st0p-the-dams

[st0p-the-dams]

Started the year with a flu that turned into bronchitis, an ear infection, and a sinus infection so I'd like to think my year will only get better from here!

[st0p-the-dams]

I think the universe is genuinely trying to take me out cause I managed to fall down the stairs, get a nail lodged in my tire, have an eczema flare up, and bleed through my pants at work in just 24 hours. I fell asleep in the shower earlier cause I was like damn this is the only place I can catch a break 😅

[st0p-the-dams]

Sometimes you have an OCD induced panic attack at work so bad you're shaking and almost throwing up because nothing is where it's supposed to be. Then you finally finish organizing and you still feel awful but there's the smallest bit of humor because you specifically panicked over organizing the dildos and pocket pussies...

To be fair this all started with the party/gag stuff cause that took me like 2 hours alone. I'm unfortunately not even done with stock but it's been 4 hours straight so I'm taking a break 😭 minimum wage is not enough for me to be stressing this hard.

[st0p-the-dams]

aromantic and interested in shipping in much the same way people are interested in superheroes. like man wouldnt it be cool if dating was real. id love to imagine what i would do if dating was real. here's my tierlist of the best kinds of dating. number 4 may surprise you.

[st0p-the-dams]

Nooo the worker at the store next door is flirting with me 😭 I thought he might be when we interacted before but it was way more obvious this time. I think he knows I'm trans at least cause he saw my name tag but even if I wasn't the most dating repulsed aromantic, he's way too young for me. My store checks ID so I know he's 20 from that. It sounds stupid but people being interested in me is my biggest anxiety trigger so I am not happy rn!

[st0p-the-dams]

Can anyone help a burnt out broke autistic. I hate asking for money but I really just need a little bit to get through until I get paid Friday. My dental appointments with the tooth extraction cost about $400 overall and I still have my actual cleaning on the 9th. I'm already putting off my oil change and getting my breaks checked until my paycheck but I don't have any grocery money either 🥲 Wish my job let me go full time cause I'm working 5 days a week but they keep me just under 40 hours and give me minimum wage and it isn't enough anymore.

DONATION LINKS

Anything would help and I can doodle something for you or make you a themed movie recommendation board in exchange. Examples attached below, doodles would be more on simplistic side of my style.

[st0p-the-dams]

Hold on I can make this post even funnier now. THIS is the ace rep I want in the world ✊😔

I love how the only canonically confirmed asexual and/or aromantic characters are such a bizarre but also extremely based bunch. Like yeah we barely have any representation but those we do get are the cream of the crop. A sentient sponge? A platypus? I love how batshit it is.

I know there are a few characters I didn’t include but they’re mostly from media I haven’t consumed. Also if you aren’t reading Rodney R Rodney on webtoon you’re missing out.

[st0p-the-dams]

Wearing bracelets so I'm more aware of my arms because for some reason I've developed a compulsion this manic episode where I just slap my eye without meaning to. I've done it 3 times and one I had to check I wasn't gonna get a black eye cause I hit myself so hard (rip left eye cause it's only that one)✌️ I think I burnt myself out so bad all October that it just exploded into the most distressing manic episode. Staying up until 4am every morning, accidentally skipping meals, insane vocal stimming, spending money I don't have, etc. Not to mention the typical horrific sex drive. So extremely dysphoric and sex/romance repulsed. Had a meltdown because a worker from the store next to mine flirted with me the other night.

On a positive note Halloween marked me being officially a year clean of cutting.

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The almost $200 of taxes taken out of my not even $1000 paycheck is about to push me over the edge

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Going to the dentist in the morning but pretty sure I have a tooth infection/need an extraction and it hurts so bad 😭

[st0p-the-dams]

Looking back on this post things seemed 100% worse than they probably were from my developing sinus infection and how jam packed my schedule was while fighting off being sick. I worked almost every day, had 4 events, and then tried to completely drop an addiction on top of that. Like I really picked the worst week to add another big stressor to my plate!

Tw: hypersexuality vent + minor self harm behaviors

In trying to manage my hypersexuality and porn/sex addiction I got the great idea to completely go cold turkey on engaging in any sexual media or stimulation. Did not take into account the fact that I suffer from persistent genital arousal disorder and that removing any outlets would be extremely painful both physically and mentally because my body is still aroused almost 24/7 even without stimuli. Now I'm just embarrassed by the fact that I barely made it 5 days before breaking down mentally. The urge to do something was so bad this morning that I spent an hour picking the skin on my face and proceeded to binge eat through my entire shift. I still haven't done anything but I was so distressed by the time I got home from work that I fainted and now I'm just laying in bed crying feeling like a fucking mistake.

Throwback to the post I made about how embarrassing it feels to have meltdowns simply from being too horny. Yesterday night wasn't quite as bad but I kept hitting myself and screaming and I just feel so out of control. The only thing that has ever managed my PGAD is antidepressants but I'm not allowed to go on them anymore because I'm bipolar and they send me into the worst manic episodes! I don't know what to fucking do anymore. If anyone else with PGAD has advice I'm desperate because counseling and doctors have yet to help and it's ruining my life.

[st0p-the-dams]

So I have the lovely trauma of dealing with a chronic case of sinusitis that lasted over 8 months straight and had me journaling about how scared I was that I would die in my sleep because I couldn't breathe and how humiliating it was to be in public while so sick. This was also during the very stressful time where I was doing a 22 credit hour semester and a paid internship (my first job ever). The whole thing ended in me having to get surgery and I've been scared of getting sinus infections ever since.

Well back when I got a concussion in July and got a CT scan they could also see I had a sinus infection. I didn't treat it properly because I didn't have the money but it stayed mild and seemed to go away. Started feeling sick this last Friday, stayed in denial about it being a sinus infection until Monday, and have been aggressively treating it in the hopes to keep it mild. Just woke up at 12:30am and was sent into a full blown panic attack because I couldn't breathe or stop coughing. Between that and the exhausting/pain/lightheadedness I'm having a hard time calming down. Logically know all my symptoms are normal and I'm not dying but I'm so scared to go back to sleep.

[st0p-the-dams]

I love my counselor (been seeing her for over 5 years!) but I feel like I'm not getting what I should be out of sessions time-wise. She's always had to end a few minutes early which never bothered me much since insurance completely covers my sessions and I know they book her appointments back to back on the hour so she needs a bit to prepare for the next person. But now these last couple months she always starts the call late too! Started out maybe 2-3 minutes late which, once again, didn't care much. Then it went to 5. Now it's consistently 10 plus. She called 15 minutes late today and I missed it because I got distracted waiting for the call after the first 10 mins. Now she hasn't even responded to my texts sent literally 2 minutes after her call asking if we could still do our appointment. So guess I'm just not having one today 🤷‍♂️

[st0p-the-dams]

hi. if you're in this tag, you're suffering, so here's some things that work for me. i can make no promises about how WELL they work, in my experience every flare is different and i'm keenly aware how lucky i am that i only get flares (knock on wood). but i know how it is to be in so much anguish that you're willing to try anything, and i've been in this tag myself looking for help i couldn't find, so here goes.

(other sufferers please feel free to add your own strategies as well, even if they directly contradict mine. this beast is different for everyone it hurts.)

STUFF THAT HELPS ME:

for some reason, sitting with my feet propped up, with one leg straight and one bent. the more horizontal the better, with as little pressure on the trouble spots as physically possible. (fully inclining to get all my blood to go up instead of down can help too.)

ibuprofen or other painkillers, efficacy varies.

vibration. not in a sexy way, think massage levels at a steady and unchanging rate, and not for too long. at the right angle it seems to overwhelm my nerves and make them stop trying to send information. (i mostly use this when i'm feeling active pain, it's not helpful if the sensation is only distracting, and too much pressure will make it worse.)

getting off, but, and this is important - CONSCIOUSLY RELAXING immediately afterward, every muscle in my body, and staying that way as long as possible. i do this even when i'm not in the middle of a flare in hopes of rewiring my physiology to not immediately roar back to attention. sometimes it can trick my body into accepting whatever satiating hormones are getting released as enough to (mostly) turn off, at least for a while. twice is the max before i try something else.

as much as possible, i try not to get off more than twice in the same day. often by the third or fourth time i am actively making the flare worse, or i'm risking a flare if i'm not already having one.

for some fucking reason i tend to bloat up during one of these, so lately i use peppermint to try to address that. not sure how well it works yet, but if you're bloating, you can probably tell how much worse that's making it, try to bring it down any way you can.

this requires doctor buy-in but muscle relaxants can help me sometimes, if nothing else they'll help me sleep through it. diazepam varies for me, it can make things better or do nothing, it's a toss-up.

the yoga position "happy baby." i don't do it right since i don't know how to yoga, but it tends to hurt my back for a while which can be nice and distracting, and when that eventually goes away it helps with taking the pressure off as much as possible. i haven't tested it for very long periods because it's hard to do anything in that position except think about how much i hate having pgad, which means i'm thinking about the problem, which doesn’t help.

progesterone supplements help. i'm afab so i don't know if this will help amab people but if you can talk your doctor into it, allegedly it's supposed to calm everything down. however, messing with your hormones in any way always runs the risk of making it worse, so be aware.

brief, inconsistent pressure. kind of the same thing as the vibration, it's about overloading the nerves so they shut up for a minute (which i'm aware may be a quirk of mine and not a universal experience). think more scratching or pinching, less pressing or rubbing. again doesn’t really help with arousal, just pain.

keeping an empty bladder. i don't know why, it's just generally worse for me if it's full, so i go early and often.

STUFF I AVOID:

ice. for me this is the definition of short term relief in exchange for long term suffering, no matter how much relief i get in the moment it's going to be ten times worse later and tends to only prolong the flare.

lidocaine gel. i might get a little relief from this, but not much, and i suspect all it really does is make me unaware just how much pressure i'm putting on the area, which only agitates everything and makes things worse when the numbness wears off.

ssris. i know these are marketed as a treatment for this condition, which is wild to me because i got mine from taking ssris and you'd have to strap me down and sedate me to get me to take them again. i have basically become very hyperaware of any med that can potentially mess with my serotonin in particular and will immediately reject one if i start to feel a flare coming on when i start taking it. i also request that my doctor start me on very low doses of anything we suspect of being a trigger, so i can hopefully catch it before it gets bad.

i already kinda mentioned it but getting off too often, this invariably makes everything so much worse and the sensation and the desperation only increase over time. if i fuck up like this sometimes squeezing in the right place to reduce as much blood flow to the trouble spot as i possibly can will help, but only temporarily, and ideally i can recover enough to move on to a distraction technique instead.

thinking about it, which is why i'm going to have to stop working on this post now and try to do something else (reading and gaming and watching video essays or doing more than one thing at once tends to be my go-to, i tend to be unable to focus on a hobby that requires too much active thinking like drawing or writing or studying during a flare).

again you know your situation better than i ever will, unfortunately, so if you already know something on this list will just make it worse, please don't try that. if something that doesn’t work for me works for you then thank god something works, do that thing i beg.

best of luck and i hope you can find relief somewhere, in those thin places we have to accept as the best we can get for now.

[st0p-the-dams]

Tw: hypersexuality vent + minor self harm behaviors

In trying to manage my hypersexuality and porn/sex addiction I got the great idea to completely go cold turkey on engaging in any sexual media or stimulation. Did not take into account the fact that I suffer from persistent genital arousal disorder and that removing any outlets would be extremely painful both physically and mentally because my body is still aroused almost 24/7 even without stimuli. Now I'm just embarrassed by the fact that I barely made it 5 days before breaking down mentally. The urge to do something was so bad this morning that I spent an hour picking the skin on my face and proceeded to binge eat through my entire shift. I still haven't done anything but I was so distressed by the time I got home from work that I fainted and now I'm just laying in bed crying feeling like a fucking mistake.

Throwback to the post I made about how embarrassing it feels to have meltdowns simply from being too horny. Yesterday night wasn't quite as bad but I kept hitting myself and screaming and I just feel so out of control. The only thing that has ever managed my PGAD is antidepressants but I'm not allowed to go on them anymore because I'm bipolar and they send me into the worst manic episodes! I don't know what to fucking do anymore. If anyone else with PGAD has advice I'm desperate because counseling and doctors have yet to help and it's ruining my life.

[st0p-the-dams]

Between nearing 30 and recently finding out I have arthritis bad in my neck/back I'm tryna take better care of myself after big outings. Just spent 4 hours at a concert dancing so I immediately made myself drink water, take pain meds, and now soak in an epsom salt bath after getting home. Mornings have been especially hard for me pain wise and I refuse to wake up hurting more than necessary tomorrow 😭

[st0p-the-dams]

I'm in one of those manic episodes where I have so much energy and aggression I feel like I'm gonna throw up.