NOTE

As I continue to work on things away from this blog (which is a collection of Free-Time/Casual Online Writing, Remarks, And Notes By ME Whelan) and continue to figure out what goes and what stays of my existing online-writing, the de-emphasizing of one or another continues as well....

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

The Exhaustion Post

This was something that I was going to post in reply to a forum thing on HubPages, but then I was going to write a Hub about it instead.

Too tired, but want this out there now.   I feel like I live a big science experiment or am in some twisted game show.  Anyway, I want this out there because making sure it is will help me get through the next few minutes, anyway.   

What you say certainly would generally apply under normal circumstances.  Not all divorces are equal, and not all divorced people are equal in terms of stress and living circumstances.  Some people, of course, have the luxury of, say, the option to choose between, say, going out to work, sitting on a couch at home, or doing something like going to a gym.

Long-term, extreme, and or un-relenting stress in day-to-lfe is often something that happens with divorce.  For some people, the divorce, itself ends whatever was bothering them (stress etc.), and - voila - they feel/are well enough to, say, go to a gym AND they may actually give "the proverbial rat's" about meeting people and socializing.  (As far as whoever it is or was that was "crying every day" goes, I can't imagine it.  They were probably young and had no children to watch going through whatever a screwed up/messy divorce can cause in children's lives.  In other words, as far as I'm concerned, the person who "cries every day" after divorce probably needs help other than just the gym - but whatever....).)

My divorce led to my not having a driver's license because when I took my three kids and left the house someone called the "mental health people" on me; and while it was apparently figured out that I wasn't a danger to myself or anyone else, they didn't just say "sorry" and leave things at that.  Instead, "The System" didn't get out of our lives and out of what should have been a simple divorce. 

As a result of some kind of mess, my children's father was allowed to stay in the house with the children.  In other words, I lost custody.  BUT, because it was pretty much obvious to all involved (as far as I can imagine), I was ordered to pick up my children each afternoon after school, have them every weekend from Friday afternoon until Sunday evening (6:00 p.m.).  I slept in the car, and was left without money to keep it inspected (and sticker-worthy).  It was 1993 when I couldn't renew my license because a few hundred dollars (but then, growing) of tickets I got for a bad sticker.  Everything was handled in such a bizarre way, and any time I tried to address it I got any number of different replies.  So, even when I've had the "extra" money to pay off the bill that escalated, I was (still am) afraid that they'd pull some kind of switcheroo of rules on me after I'd already handed over a good sized chunk of money to them.  

I won't go more into the whole, twenty-plus-year-long thing about what has gone on; but with the Internet and being able to walk and take a very limited bus to some places, I was kind of OK for a good long time.  At some point it was wearing thin.  It didn't help that I was already kind of exhausted going into the divorce.  Neither did a couple of "horror shows" that involved losing my mother, and watching my children lose their remaining grandmother (not to mentioned any number of other losses).

Now (finally) to my point:   Just as I was starting to show some pretty obvious signs associated with adrenal fatigue/exhaustion,  I had the "gift from God" of doing a serious leg injury that was, just as it was making progress, followed by yet another one with the other leg (because I'd been relying on it for too long).  The nature of the exhaustion kind of changed in some ways, but not others.  Now the demands of getting the large muscles back to reasonably normal meant making demands on the system (look up a PBS work-out program (TAPP) for people dealing with exhaustion/compromised adrenal "system". 

The leg issues meant being trapped in the house, and where I live can mean the same thing when the weather makes it impossible to walk on roads that aren't designed for pedestrians.

Too much unrelenting, extreme, and/or varied types of stress for too long can men a person needs more sugar and/or salt in order to feel like they can function OK.  Even if they can generally function OK, or appear to be, it can mean a) not being entirely and/or always able to concentrate.  Aside from what the body requires by sometimes showing up in the form of cravings; even without any particular craving (like those days when I had fierce, fierce, salt cravings - which aren't the case any longer).

Several years into some degrees/types of stress that go on for too long can amount to a situation where a person who does physical activity beyond what his system can handle can result in (besides whatever else) a weird kind of anxiety that involves a weird kind of getting shaky (even when there's nothing in particular on the person's mind that would bring on anxiety).  Separate from physical demands, mental demands can seem to turn into physical ones (in ways I won't describe here), and if it all goes on long enough (and without at least a little time in-between for "breaks"; a person can feel like he's getting to yet another level of exhaustion that starts to  involved a number of different types of "saturation points" (my description of them) that can either feel physical, feel emotional, or just feel "plain, old, intellectual-level only").

Not seeing some causes of anger adequately addressed by the right people (like court people out-and-out admitting a failure and doing whatever can be done to make things right, for example) can mean a person needs "extra mental energy" (and a solid, well adjusted, nature and level of maturity) to control that anger.  OR, if the person is someone who doesn't know who to be angry at, wouldn't act on it anyway (at least not outside legal or moral means), and certainly has no plans to harm himself; that blend of needing an outlet for the anger and having to find a way to cool it down poses its own, additional, demands.

The "rules of what is healthy" and "rules of what are positive things to do" don't/can't apply to the person for whom the answers don't lie in places like gyms and/or in things like socializing and/or eating healthy vegetables.

If one looks up "adrenal fatigue" or "adrenal exhaustion" one may find the equivalent of a snake-oil sales-looking page of supplements (that lead people to think that "everyone can get adrenal fatigue some time".  Or, one may find tons of information about treating adrenal fatigue (get rid of the stress, rest, eat healthy foods, avoid caffeine  and sugar, etc. etc.)

Not everyone can "just" remove them-self from unrelenting, long-term,  serious, serious, stress that acts as the backdrop/foundation for everything else that's going on (good, bad, or otherwise) with/in a person's life and that his family (particularly children).  To be someone in that kind of have situation and have some "clown" think that going out for a run (or whatever) or "meeting new people" (as if a grown-up and parent give a rat's when they have that kind of thing going on) is "what you should do"  isn't just infuriating and isolating.  It would seem laughable if it weren't so uninformed.

I'm not calling anyone who has already posted on this thread, "a clown".   The "usual rules" generally apply to most people most of the time.  These days there's better information about adrenal exhaustion than was, say, a handful of years ago.  My thing is that before anyone thinks he has any advice to give anyone else, that person ought to consider the possibility that the other person may be dealing with things that the "advice-giver" may never in his life ever face; and be careful about who give advice to about what.

As I've written this big rant it's been a matter of my having been trapped in the house for enough days that I haven't been able to get enough of what I need to "get myself to OK" enough to be able to act/write like a non ranting-lunatic.  Having exercised more than was a good idea in recent days means not only "getting a muscle deal" going on that makes me more demands on my system; but has also meant needing a little more sugar than I'd ordinarily need.  (Apparently, salt is, maybe, more for "mental stress").  Anyway, having figured out that I shouldn't have divided my one candy bar that I had into halves (because that means not EVER really getting what I needed out of it); I decided yesterday when someone nice enough to bring me a candy bar to eat the whole thing.  That did the job yesterday.  Today, however, when the time came that I became aware of being in low-blood-sugar" too long, while peanut-butter helped some, as did the later addition of a little less than a teaspoon of honey; I'm not where I need to be "mentally", and I sure as heck had better not do yet more physical activity/exercise unless/until I get to a "place" (mentally) where I'm mainly OK "mentally" (it's not like I live in constant, immediate, new, upheaval-stress), and ready to once again start to gradually build up the physical activity.

These days I've worked my way past any number of times when exhaustion was more of a factor than I'd choose to allow it to be.  I'm generally and normally OK most of the time, but without a license my choice is either be trapped at home or go out doing a ridiculous walk to some very limited choices of places.  That, and the fact that (while I certainly am not going to starve to death, or be allowed to starve to death by relatives/friends) I can't get enough of exactly what I need trapped at home, and going out means making yet more physical/mental demands that I can only sometimes afford (depending on the day, how much activity I've done (physically, mentally) the day or two before, the weather, etc. etc.).

I could have turned all this into a Hub, but I have reasons for not wanting to.  I'm more interested in "contributing to a real-time discussion" here - and, ideally, one that doesn't involve spammers and/or advice-givers for whom life is fairly simple and the rules that hear/read from others are just what they accept without question.

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