ysabetwordsmith: Damask smiling over their shoulder (polychrome)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
This poem was written outside the prompt calls, and posted as barter for [personal profile] 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.

Good poem, BUT--

Date: 2014-06-10 10:10 pm (UTC)
dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.
Edited (cut out the now irrelevant bit about problem with links) Date: 2014-06-10 10:27 pm (UTC)

Re: Good poem, BUT--

Date: 2014-06-10 10:42 pm (UTC)
dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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--

Date: 2014-06-10 11:06 pm (UTC)
dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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


Edited (last link) Date: 2014-06-10 11:11 pm (UTC)

Re: Good poem, BUT--

Date: 2014-06-12 11:26 pm (UTC)
dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
From: [personal profile] dialecticdreamer
I think they have the potential to all be relatively healthy, emotionally. It's just going to take WORK to get there.

the poem

Date: 2014-06-10 10:29 pm (UTC)
dialecticdreamer: My work (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-06-10 11:51 pm (UTC)
ext_3294: Tux (Default)
From: [identity profile] technoshaman.livejournal.com
Sometimes you just gotta go bury yourself in a good *book*...

Detritus

Date: 2014-06-11 01:57 am (UTC)
zeeth_kyrah: A glowing white and blue anthropomorphic horse stands before a pink and blue sky. (Default)
From: [personal profile] 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.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-06-11 03:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] 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.
Edited Date: 2014-06-11 03:37 am (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2020-05-14 06:04 pm (UTC)
From: (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

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