Poem: "Traumatic Inertia"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem was written outside the prompt calls, and posted as barter for nanila. It is a direct sequel to "The Hardest Part" in the Polychrome Heroics series.


"Traumatic Inertia"


Damask's Journal

Maze: I can't seem to get out of bed today.

Mira: Me neither.

Ham: Did anyone get the license number of that truck?

Clement: Not fucking funny.

Clarity: Let's think of something we can do in bed, then.

Keane: We'll just spend the day processing.
Don't worry, folks, I got this.

* * *

Notes:

(Links for apathy, inertia, and depression are the best I could find, but some still refer to "laziness." :(  If anyone can suggest more positive replacements, that's welcome.)
Apathy is a lack of motivation, which can result from PTSD, depression, or other causes. Contrast it with other emotional states. Inertia is a limitation in fitness. Depression increases this, but exercise can reduce depression and anxiety.  Here are some tips for exercising while depressed.  There are ways to overcome apathy, break inertia, and ease depression.

Emotional processing is necessary after major upheavals. Know how to process and release emotions. The other headmates may not appreciate Keane much, but he's crucial to the system's functionality.

Comments

Good poem, BUT--

[dialecticdreamer]

If you as a reader even /suspect/ that what you're dealing with is NOT a bout of inertia and sadness over something like a breakup or fight with a friend, I'd say-- run, don't walk to the link labeled "ease depression". It's a good, safe start, and then go where the mood strikes you among the more limited links. Because they're not /bad/, they just have the Puritanical association that 'lazy' is a mortal sin and it creeps into their tone, quite obviously.

Re: Good poem, BUT--

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Both of the first two links I checked about inertia and depression USE the term "lazy" --applying it to someone who may, in fact, be diagnosed on the bipolar scale as depressed. BE WARNED that the posts, while helpful for the occasional bout of 'the blues' are NOT ideal. <<

Thanks for catching this. I have added a warning above the links.

>> Probably "the best of a bad lot", am I right? <<

Exactly. I look first for positive content -- is it on topic, does it have something useful? Then I try to weed out negative content -- does it say something awful? But sometimes that leaves me with 0 links.

>> Treating people with depression as though they are lazy is a cruelty endemic to modern American culture, and it is VERY cruel indeed. <<

Agreed.

Another problem is that small but crucial distinctions are usually lost in topical posts. Frex, depression can be acute or chronic; biochemical, psychological, and/or circumstantial. Those different forms may respond to different treatments. Drugs won't help short-term depression because they take weeks or months to have any effect if they're going to at all; you need coping skills to deal with the acute form. Conversely, biochemical depression is a long-term problem not much influenced by circumstantial or psychological factors, and usually requires pharmaceutical support.

A majority of people, if something horrible happens, are going to have at least one experience shortly afterward when they have no energy and no drive. If that's never happened to you before, it can be alarming and you might not know how to deal with it. So the first thing you should do is rest, because your supply is probably just depleted and will bounce back to normal. Eat healthy foods, take care of yourself, do things that usually make you feel good. Try to work through what upset you so much. Then if you don't feel better after a few days or weeks (whatever your help-seeking threshold is) the problem might need expert attention.

I couldn't find a webpage that said that.

>> I'm sorry to harp about something incidental to the actual poem, /except/-- Would you really suggest those links to Maze, unwarned and without support? Because in the poem, she isn't in a stable place, and hitting the "lazy" designation -might- just be one time too many, and send them into a downward spiral. <<

These are valid points. I want the resources to be helpful, not harmful. But I'm limited by what can be found online already or what I have time to write myself. So I added the warning, and maybe someone else will know of better links. Once in a while, readers do suggest articles that are exactly what I needed but couldn't find earlier.

This poem is really about acute depression rather than chronic depression, which I've dealt with in some of my other writing. It's a lot easier to find close matches for the version everyone pays attention to, so then I can weed out the crappy ones and still have some left.

Re: Good poem, BUT--

[dialecticdreamer]

I'm digging through links. Straight off the top of my head, WebMD is much more helpful, and oddly, MORE optimistic.
http://www.webmd.com/depression/features/exercise

If you like it, add it above, please. (I've expressed a problem with something, I'm bleeping well going to try to help make it better!)

Includes mention of both depression and anxiety, something Maze and her System seem to experience a LOT right now (and for good reasons).

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/depression-and-exercise/art-20046495?pg=2

Again, very helpful, start where you ARE, start small, don't sweat the occasional setback. GOOD advice especially for people whose situations are compounded by depression, like a disability, or poverty, or a dozen other things. "I don't have the money to join a gym" is a very VALID complaint that's usually shot down as "you'll find the money when you get SERIOUS about your health." (To them I wave my fingers in rude, entirely non-ASL gestures.)

I read a book several years ago, which actually LOOKED AT the studies of Prozac and other depression treatments and compared them to, among other things, both a "couch-potato-no-change" group and one which worked up to an hour of exercise per day. And both studies were compared against the studies of chemical treatments for depression--Guess which one is cheaper and /within two percent/ of the MOST effective drug therapy?

Yup, the exercise.

I'm currently trying to dig through my memory for the name of ONE of that particular chain of books, but it was one of the few written for the layperson which EXPLAINED methodologies, INCLUDED the methodologies, and expected the reader to actually be able to interpret the data graphs from each study compared.

Re: Good poem, BUT--

[dialecticdreamer]

Okay, didn't find the actual book, (memory must crap out at the fifteen-year-mark?) but check this out for specific, concrete comparisons. Includes data on how much exercise saw improvement, long term comparison and neutral language.

http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Exercise-and-Depression-report-excerpt.htm

From the excerpt for the full text, there's one key bit of data: SSRIs (serotonin reuptake inhibitors, Prozac and Zoloft are brand names of this category) can take four to EIGHT WEEKS to begin affecting mood. And the side effects are /serious/. Check this out to see which drugs are being discussed in the other links: http://www.health.harvard.edu/special_health_reports/Understanding_Depression

Last comment: our understanding of chronic depresion is RAPIDLy changing. If your last"new" information is more than five years old, check this out. Serotonin levels aren't the CAUSE of chronic depression, they're a SYMPTOM.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/06/head_fake/?page=full

Re: Good poem, BUT--

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Straight off the top of my head, WebMD is much more helpful, and oddly, MORE optimistic.<<

Yes, it is; I've added both of your links.

>> (I've expressed a problem with something, I'm bleeping well going to try to help make it better!) <<

Much appreciated!

>> Includes mention of both depression and anxiety, something Maze and her System seem to experience a LOT right now (and for good reasons). <<

Those problems go together for many people. Yes, Damask have solid grounds for being kind of a mess right now. Not only are they trying to cope with the aftermath of trauma, they've got new superpowers and new headmates and then even more shit happens. 0_o

Re: Good poem, BUT--

[dialecticdreamer]

I think they have the potential to all be relatively healthy, emotionally. It's just going to take WORK to get there.

Re: Good poem, BUT--

[ysabetwordsmith]

Oh yes. There's nothing wrong with Damask that time and effort can't mend. They're never going to reintegrate into a single person, but as long as they're comfortable and functional as a team, that's an evolution not a disorder. They'll get there.

the poem

[dialecticdreamer]

Is surprisingly powerful, given that I later had to go find the poem it follows. (Such a hardship, LOL.)

Keane is taking care of the others, and they're ALLOWING it, not just grudgingly tolerating it.

Oddly, I think this will help them ALL bond as a group, and give them more respect for the skills Keane brings to them all.

Thanks for posting it.

Re: the poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Is surprisingly powerful, given that I later had to go find the poem it follows. (Such a hardship, LOL.) <<

Thank you! I'm glad you found this so moving.

>> Keane is taking care of the others, and they're ALLOWING it, not just grudgingly tolerating it. <<

They're slowly learning how to cope with challenges together.

>> Oddly, I think this will help them ALL bond as a group, and give them more respect for the skills Keane brings to them all. <<

It lays a good foundation for that, at least. I think at some point Damask will need someone to point out how much Keane is doing for the system as a whole, when other headmates complain about how he irritates them. He's like a housewife, you know? Does a ton of work that everyone needs done, but gets very little appreciation for it.

>> Thanks for posting it. <<

You're welcome!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you just gotta go bury yourself in a good *book*...

Detritus

[zeeth_kyrah]

Much of my private life is characterized by detritus. Stuff I can't get around to, piles of papers or dishes or materials I haven't been able to organize, use, or clean up (meaning wash or get rid of). It's apparently a sign of major depression, and clinging to it can lead to becoming a hoarder. I don't cling so much as simply having no motivation to deal with it; washing dishes myself is painful in the lower back after only a few, and I don't have an automatic dishwasher. Some of those papers date years back, and might be important, but they all have the same mental weight; finding the energy to categorize is difficult.

Simply cleaning one's inside helps with this, but until the wounds themselves are addressed and repaired in some way, there is no dealing with it for me. And often, pieces of the self are missing, and have to be tracked down and retrieved lest the wound get filled with false things and bad replacements.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

To me, "inertia" is when you lack the energy; you might have the desire to do something, but you can't seem to do it. Sometimes that's a "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" situation, and other times it's an executive function problem.

And apathy is different, because it means you don't care. Not that you don't have the energy, or can't muster the spoons to do it, but that you don't even *want* to do a thing. Like people who walk by homeless people without giving them change not because they don't have the money, but because they have no desire to help (because maybe they think the person is lazy or whatever, or they don't care the reason they just don't have any compassion); THAT is apathy.

[(Anonymous)]

Aww, Ham thought that he was helping with asking if someone had got the number plate but no one has the mind to delve too far into the very recent trauma. If Ham had asked this a little way down the line, it may have been received better but he's probably itching for something to do.

People deal with grief differently and it has to be the same for plural people but it's a fight for a singular person to grieve and it must be hell for plural people, especially when Ham seems to be the type that needs to do something to deal with his grief.

I hope that when Damask are in a better place emotionally they notice just how much Keane does for them.

Continuing onto the next poem :)

~Angel

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Aww, Ham thought that he was helping with asking if someone had got the number plate but no one has the mind to delve too far into the very recent trauma. If Ham had asked this a little way down the line, it may have been received better but he's probably itching for something to do.<<

Yyyeah.

>> People deal with grief differently<<

Very differently, and it's not a fast fix, nevermind what the bastard doctors here have to lie about it.

>> and it has to be the same for plural people but it's a fight for a singular person to grieve and it must be hell for plural people, <<

It's harder in this case because of how the different needs are pulling against each other.

>> especially when Ham seems to be the type that needs to do something to deal with his grief. <<

Yeah, he'd probably do better with something active.

>> I hope that when Damask are in a better place emotionally they notice just how much Keane does for them.<<

That is taking a really long time.