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Tooth grinding, Therapy, and things n' stuff.
11 years ago
General
Well hey there, everyfur. It's me, your humble and happy Stoner Bear!
So lots of things have happened since I last updated my journals. I'm gonna go into a lot of detail to catch y'all up, so if you like hearing about relatively pointless but perhaps-somewhat interesting life stories, read on.
THERAPY
I've finally, FINALLY started therapy. I started around the beginning of September, and have been going twice a week for about two to three weeks now, though my therapist and I have decided to limit the visits to once a week, now. At the start of my sessions, I took two tests to see where I was at when it came to Anxiety and Depression, and for both at the start, I got a 14/15 for Anxiety (fifteen meaning Severe Anxiety Disorder) and a 25/27 for Depression, meaning that I have VERY severe Depression Disorder. I was having thoughts of suicide, I couldn't seem to get myself out of bad and irrational thoughts of worry or guilt or self-loathing, and I had begun to totally cut myself off from the real world by being reclusive to my small room/living space, at the current moment.
On Friday, about two to three days ago, I tested once again for the Anxiety and Depression after having been on Citalopram, or Cervexa, for about two weeks, and my scores in Anxiety had gone from 14 to 3, and my symptoms of Depression had gone down to 5. For me, it is a HUGE improvement, and my therapist is very happy to see such a change in mood and overall productive life. I feel like I've gotten my life back, and I no longer have bad thoughts or irrational fear making things such as current art projects I should've been working on difficult, neigh on impossible to do with such low motivation and mood, as well as self-esteem.
However...
BRUXISM (Tooth grinding)
The side effects are starting to become very noticeable, especially due to the fact that I have been up since yesterday at about nine AM, so that's almost an entire twenty-four hour period I've been away due to the fact that, when I began to lay down to sleep in the early hours of the morning, I noticed this weird grit between my teeth. After multiple times of crunching down on what I thought was leftover food, I opened my mouth to find a chip of enamel from my back molar that had come off of my teeth.
Looking up symptoms and reasons as to why this has happened, I've come to find out that I have a case of severe Bruxism, or tooth grinding, due to the medication I am on for my current mental state. SSRI's tend to trigger tooth grinding, so it's not unheard of for this to happen. Along with tooth grinding, I've been having moments where I am falling off to sleep, and my facial muscles will tense and I will only take notice after my face starts to ache from unnecessary facial clenching. Due to this, I have been waking up with minor headaches, and my jaw is throbbing at points when I've been clenching my teeth so much, as well as minor pain from it all. I'm hoping my therapist and doctor can help me find out what to do, since I do like not having the symptoms of my Anxiety and Depression constantly attacking my mood and overall uplifted feelings, however I also don't want to lose my molars due to this issue. I kinda like my teeth, thank you. B[
TRANSGENDER
As some of you may have seen, I have changed a little bit of info on my Artist info for my FA profile. I have recently found out and understood, after dealing with my mental issues, that I am Transgender! I figure that, due to my inability or lack of dealing with the most important situations (specified above), I wasn't able to really grasp what I felt about my body until the fog of things had cleared a little bit. As a kid, I always acted more like a boy than anything - I had my hair cut into mohawks constantly at age seven and onwards, I'd wear boy clothing, I loved wrestling, and I generally did a lot of things that young tykes of the masculine or boyish sort did.
The cherry on the sundae of it all though was when I would constantly wish I had boy parts, and that I wouldn't grow breasts when I got older. I also had gone up to my dad at about age five and asked him (as I do remember doing so), "Dad, can I be a boy when I grow up?", to which my papa bear replied, "Well, there's always a possibility of that happening, when you're older." My dad loves telling that story in particular, and now refers to me very affectionately as his "Little Bear". <3 Rather than going by my original name, Madelaine, I've started to go by my newly designated name - Bjorn.
So that's pretty much the jist of what's been going on for me these last few weeks. 8I
So lots of things have happened since I last updated my journals. I'm gonna go into a lot of detail to catch y'all up, so if you like hearing about relatively pointless but perhaps-somewhat interesting life stories, read on.
THERAPY
I've finally, FINALLY started therapy. I started around the beginning of September, and have been going twice a week for about two to three weeks now, though my therapist and I have decided to limit the visits to once a week, now. At the start of my sessions, I took two tests to see where I was at when it came to Anxiety and Depression, and for both at the start, I got a 14/15 for Anxiety (fifteen meaning Severe Anxiety Disorder) and a 25/27 for Depression, meaning that I have VERY severe Depression Disorder. I was having thoughts of suicide, I couldn't seem to get myself out of bad and irrational thoughts of worry or guilt or self-loathing, and I had begun to totally cut myself off from the real world by being reclusive to my small room/living space, at the current moment.
On Friday, about two to three days ago, I tested once again for the Anxiety and Depression after having been on Citalopram, or Cervexa, for about two weeks, and my scores in Anxiety had gone from 14 to 3, and my symptoms of Depression had gone down to 5. For me, it is a HUGE improvement, and my therapist is very happy to see such a change in mood and overall productive life. I feel like I've gotten my life back, and I no longer have bad thoughts or irrational fear making things such as current art projects I should've been working on difficult, neigh on impossible to do with such low motivation and mood, as well as self-esteem.
However...
BRUXISM (Tooth grinding)
The side effects are starting to become very noticeable, especially due to the fact that I have been up since yesterday at about nine AM, so that's almost an entire twenty-four hour period I've been away due to the fact that, when I began to lay down to sleep in the early hours of the morning, I noticed this weird grit between my teeth. After multiple times of crunching down on what I thought was leftover food, I opened my mouth to find a chip of enamel from my back molar that had come off of my teeth.
Looking up symptoms and reasons as to why this has happened, I've come to find out that I have a case of severe Bruxism, or tooth grinding, due to the medication I am on for my current mental state. SSRI's tend to trigger tooth grinding, so it's not unheard of for this to happen. Along with tooth grinding, I've been having moments where I am falling off to sleep, and my facial muscles will tense and I will only take notice after my face starts to ache from unnecessary facial clenching. Due to this, I have been waking up with minor headaches, and my jaw is throbbing at points when I've been clenching my teeth so much, as well as minor pain from it all. I'm hoping my therapist and doctor can help me find out what to do, since I do like not having the symptoms of my Anxiety and Depression constantly attacking my mood and overall uplifted feelings, however I also don't want to lose my molars due to this issue. I kinda like my teeth, thank you. B[
TRANSGENDER
As some of you may have seen, I have changed a little bit of info on my Artist info for my FA profile. I have recently found out and understood, after dealing with my mental issues, that I am Transgender! I figure that, due to my inability or lack of dealing with the most important situations (specified above), I wasn't able to really grasp what I felt about my body until the fog of things had cleared a little bit. As a kid, I always acted more like a boy than anything - I had my hair cut into mohawks constantly at age seven and onwards, I'd wear boy clothing, I loved wrestling, and I generally did a lot of things that young tykes of the masculine or boyish sort did.
The cherry on the sundae of it all though was when I would constantly wish I had boy parts, and that I wouldn't grow breasts when I got older. I also had gone up to my dad at about age five and asked him (as I do remember doing so), "Dad, can I be a boy when I grow up?", to which my papa bear replied, "Well, there's always a possibility of that happening, when you're older." My dad loves telling that story in particular, and now refers to me very affectionately as his "Little Bear". <3 Rather than going by my original name, Madelaine, I've started to go by my newly designated name - Bjorn.
So that's pretty much the jist of what's been going on for me these last few weeks. 8I
Hmm, I know my mom has great recommendations for medications... She really does her research so I can ask her if she can find an alternative medication maybe?