be fun or easy but hopefully they’ll all improve my life in the long run so they are worth doing.
So there’s my list. I love a good list. I find that they help me organise my thoughts – my often very restless, whirlwind thoughts. It’s been a tough few months but I’m looking forward to diving into all of these things.
Category: book, covid-19 pandemic, event, family, medication, mental health, music, sleep, therapy, trichotillomania, university, writing Tagged: adhd, adhd inattentive type, adhd medication, album, antidepressants, anxiety, asd, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, autism spectrum disorder, autistic, autistic adult, blog, blog writing, books, break, depression, exercise, exhaustion, family, films, friends, glasses, inattentive type, masters, masters degree, masters degree in songwriting, masters degree year two, masters part time, medication, mental health, mental health break, mental illness, movies, music, new album, new music, new projects, pain clinic, part time masters student, recovery time, rest, singer, singersongwriter, singersongwriter life, sleep, sleeping, stim, stimming, swimming, therapy, trich, trichotillomania, tv shows, university, writing
Posted on September 12, 2021
And that’s that. I’ve finished the final module of my Masters and therefore the Masters itself. I don’t know what my grade is for the module or for the whole course yet but frankly, I’ve got a lot to process before I can even really think about the grades and graduation.
Looking back at a similar post before the module started, I was excited about the project but nervous about my health, mental and physical, and whether it would prevent me from doing everything I needed to do, from being able to enjoy the process. And those were valid concerns so I thought, having written a post about how I was feeling before the module started, I’d write another now that it’s ended – like bookends.
A lot has happened since the beginning of May.
Over the last four months, I’ve spent almost every day working on my final project, researching, writing songs, and working on the production of an album. It’s been incredibly intense and now that it’s all done, I’m utterly exhausted, both mind and body. And while, for the most part, I loved it, it’s also a relief to be free of some of the anxiety around it (I’m still struggling with my anxiety around the grade). Having said that, I feel strangely lost and untethered now that I don’t have this big thing to focus on. I know that I need a break but I am looking forward to the next project, whatever that may be. I’m always happier when I’m doing things.
My mental health was pretty good for most of the module, surprisingly so. By my standards at least. I think that the constant creating and the creating of stuff I’m proud of really helped. I had one particularly bad episode of depression, plus a handful of smaller ones, and my anxiety was pretty constant but that’s normal for me. It got very bad in the last month, which was hard to manage – trying not to let it destabilise me was a bit of a battle in itself. It hasn’t quite faded yet. For various reasons, I didn’t have any access to my therapist, which was an unforeseen difficulty and that made things a lot harder than I’d expected them to be.
I also really struggled with my concentration. I’m still not getting any support for my ADHD (something that I hope will change soon but I’m still so frustrated that I couldn’t get any help with it during my Masters) so staying focussed on my project, on my research, took all of my energy. It was exhausting. I felt like my concentration was so, so fragile that a single moment of distraction would break it and then it would be impossible or would take days or even weeks to get back. So I couldn’t stop. Not for anything. That was very stressful and resulted in many, many long days. Sometimes I’d work all day without moving (not healthy, I know) and end up going to bed very late. And then, of course, I couldn’t sleep because my thoughts were racing. So it did a number on my sleep schedule too; I’m surprised I’m not nocturnal at this point.
That, plus the general fatigue I deal with day to day, meant I was tired all of the time. I’ve drunk an obscene amount of Red Bull (my antidepressants make me really drowsy, just to make things even more difficult, although I may be changing medications soon, which hopefully won’t have the same side effects) – I am beyond sick of the taste of it. But it got me through and I’m grateful for that. I will however be grateful to never drink it again (hopefully). And I’m really looking forward to getting both some proper sleep and some proper rest now that my work is done.
I also mentioned back in June that I’d been having migraines that seemed to be being caused by an abscess in one of my teeth. Since then, I’ve been on antibiotics twice, continued to have migraines, and am still waiting to have the tooth removed, a decision that was made at the appointment in June. Given how much disruption it was causing though, I did get extenuating circumstances which allowed me some extra time (although it wasn’t really extra since it was making up for time lost to a medical problem) to cope with those problems. It’s not bothering me presently which is a relief but I’m more than ready for them to take the tooth out, just so that they’re not even problems I have to think about.
While I managed to keep swimming twice a week – a routine I’ve been trying to maintain to create a solid foundation for my crappy joints – I was in almost constant pain throughout the module. At times, my right knee was so painful that I couldn’t walk on it and my back has been consistently painful; my Mum, who used to be a massage therapist, said it felt like trying to massage rocks and now that it’s all over and I’m trying to relax, the muscles feel like their made of concrete. Which is about as pleasant as it sounds. I’ve also had great trouble with my hands and wrists what with all the typing I’ve been doing. So, all in all, I’ve been a bit of a mess. I haven’t had any support for this – the hEDS – either; I’ve been waiting for physiotherapy and hydrotherapy since December 2020 officially and May 2020 unofficially. I’ve just had to try and get by on various painkillers, none of which have been all that effective.
Despite working practically non-stop, I got everything for my project done just in time for my final presentation. My assessors were positive, which I’m trying to hold on to in the wake of my anxiety around the final grade. I’ve been really trying not to attach my self worth to my grades (something I’ve always really struggled with), or at least, lessen the power my grades have over me but I can’t help the fact that I really want to do well. I’ve worked so hard – with so many obstacles – and the idea that that still wasn’t enough to get a Distinction would be upsetting. I’d get over it but it would still be upsetting. I never want someone thinking, “Oh, she mustn’t have worked hard enough.” Or worse: I never want to think, “Oh, I would’ve gotten a distinction if I wasn’t autistic or had ADHD or whatever” thoughts left over from my late diagnoses and the resulting difficulty I have in setting standards and goals for myself (more on that in another post). This anxiety isn’t helped by the fact that I keep thinking of things that I should’ve included in my presentation. My brain clearly hasn’t quite processed that the module is over.
And then, just when I thought I could relax, the world tipped under my feet. The next morning, my Mum told me that my Granny had died a few days earlier. She was ninety-three. Having barely started to process the end of my two year Masters and intense final project, this news was just too much for my brain. A few days on, I feel like I’m bouncing pretty erratically between two states, the first being this weird bubble where nothing can touch me and the second being, ‘if I stop thinking or talking or moving for even a second, I’m going to completely fall apart.’ It’s surreal and exhausting and sad. I’d like to write a piece about her at some point because she was such an incredible woman but I can’t really write more than this right now but it felt really important to at least acknowledge what’s happened because it’s so big and so important.
I don’t think there’s anything else to say right now. I’ve barely been able to wrap my head around this last week: my final presentation, the ending of the Masters, Granny, and everything that’s ahead given all of these things. It’s a lot to take in; I’m exhausted. I’m just taking it day by day.
Category: adhd, anxiety, autism, covid-19 pandemic, death, depression, emotions, family, heds, medication, mental health, music, research, sleep, therapy, university, writing Tagged: actuallyadhd, actuallyautistic, adhd, adhd inattentive type, adhd support, album, antibiotics, antidepressants, anxiety, anxiety disorder, asd, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, autism spectrum disorder, autistic, autistic adult, autistic student, break, concentration, death, depressed, depression, drowsiness, drowsy, eds, ehlers danlos syndrome, exhaustion, extenuating circumstances, fatigue, final project, focus, generalised anxiety disorder, grades, grandmother, grandparent, granny, grief, heds, hypermobile ehlers danlos syndrome, hypermobility, identity, inattentive type, late diagnosis, loss, masters, masters degree, masters degree in songwriting, masters degree year two, masters part time, medication, mental health, mental health break, mental health update, mental illness, migraine, migraines, new album, new music, part time masters student, processing, recovery time, red bull, rest, self worth, side effects, singer, singersongwriter, singersongwriter life, sleep, sleepiness, sleepy, songwriter, songwriting, therapist, therapy, tired, tooth extraction, tooth pain, writing
Hi! I’m Lauren Alex Hooper. Welcome to my little blog! I write about living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), ADHD (Inattentive Type), and Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), as well as several mental health issues.
I’m a singer-songwriter (it’s my biggest special interest and I have both a BA and MA in songwriting) so I’ll probably write a bit about that too.
My first single, ‘Invisible,’ is on all platforms, with all proceeds going to Young Minds.
My debut EP, Honest, is available on all platforms, with a limited physical run at Resident Music in Brighton.
I’m currently working on an album about my experiences as an autistic woman.