I have pictures of my brain now. My dad gave me a brain scan for Xmas. Yes, my family is unique, I come by it naturally. When I can connect with, borrow, an optic scanner, I will get a digital version and post it somewhere. This is the thing that he and I am doing: http://www.amenclinics.com/.

They have you concentrate, shoot you up with some radiation that gets deposited in the busy areas and then take a SPECT scan of your brain to come up with a 3D image of the inside and outside. The next day they do it all over again but with you relaxing. The third day is talking to the Doc to find out what it all means in relationship to your personal history (they spent two hours taking my history on the first day).

Turns out that my brain shows that I am prone to depression, mood swings, and ADD. Anyone surprised? For what I have going on, I am on the proper meds (I still don’t think I am on the right strengths since drugs affect me oddly). What they are suggesting is a laundry list of supplements at which the top is Fish Oil (Omega-3).

The eye shaking thing doesn’t show up. The hypersensitive thing would be on a microscopic level and this isn’t that detailed.

One thing I didn’t know from before was that I am about equally balanced between anger/irritability and internal oriented sadness. I am very aware of the sadness part and thought I had avoided the anger/irritability. Part of my current process is to own up to and process my anger and irritability instead of suppressing it. I wonder if that is why it is showing up as equal when the sadness seems to be much larger in my life or if it has always been equal and I just did a good job of suppressing it before.

Supposedly I am not an addictive personality. I have assumed I was but I haven’t really gotten caught on anything yet. I may just look a little like it but not really be one.

Another funny thing is that it seems that I have much more brain activity at rest than when concentrating. At rest, my cerebellum lights up brightly. When concentrating, it almost goes away and it is my Thalamo-limbic area that becomes almost the only light in my head.

Another interesting odd note is that issue that show up on the right or the left tend to flip between the two different states.

Interesting general brain info includes that sensing your internal state is located in the Temporal Lobes and sensing your external state (data from the 5 senses, being able to close your eyes and point to something specific in the room) is located in the Parietal Lobes.

Also I have more variation in mood compared to a “healthy” brain which leads to creativity. And creativity shows up at the beginning and ending of an up or down swing. To me, this means when you are switching from one direction to the other, that is when I am my most creative and knowing that, I can capitalize on it.

I have issues with organization and motivation. I want to find out how to jump kick motivation. I lack discipline and motivation is how I lever myself into doing things.

The way to improve a lot of things is stuff I have done for years. Own your problems, avoid blame, kill off negative thoughts, focus on joy and being happy, etc. The problem is that I do those things as a survival mechanism so they aren’t as useful as someone that is coming to them fresh. I over use them and block other things with them. What I am doing now is letting those systems go offline so I can lean how to handle the negative stuff better. When it is all Happy Happy Joy Joy, when the bad times show up, and they always will, I have no way of coping. I go way down when I get hit with bad times. When you have a full spectrum of coping skills then you can choose the Happy Happy Joy Joy version when it is an option and deal with the bad things as needed.

I tried to explain all this to my dad and he can’t make heads or tails of it. And he is into this stuff as much as I am. So I don’t expect others to grok it either. But I am putting it out there anyway. (How many sentences can I start with conjunctions?)

I took a waltz class today. I found out that I am not as good at dancing as I thought I was. I am good at faking dancing a waltz. The actual techniques are harder and I find there are so many thing I have to remember to correct that I lose my footwork. It is good to learn this.

I was planning to take tonight’s lesson to test how much stamina I have. If it worked out ok, then I would take the February swing lessons in prep for March PEERS with Lee Presson and the Nails. The jury is out on if I can make it. Be the end of the hour, I had to sit down and sweat was pouring down my face. I need to think out my dance outfit. I need something very light because I so easily over heat but I don’t want my partner(s) to have to deal with a sopping wet dance partner. I didn’t used to sweat when I danced. No matter what a handkerchief is in order. This is one of the reasons I look to water aerobics for exercise. The water helps me maintain my temperature.

I am also pondering switching from follower to leader. I want to be a girl but with my height, it is somewhat uncomfortable to dance with the people that show up. I feel like I stick out all over the place. Sometimes this does not bother me but when I am finding out I am not as good a dancer as I thought I was, I don’t have a lot of room to absorb other areas of uncomfortability. Besides, I think I have more and better suited clothes as a guy than I do as a girl right now. I could look really cool if I could stand to wear a hat and vest. But those are too hot.

So it looks like things will go smoother for me if I just give up on my sense of being a girl and take on the leader role as my own. I may have more curves now but I don’t know how to dress those curves. I know how to dress a guy in my size. I will have to see if I am as good at that as I think I am. With my current haircut I probably will make a good dyke.

I still want to be a girl and I still wish I didn’t sweat so much or overheat.

The new movie seems to be a very different version of Sherlock Homes. The fist fighting scene is one that struck me as not how I picture Sherlock Homes. Someone from my FL posted this link http://community.livejournal.com/221b_bakerst/439718.html that lists out things from the movie that fit the Sherlock Homes canon. It shows that the fighting scene does actually fit.

I got to watch myself follow ruts in my road and have written up what I have seen. It moves from one thing to another and seems to cover things that don’t go together. This is not a well written out piece but the flow of my logic. Here is an overview of what it covers.

Summary:
Fear based motivations
It is hard for me to get into trouble
I am very gullible and innocent
Lack of confidence based on lack of situational knowledge
Rejection response – Wired backwards
Why I don’t play RPGs anymore
Losing myself in a character
I am a RPG Snob
Look at those patterns, yup they all fit a model, a strange one all my own.

Cut for length

This is my type of weather and I haven’t been able to get myself away from the couch and out the door for anything the last few days. I don’t know why. Sunday through 2am Thursday morning (with a 5 hour excursion for therapy and errands on Monday) has been at home, on the couch, watching TV, playing with the internet, or sleeping.

It isn’t that I don’t have energy but that I seem to be forcing myself to dive deeper into the couch. It doesn’t make sense to me. It is a new phase.

I finally got myself out the door and went for a little walk around the block in the rain. I am sorry to have missed the downpour and happy to have missed the wind. I have steel toe rubber boots and a rubber rain cape. I used to have an awesome black leather hat that had a really wide brim and was a perfect rain hat but I lost it years ago. Since getting dressed to go out is part of what keeps me from moving, I stuck my bare feet in the rubber boots and wrapped the rain cape around my nightshirt and robe. My head did get soaked (I was looking forward to that) but the rest of me is bone dry.

While wind does make me dig in deeper, I was digging into the couch even when it wasn’t windy.

I am glad that I managed to at least get out for a little tiny bit of this storm system. I regret not being in a position to enjoy it more. I have enjoyed listening to the rain fall pretty much the entire time. That is one thing for a flipped schedule, it mostly rains at night and I am awake for it.

It is hard to say I would rather stay awake when I’m asleep because my dreams are bursting at the seams. ~”Firefies” by Owl City

This line from the song really resonates with me every time I hear it.

This is a long detailed description of a dream I had before waking up today. No analysis, just a vivid dream that is typical of my types of dreams. It is just an example because a friend suggested that I write them out when I wake up. They are kind of cool but they are so long and so detailed that it takes forever to go through them. I told a boyfriend about my dream the first night we spent together. When we finally got up, he asked if he needed to set aside 15 hours for sleeping and telling him the dream because that is how much time we took. I find when I try to write them out that the process of coming up with the right words to describe something tends to overwrite the memory of the dream. It is easier to type it out but in typing, trying to have the correct spelling and correct grammar to make myself understood, it really overwrites the memories. It is a very clear difference between the two sides of the brain in action.

Cut because it is long and possibly boring to many

Ah fiddle…

I measured myself today and checked a chart for what size to wear. Bust measurement says 14, Waist says 18, Hips say 16. When I am so thin I am just a stick the answer to the size question is yes. These curves don’t match the curves in typical clothes. Oh well.

Bust: 42
Waist: 38
Hips: 46
Inseam: 35
Neck: 14
Calf: 15
Wrist: 6.5
Crown: 22
Height: 72

I sure do enjoy telling stories. And since I tend to not talk unless people want to hear what I have to say, this means I usually get positive feedback from any audience.

One of my ennegram sources made the point that for the types 5, 6, and 7, to have power they give it away. This makes a lot of sense to me.

This is my interpretation:
Picture a baseball diamond. At the pitcher’s mound stands a person and their power radiates from them equally in all directions. For their power to reach each base, it must overlap the lines between each base. If the baseball diamond is the limit of what they can actually do, then all the area outside the diamond but inside the circle is where they fail. And failure hurts.

To reduce the amount of failure to the least possible degree, the person can limit their power so that the circle extends to only touch the lines between the bases. This means the entire circle is within the diamond. But the space between the circle and the bases is wasted power. The person could have it but choose to limit themselves to avoid having places where their power wouldn’t work, thereby sacrificing power for a reduction in pain.

I think this relates to my concept of Deny before Denial. It hurts less to deny yourself something than to have it denied to you.

For those that are interested
8, 9, and 1s are Self deleting.
2, 3, and 4s are Self rejecting.
5, 6, and 7s are Self opposing.

I am working on reducing the extra stuff in my life. I find I can let things go easily if someone else wants it more than I do. Also when I give something away, it needs  to be appreciated which means just dumping it off at Goodwill doesn’t work so well for me. 

Currently, I am looking to see if anyone wants to provide a new home for a Wallace and Gromit plush dolls. They were given to me years ago and I have loved them and delighted in them. They have been living in a drawer for some time and I realized it is time for them to be appreciated again. I found a picture of similar ones on ebay and it can be found here. I think Wallace is 15" tall.