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So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

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Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#121

Post by sciurus »

fho wrote: post #93
tluyben2 wrote: post #72

Same exact symptoms (the bass guitar string he heard is a thing that gave me ptsd like symptoms/crippling anxiety for a long time after) I had from a TIA when I was overworked. He waited getting a scan so they could've missed it later; my office was next to the hospital: nothing showed on the CT one hour after but on the RMI a couple of hours after they found a tiny lesion in one of the regions involved in forming sp…

Is that "bass guitar string" thing common? I had it twice, both times in a hot and cramped train and shrugged it up to "heat stroke".

I'm curious about this too. I have also experienced this at times, although I wouldn't have found these words to describe it. I don't think it's been tied to any particular conditions like heat or stress. Usually it happens when I'm in bed and beginning to fall asleep.

Googling turns up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome which sounds like what I've experienced.

Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#123

Post by misterremote »

blocked_again wrote: post #107
popotamonga wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes i wonder if i'm in the path for that. Because even though i do 13h days every day of extremelly stressing work (putting out fires all the time), i do always get 8h sleep and 1h exercise. And so so food.

But why? There are plenty of good companies that have work life balance. Why not move to one of them?

I'm also curious!

Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#124

Post by vegardx »

This reads out exactly how a manic or hypomanic person would experience things and rationalize past events and feelings. The idea that it has to be something complex and in a sense grandiose compared to "just being burned out" is often a very telling sign.

Perhaps it's Twitter forcing the format a little, but I could see myself thinking like this during a hypomanic episode. I'm diagnosed with bipolar disorder (type 2, rapid cycling). I could see a lot of people with undiagnosed behavioral disorders being thrown into a complete mess of a situation with any resemblance of a functional system being thrown out of the door when Covid-19 hit.

Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#125

Post by misterremote »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #91
cercatrova wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you visualize things in your mind as if they were physically in front of you? People with aphantasia cannot and they often can't remember visual events from the past as a result. Perhaps you have it too.

How can I tell if I am unable to do this? I think maybe I kind of can, but I have to focus really hard and it is a flickering image and I am not sure if I am actually imagining that I am imagining if that makes sense at all. Or the fact that I am not sure is already telling? I don't think I try to imagine anything in my daily regular life though.

Haha, exactly my thought! I can form a mental image (photo) in my mind, but how do I know others can "see" it similarly?

It's not very clear as I can't really see it in front of me, but it's in my head, and there's a different kind of "seeing" happening...

One evening I asked my 5yo daughter that when she imagines something in her head, does she see it almost like in real physical 3d? She said yes. I wouldn't say yes to that question. But again, it's so subjective...

Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#126

Post by 74d-fe6-2c6 »

sokoloff wrote: post #115
74d-fe6-2c6 wrote: post #94

I don't find his explanation convincing. He totally overworked for a long time, probably didn't exercise at all, didn't do anything at all - this by itself is likely already a symptom of an underlying issue. No sane person will spend all the time working if there is a choice. Maybe he was distracting himself from a depression or some trauma. To narrow the cause of his experience down to Glucose seems like quite a sim…

I might not be sane (how would I know fully?), but there are several times in my life when I beyond-willingly worked 75-90 hours per week for months on end. I did it to ship a game, and two other internal products at other companies. Those periods look a lot like working, sleeping, eating, and walking among the areas where those activities happen. I loved my life in those periods and had plenty of freedom to choose t…

I'm the last person to judge you. I myself am most certainly not "sane". My coping strategies lead me away from work. I need to maintain balance to actually work. Not even sure if I even have a real coping strategy. I do breathing exercises, ride my bike and in the evening I treat myself with a little bit of weed. So, that's that. It just seems to me that it might be worth digging a bit deeper and broader if you want to narrow down the cause/s. Good luck for sure!

Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#127

Post by misterremote »

pas wrote: post #98
1_player wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the story lacked the "why?" Why are you working so hard to give yourself seizures and ignore them? When is it a good time to just tell your boss fuck off I'm out? I don't know the guy, but I would understand if it was the case if he was trying to provide for his starving family in a third world country. One thing is reaching burnout, one thing is literally reaching the point of permanent physical damage and jus…

Third world countriness might not only happen there . The status game is very strong in the US. The need to provide for one's family, house, car, tuition, the very best food, savings, etc. And when it's just one more stupid report, it seems easy. OP seems to have a very high tolerance for delayed gratification. (Which doesn't seem that surprising for a pentester.)

It's a Game of Society, and it's not our friend. When you're sold the story of how your life should look like through ads, people around you, etc, of course you struggle to achieve that.

I think OP said he was in debt, and needed money to come out of it while supporting his family.

So here's the result of the game called "society".

Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#128

Post by alexpetralia »

aetherspawn wrote: post #9

I have had something similar to this (heavy fog and inability to continue creative work) and I use coffee, bulk vitamins and regular walks with music to work through it. I also started eating more fresh food and less frozen food, even if it meant eating-out fresh, because it was much worse when I was reheating a lot of tasteless frozen food. But no matter how hard I try, I have focused my career into an area that req…

I wonder if you may have aphantasia, and I also wonder if it may be more common (selected for even) amongst engineers.

If I say: "imagine a red triangle", can you do it easily? Is it red? Does it visually exist in front of you?

I have asked many people this, and many people say it is laughably easy. This tells me it is "normal".

I can't do this. I also have a terrible episodic memory. But my semantic memory is fantastic.

Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#129

Post by jac241 »

h0l0cube wrote: post #54
Jakobeha wrote: post #45

I don't necessarily doubt the author, but how do you chronically deprive your brain of glucose? Afaik you would get glucose back whenever you ate anything. Unless you were doing keto, but then your body and brain run on ketones. And if you did somehow deprive your brain of fuel, you would get symptoms in a much shorter span. Maybe undereating, but he doesn't list weight loss, and if you're rapidly losing weight and s…

It seems very much like confirmation bias. The state of the art of research on FND might be ahead of wikipedia, but it states under 'causes' only this: > A systematic review found that stressful life events and childhood neglect were significantly more common in patients with FND than the general population, although many patients (around 70%) report no stressors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_neurologic_d…

With you on this. There is no diagnostic test for glucose/dopamine depletion, and it is unlikely theory in my opinion. Even when you haven't eaten the circulatory system keeps the brain flushed with glucose from the liver or muscle glycogen, and then ketone bodies from ketogenesis. Unless you have a constant flow of these nutrients supported by a normal blood pressure, you pass out quickly. I don't think it's a surprise that he started to improve when he started antidepressants, started seeing a therapist (the psychologist), started exercising more, and took a less stressful job. To me it sounds like anxiety that built up repeatedly after 30 minutes of working. He states that he felt a numb nothingness (anhedonia), had trouble concentrating, and had psychomotor slowing. Only needs one more to hit the criteria for major depressive disorder, and I'm guessing he was having trouble sleeping at this time. From what he wrote ("It was a physical issue.") it looks like he was going to search until he found a non-psychiatric diagnosis, seeking out a neuro-psychologist (someone with likely no biochem/physiology background), to propose a theory about something that is unlikely.

Regarding the post up above about a TIA (thank you for sharing this story) or the one below about the Microsoft engineer who had neck pain and then a stroke (carotid or vertebral artery dissection, often caused in younger people by car crashes or neck manipulation by a chiropractor..), I think a TIA/stroke is much less likely in this guy's case because of the recurrence of the symptoms after being able to work for a period of time. Someone who's had a TIA hitting Broca's area (motor speech) won't be able to work for a little and then have to stop, they're just not going to be able to speak/type. And unless they're very unlucky they're not going to have them repeatedly only after working for a short period of time. Maybe it is an exact match with the TIA post above with anxiety/PTSD after the initial TIA with word finding difficulty, but it doesn't seem like this guy had word finding difficulty at first because he was able to work after sleeping off his stroke.

If you want to run with glucose, he could have type I diabetes or an insulinoma if you want to go rare, but the symptoms are going to be resolved immediately after eating anything with carbs.

But what do I know, just a student in the American medical system.

Re: So I finally sorted out what happened to my brain

#130

Post by bladegash »

varjag wrote: post #97
bladegash wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research is conflicting, but burnout many times is not caused by the amount of hours worked, whether you are exercising, eating right, etc. Those may be components to it or make you less resilient in general, but burnout seems to really come from things like feeling lack of meaning/purpose, inconsistency in values, perceived or actual unfairness, etc. Another interesting perspective I have heard describes burnout as…

One can argue about compounding factors, but working too hard is always there in burnout cases.

I disagree and I do not see why it would not be possible to become burned out when your workload is too low-pressure. Some people thrive under such conditions and languish under others. However, some issues unrelated to working too hard are far more universal, such as feelings of being unfairly treated, lack of autonomy, feeling trapped or stuck in a position due to other responsibilities, etc.
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