Tetris 'helps to reduce trauma' →
I’ve been thinking about this again recently. For as long as I can remember I’ve always enjoyed watching disk defragmenters run…these usually have coloured squares representing areas of a hard disk that contain fragmented files. Now it isn’t tetris or a game or even interactive but it is usually represented on the screen by blocks changing colour.
Last night I was defragmenting a netbook and felt so calm and relaxed (i.e. unusual!) while watching it, must have easily spent over an hour. Didn’t have any flashbacks to you-know-what during that time. Totally unscientific and only one occasion but I thought I’d record it anyway just because of the peaceful state it left me in and with no ‘troubling’ thoughts while I was doing it.
I wondered at one point “I wish I could get a screensaver that would defrag during idle time”.
The big problem for me in any of the advice given in the stress management course relaxation exercises was that most of them are based around visualisation - I am phenomenally crap at imagining anything, my head is filled with (to me) horrific and distressing *real* things that have happened that replay on an infinite loop in my head, re-experiencing many of the same emotions,though to a lesser degree that I felt when they happened.
Maybe watching the blocks gives me something in the *real world* to focus on, that works better for me than something made up inside my head and it’s the current real world blocks that are literally blocking older memories from coming to the fore. Well anyway, am definitely going to look to see if I can find something like tetris but not interactive to put on the ipod touch so I could carry something ‘blocky’ around with me. Now I’m going to go round defragmenting as many drives as I can find, I’m just grateful for a small instance of something being helpful :-)
Sick…
Yesterday I was at the ranch. I ate a sandwich from Starbucks, drank a chai tea latte, then rode my horse for an hour. I got off her, was walking her over to the wash rack to hose her off and all of a sudden felt like I was going to pass out. Was seeing stars, my whole face went numb, felt like I was going to vomit. I tied her up to the fence and went to go sit down in the shade and drank 20oz of water, assuming I was dehydrated since it was 75 degrees out and I’d been riding my horse.
[snip]
We got home, I felt good enough to shower and sit down. I still felt “not right” all day, but we ordered Chinese food and I had a normal dinner. The evening started to get worse and worse. Randomly, my nose and mouth and hands and feet would start to get all tingly/numb. I would have waves where I would feel like I’m about to pass out and vomit.
[snip]
At this point, I’m not sure what it is - heading in to the doctor now…my theories are:
1) Food poisoning from the Starbucks sandwich?
2) Allergic reaction to Nexium, a new delayed-release medication for acid reflux that I started taking Friday night around 11pm.
3) Blood pressure/blood sugar/iron?
4) Insert idea here?
As another potential for 4. Are you under any stress? I’ve had numbness/pins and needles in hands, feet and mouth and a feeling of heaviness in my face, also spells of nausea without actually being sick - very unpleasant. Breathing and heart rate in strange patterns. In my case it was directly related to a deeply stressful life situation and the doctor said these symptoms were caused by anxiety.
