the dune mantra doesn't work

I am trying to remember if I had a post planned for today and no, it's for Saturday when I have time to navel gaze like, super-intensely, or fake it after so much coffee.

So there's an about me meme going around, and it occurred to me--as I skipped all of 2017 on DW--that some things happened.

The first cut is a plain summary if you don't want to delve into My Epic Feelings About Anxiety Let Me Tell You About It. Trust me, it's a lot of words and I had feelings.

The second is the tumblr post I made and God was it hard to find, aka My Epic Feelings About Anxiety Let Me Tell You About It. There may be an earlier one? If anyone sees it, do tell.

(I also found my Story of Many Rabbits tumblr post! It will be posted as soon as I match up some pictures!)



In July 2017, I was walking to work when abruptly, I couldn't breathe. My mom came to pick me up and took me to work, but the problem continued. So doctor, albuterol treatment, and a diagnosis of asthma. Okay then. It was fine.

In late August, it happened again while I was at work, but worse. Went to the doctor, but the albuterol didn't seem to help. Nothing helped, actually, except a half dose of xanax and sleep; when I woke up, it started again with related hysterical crying and terror of kind of everything going wrong that I could imagine and I couldn't stop imagining.

This continued for a horrifying week where I came home to feed my rabbits once a day and sobbed hysterically or slept (a lot) in my mom's spare bedroom. My regular doctor told me it wasn't asthma; it was anxiety disorder. At some point, fuck knows how, this happened.

I could also have asthma; as it turns out, there's really not a good way to know, and as I have severe allergies anyway--to everything, apparently--congestion from that could also be the real problem.

I'm kind of rolling with it, by which I mean I'm angry half the time, scared of taking long walks or getting out of breath (could be asthma, could be my fucking brain, who the fuck knows) and doing it anyway and yes, its easier every day but I remember when 'easier' didn't apply to 'take a Pokemon Walk for fun'. It also fucked up editing teh last two chapters of Game of God, because funny story, I wrote an entire book based on the concept of people contracting a geas that causes flight/fight/freeze in response to their fear.

Yes, I wrote a book about people having magical fucking anxiety attacks that make them sometimes kill others and/or themselves. Because dramatic fucking irony isn't dead. I'm still editing it, but it has to be in tiny pieces and it still causes me--uh, problems.

On the upside, Book Five and Six got a lot of editing work done and I wrote a novel in between about a escaped mentally ill felon dealing with his mental illnesses, including panic disorder and anxiety disorder, while on the run with the serial killer he put in prison who is Stockholming him into being his new partner (or the other way around, IDK). There's also lots of murder and a cannibal; for reasons probably fairly obvious, it's very cathartic.





Date: March 29, 2018
Original tumblr post: http://seperis.tumblr.com/post/172399239670/the-dune-mantra-doesnt-work

The single most valuable piece of advice I ever received was from Te when we were chatting one night; she told me write what you fear.

I just didn’t realize it then.

I thought she meant like, for art’s sake, authenticity, so I’d be a better writer, so I wouldn’t avoid topics, so I’d make better stories...and it’s only now I think it wasn’t about being a writer at all. It was about being me.

I’m afraid my depression won’t change. I won’t cycle back out, I won’t get better, I won’t get worse. I’ll just be here, in this featureless, doorless, windowless room with nothing worth existing within it, until the day I die.

I’m afraid the anxiety attacks will keep coming. I won’t be able to breathe and I’ll be trapped in my bed or on my couch and do nothing worth doing, until the day I die.

I’m afraid of my own medication and I don’t know why, but I can by sheer accident work myself into an anxiety attack trying to take a half dose of fucking Zoloft. I’m afraid when it gets better that means it’s going to get worse; I’m afraid when it gets worse it won’t stop. I’m afraid it will be July and August last year where I thought I was going crazy in my mom’s spare bedroom when I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t stop crying and no one could tell me what was happening to me, what was wrong with me, what to do.

Depression and anxiety run in my family; until last year, I’d never had anxiety. I’d just had a well woman check, my stress was fine, there were no triggers, but I felt my depression coming back, and I did the responsible thing and talked to my doctor and we decided I’d go on anti-depressants; I have a life I love and I really wasn’t interested in giving that up.

One month later, on my walk to work, I abruptly couldn’t breathe. They thought it was asthma and that, I could deal with; that’s a thing. I’d had two bouts of pneumonia years ago, it’s been on the table for years. As it turned out, it wasn’t that.

One month after that, I was sitting outside reading at work and when I got up to go inside, I felt short of breath; when I got to my desk, I used my inhaler and settled back for it to work; it didn’t. Half an hour later, I was in the doctor’s office on breathing treatments that didn’t work; there was nothing wrong with my lungs.

For four fucking months, I couldn’t take a walk alone. For two months before that, I didn’t want to walk anywhere at all, alone or not. For a month during that time, the only time I left my apartment was for work. For a week, I couldn’t get out of bed in my mother’s guest room.

I told them: it can’t be that. I don’t have triggers, I don’t have that kind of stress, I’m not repressing some fucking trauma here. I was just living my life, nothing changed, nothing happened, not until this. There’s got to be a fucking reason.

My doctor, my practitioner nurse, and my psychiatrist all said the same thing: we don’t know. Sometimes, it just happens. The brain just does that.

This is my life; it’s going to chase me, I’m going to run, and sometimes it might catch me and it will never, ever stop. Worse, what’s chasing me is me; I’m never, ever going to get away. This is my life until the day I die, and that’s a long fucking time to run. I’m so tired already, but it’s not like I plan to stop.

So yeah, I figured it out; write what you fear. Give it shape and form on the page, look at it and see it and then do it again, and again, and again; it’s not that you won’t get it right the first time, it’s that there are a lot of ways to be right. I’ve written a hundred thousand words and there’s no end in sight; on a guess, this is going to take a while.

So right, let me be clear here: this doesn’t take away its power. I’m still afraid and still incredibly angry–-I could write a goddamn novel expressing how fucking angry I am with fuck as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, gerund, and prepositional phrase if I’m feeling ambitious–-and I’m still running. When it catches me again–-and it will–-I’m caught, no way around that. Luckily, I didn’t count on that happening; it won’t go away because I faced it down with resolution, willpower, coffee, and a keyboard. This is life, not a story.

But the stories I write? I make the rules, and there, that just might work. Sure, that doesn’t sound like much consolation, but actually, it kind of is.

…okay, but you know something weird? Could be wrong, so don’t hold me to this, it’s not like I”m objective here, but…every word I write, I feel a little less tired.

This has been a PSA from someone who just clocked forty thousand words of a deeply unsettling and rather pornographic roadtrip across the greater Midwest by a serial killer/rapist and the psychiatrist he kidnapped who testified against him in court, was later convicted of manslaughter via drug dealing and then double murder by creative lobotomy during a medication related psychotic episode and now has some issues and panic attacks because sometimes, you’re really fucking literal giving your fears form and sometimes, you decide to combine it with hand feeding, piercings, sex, and creatively recreational murder.

Right now, I’m not tired at all.

Comments

[amireal]

So uh. First of all *HUGS* welcome to the anxiety club. We have cookies.

Second, did anyone ask if maybe the sudden anxiety was related to your new antidepressant? 4 weeks later is awfully coincidental. I mean, if you've already played the meds russian roulette ignore me, but you know old tech support survivors, we always gotta ask if the darn thing is plugged in first.

[kore]

That is an excellent point, especially since a lot of the time psychotropic drugs take 3-4 weeks to kick in. If it's Zoloft, I do think increased anxiety is a known side effect, too. Just might be something to check out, if S. hasn't done so already.

(One time, I quit caffeine -- coffee and tea -- for about A YEAR because my doc was very stern about how it was increasing my anxiety. I felt so much less anxious! and also sleepy and depressed and stupid and scattered. I was like, fuckit, if the side effect is increased anxiety, I will try to live with it.)

[seperis]

It may have been related to the Prozac, since it started after that. I went cold turkey off it when the anxiety started, and stayed off until my doctor sent me to a psychiatrist for the Zoloft. I don't think it's making it worse--believe it or not, even at the lowest dose, it helped with my PMS, that was freaky--but yeah, that's why I'm scared of moving up at all.

Thank you! *sends love*

[domarzione]

Going cold turkey off SSRIs = bad shit happening. Getting off SSRIs in general is hard work.

Depending on your sensitivity, even tapering will cause problems. (I'm crazy sensitive; tapering from 10mg of Prozac so I could switch meds gave me a solid week of flu-like symptoms for each step down and that was with another SSRI in my system. Do NOT underestimate the fuckery of getting off SSRIs.)

[kore]

Oh man, anxiety and panic attacks fucking SUCK. You have every bit of my sympathy. They are so horrible. I had anxiety attacks and what were probably 'mild' (hoho) pani attacks until I sobered up, and then suddenly without the alcohol, the panic SPIKED. (That was great for sobriety, let me tell you. "But I'm MORE fucked up now! WTF!") They finally got so bad, to the point I was having multiple attacks a day, I finally very reluctantly went back into therapy. Luckily I found The Best Therapist Ever and she taught me a lot of CBT stuff to deal with them that helped drop the occurrences down to nearly zero, thank God, because having 3-4 panic attacks a day was driving me crazy, no exaggeration. I have respiratory issues (was in an incubator as a kid) and possible ashthma and severe allergies too -- and that fear-cycle is awful, when you get afraid you aren't going to be able to breathe, and then it feels like you can't breathe, and you get even more afraid, and it just fucking spirals. Being afraid of going on a walk alone, leaving the house alone, even getting out of bed....yeah I have been there, and it SUCKS, is all I really am trying to say here. You are right to be angry. It just sucks.

This has been a PSA from someone who just clocked forty thousand words of a deeply unsettling and rather pornographic roadtrip across the greater Midwest by a serial killer/rapist and the psychiatrist he kidnapped who testified against him in court, was later convicted of manslaughter via drug dealing and then double murder by creative lobotomy during a medication related psychotic episode and now has some issues and panic attacks because sometimes, you’re really fucking literal giving your fears form and sometimes, you decide to combine it with hand feeding, piercings, sex, and creatively recreational murder.

Now that's art as katharsis!

[seperis]

that fear-cycle is awful, when you get afraid you aren't going to be able to breathe, and then it feels like you can't breathe, and you get even more afraid, and it just fucking spirals.

THIS. It's exactly that; I started doing the four-seven-eight breathing and God, that helped. I even have a one minute twenty-second timer at work that I set for four reps while mentally shouting "YOU HAVE AIR. ALL THAT AIR. LOOK AT HOW MUCH AIR YOU HAVE! SO MUCH!"

I hate it; shortness of breath triggers it, even the brief kind like running up stairs or to the mailbox; it's so. Damn. Stupid. I can tell I'm fine! THERE IS ALL THE AIR. But if I notice it, it notices and then the cycle begins. Which means I now notice all the time and training yourself out of that...it's like classical conditioning in Hell.

Thank you for this. You just described exactly how it feels and it's so comforting, you have no idea.

[kore]

Aw, I'm so glad I could help. And yeah, that is really exactly it -- the shortness of breath can be caused by something physical, really temporary, like that wrong-pipe-while-drinking thing or running up stairs or whatever, and it's like the brain goes ALERT ALERT ALERT and once you're on the whizzing merry-go-round, you can't get off.

I started doing the four-seven-eight breathing and God, that helped. I even have a one minute twenty-second timer at work that I set for four reps while mentally shouting "YOU HAVE AIR. ALL THAT AIR. LOOK AT HOW MUCH AIR YOU HAVE! SO MUCH!"

Square breathing helped, but what REALLY helped me was the 7-11 breathing for some reason. As I kept on breathing in the pattern I could feel myself relax, and my lungs take in more air, and all of a sudden it was a happy cycle! instead of HORROR AND DOOM. Sort of primitive biofeedback, without a machine. And thinking "It's a panic attack, I've had a lot of them, it's not going to kill me, I'm not going to go crazy...."

Which means I now notice all the time and training yourself out of that...it's like classical conditioning in Hell.

It's a crash course in behavioural therapy! While it feels like your hair is on fire!

[seperis]

Just want to reiterate: you have no idea how utterly reassuring your comments have been. I wish I'd been here, we'd been circled?????, and I posted about this last 2017 because honestly, you might have saved me a shitload of 'wtf is happening to me'.

Both my shrinks are great (er, my first moved to a new position in May) but they were (correctly, btw) focused on getting me stable enough to stop getting anxiety about taking my own meds (even my thyroid meds freaked me out for a couple of months after, like where did fear of meds come from????). They were completely right on their focus and it worked, but I honestly felt like I was going to just go crazy at any minute. So hearing literally exactly what I went through (and go through) is like--this is something that really happens to other people and they can deal.

So yeah, sorry, it was just really really good to read all this.

[seperis]

Now that's art as katharsis!

It's only once in a long while that when I'm working on it--now ninety thousand words--I think "So this is really kind of horrifying" and then I move on to a sweet interlude of them hiding an eviscerated body and a little h/c because Lloyd worried he failed Carjaking 101.

It's--nice, honestly. Like, if Lloyd can still carjack and murder across teh greater midwest despite anxiety, panic attacks, and failures of basic executive function, I can damn well finish this project at work.

[jjhunter]

When I finally got my version of this down as concise and vivid as I could, it was in poetry: "What I Mean When I Say 'Depressed'".

And more recently: "Load-Bearing"

This summer I suddenly started having an escalation of anxiety that was both an intensification of an old symptom - throat spasms that could get so acute I'd gag and throw up - and intrusive thoughts intruding into sleep time, which was new. I'm on a med that takes the edge off both enough that I've started getting back some energy and life and capacity to create and not just hang on as best I could, but that sense of a sudden escalation, a surreal bodily hijacking, is still with me.

I'm so, so sorry you've been experiencing this. I hope things continue to get easier. And I too say: here, listening. You are not alone.

[seperis]

Oh God, intrusive thoughts--especially when just one particularly shitty one hits and won't go away and you're stuck with it ambushing you for months and of course when you want to sleep (until you're that impossible combination of horrified and anxious and bored because that thought has literally made a trench in your brain)...I'm so sorry.

I'm glad it's getting better for you, too. It's good not to be alone.

[niqaeli]

Anxiety is a stone cold fucking bastard.

(I don't have an official diagnosis for mine. It's just sort of subsumed under the ADHD. I haven't bothered. It's mild enough that anything I need accommodation for the anxiety for, I can get it under other diagnoses. But on the other hand, ask me about August 2010.)

I'm glad writing can, at least, be a venue for you.

[seperis]

I take the 20 mg methylphenidate four times a day (mostly for work); as long as I'm on it, I can usually catch it before it starts and redirect to something that needs intense concentration (luckily, work!). It's my off days it's more...prevalent. Or when I don't have a project that requires attention (in which case I plumb the depths of new ways to use spreadsheets for Pokemon, fic, household budget, whatever requires all my concentration).

*sends hugs* I would be interested in hearing about August 2010. I'm guessing double plus not good.

[niqaeli]

August 2010: I spent basically two weeks straight in an anxiety attack with only occasional brief reprieves wherein the weight on my chest lightened. Didn't go away, though. As to what prompted that, ehhh, that's something I mostly don't talk about, except in person. The short version is: when something that's already been an ongoing source of stress in fandom then explodes in your face on top of your horrifically stressful job¹ being in the process of exploding, it... doesn't go well.

¹This was the tech support call centre job that I to this day refer to as the helljob. My favourite part of that job, by the end, was taking calls from queue and literally everyone who has ever worked at a tech support call centre winces hard when I say that. But it genuinely was. I finally quit not long after the August 2010 nightmare, at the point where I was consistently sobbing my face off every day on the drive home because that was the only way my body knew of for bleeding off the stress.

[seperis]

I spent basically two weeks straight in an anxiety attack with only occasional brief reprieves wherein the weight on my chest lightened.

Now that I know exactly what that is--HOLY SHIT. I was a week and I still live in terror of that happening again, like being hijacked or something. Two weeks of that, I might literally have lost my mind.

you have all my sympathy.

[niqaeli]

The only reason I didn’t was I knew, flat out, it was anxiety. If I hadn’t been certain of that I would have been even more freaked out and possibly landed myself in hospital, one way or another. I still carry a grudge about the fannish shit that triggered that, I suspect you will not be surprised to hear.

[ratcreature]

This sounds really awful. And kind of more sinister for happening for no reasons. *hugs*

[seperis]

The 'out of the blue' part is what still gets to me. I get it; the brain is the brain, it does random shit all the time, we're all one bad chemical reaction away from psychosis or talking to our rabbits and thinking they're talking back, but--the only thing that happened before July was I got very sick from--I THINK--the pesticide they did in my apartment. Which yeah, caused bad congestion, but since those two bouts of pneumonia in 2007/2008, I didn't fuck around and went straight to the doctor when I started having breathing problems.

They could be related, but the office knows now not to pesticide here so they haven't since then, so I"m not sure how.

[ineptshieldmaid]

I sort of lost track of you after the Tumblr migration - I'm sorry to hear you've been having a rough time of it. But also, anxiety-fistbump? I guess?

Writing one's own anxiety into fanfic and only realising afterwards (at the least convenient time) that that's what one has done is a Time Honoured Tradition, I applaud you on the immense wordcount thereof.

[seperis]

Writing one's own anxiety into fanfic and only realising afterwards (at the least convenient time) that that's what one has done is a Time Honoured Tradition, I applaud you on the immense wordcount thereof.

Five hundred thousand words of an entire town getting contagious magical anxiety attacks; what the hell? Like, I started this series six years ago and I was totally exploring depression and grief and mental illness and in a very distant way anxiety, mostly phobias and ptsd because I'd never experienced anxiety attacks myself (I think?) and--Game of God when I read it is now "So huh, I got that kind of horrifically right and closing document for a bit."

Thanks, btw. I appreciate your support.

[goss]

Awww, man.

But the stories I write? I make the rules, and there, that just might work

every word I write, I feel a little less tired

Oh, that is good to hear, how your art can be a source of strength to you. Cheering you on and sending you all the good vibes. *hugs tight*

[seperis]

Thank you so much!

[out_there]

*hugs*

[seperis]

Thank you.

[princessofgeeks]

You are amazing.

[seperis]

You're very kind. I am trying for 'functional' which so far is mostly working.

*sends hugs*

[trobadora]

Damn, that sounds awful. *hugs*

[seperis]

Thank you!

[aurumcalendula]

*hugs*

[seperis]

Thanks!

[cesperanza]

I'm sorry I didn't know and I give you all the hugs in the world!

[seperis]

Thank you! And I was very much not talking about it until I had to. Which in retrospect I suspect didn't help; its hard to fight something you don't give a form.

[wrenlet]

Yeah, 2017 was also the year I finally medicated my depression. *fistbump*

(2018 was the year my thyroid apparently went on the fritz so woohoo, better living (or at least not dozing off in the car DURING MY COMMUTE) through chemistry.)

... 2019 may be the year I finally start writing again. We'll see.

[seperis]

Hyperthyroid or hypothyroid? I"m guessing hypo from the falling asleep; teh fatigue, abrupt weight gain, and fugue state was how they diagnose me!

The literal one nice thing about hypothyroidism is that it is generally so correctable!

*fistbumps of matching meds solidarity*

[wrenlet]

Yep, hypo. It turned up in my bloodwork, actually, all hail the yearly physical!

Naturally I had assumed the tiredness was Something I Did Wrong, I started using a white noise app at night, got one of those light-up alarm clocks, I'm sure I would have taken to bathing in oatmeal for the all-over itch before it occurred to me to talk to a doctor.

[seperis]

I got lucky; I was already on ADHD meds at the time, and when I mentioned my symptoms, he ordered bloodwork immediately. I think the weight gain was what really threw him; in general, I was so static--I've had him since my early twenties and maybe had a five pound variation all that time--that a gaining that fast was weird.

[olanthanide]

This reminds me of the first time I read DtA and when I got to the parts describing mental illness, I paused and thought, "she Gets It".

So sorry to hear what you're dealing with this year and congratulations on surviving 2018. Or, as I like to think of it: the year's almost over, and I'm still here, that means I WIN.

(Personal experience with on and off cycles of anxiety & depression. But then again, as a queer WOC in STEM it'd probably be weird if I didn't.)

[seperis]

This reminds me of the first time I read DtA and when I got to the parts describing mental illness, I paused and thought, "she Gets It".

Thank you! It's the first story I wrote that dealt with mental illness directly adn specifically how you deal with it as part of your life.

So sorry to hear what you're dealing with this year and congratulations on surviving 2018. Or, as I like to think of it: the year's almost over, and I'm still here, that means I WIN.

At the end of 2017 I did a huge twitter thread of all the things I would do in 2018. I got a surprising number of them, and by God, I want to up it in 2019.

(Personal experience with on and off cycles of anxiety & depression. But then again, as a queer WOC in STEM it'd probably be weird if I didn't.)

*sends so much support* So you're pretty much exhausted all the time, I take it?

[olanthanide]

You know that feeling where you know if you don't get enough sleep Everything Will Be Worse, but then you can't sleep because anxiety / depression, which makes you more anxious / frustrated, which makes it even harder to sleep, and then before you know it it's 2am in the morning and you're arguing with your brain about why does it want to have a panic attack right now, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS, etc etc?

...yeah. I'm sorry to report that knowing how it works from the biomed side of things helps not at all.

and by God, I want to up it in 2019.

IKR??

[alchemise]

I'm sorry you've had to deal with all this, but I found this post super helpful as I've also got newfound anxiety problems that started this year. Maybe 2018 is just fucking with us hard.

[seperis]

Oh man, I'm so sorry! Even before I understood what it was, I thought it sounded shitty; I just did not know how much it infiltrates everything.

[the_shoshanna]

Wow, that's awful. Sending good, and I'm glad the writing helps.

[reginagiraffe]

So sorry you had to deal with that. *hugs* Glad to hear that you're maybe getting on top of it.

[rissabby]

I got short of breath from reading the comments.
I have major depression, of the disabled from work kind, but only occasional anxiety attacks. Those I-can't-breathe attacks are the only times in my life when I think that if I had to live in that state it would not be worth it. Thankfully, they only last a few minutes, and I can remind myself that they've always gone away before, and they will go soon. Then, sometimes I still feel as if the oxygen level in my apartment is bad, so I open a window or turn on the fan of the AC.

I told them: it can’t be that. I don’t have triggers, I don’t have that kind of stress, I’m not repressing some fucking trauma here. I was just living my life, nothing changed, nothing happened, not until this. There’s got to be a fucking reason. I felt like that about my depression. If I had thought about it at all before, I would have said that I would never get an affective illness because I was too rational, down to earth, and pragmatic. The only thing that changed for me was that I quit smoking, which thousands of folks do everyday, and I had done before without wrecking my brain. Ha! I also got the most anxiety attacks then, but I thought they were withdrawal symptoms.

Anyhow -- Yay for learning to help yourself, healthcare, and mom's with extra rooms.

[domarzione]

As yet another (three-year) veteran of the Mental Health Parade... my hard-earned advice is (a) regular therapy, like once a week at a minimum. You'll be surprised at how a good therapist can connect your current shit to your past shit and suddenly everything's a lot less mysterious. And once it's less mysterious, it's got a lot less power over you. And (b) find yourself a good psychiatrist. *Especially* if you are freaked out by your meds, find yourself a psych who has time for you and you will feel SO MUCH BETTER. I went my first few years with a guy who scheduled appointments at five minute intervals and I went nowhere because all he did was renew my scrips and send me out the door; I finally got a guy who schedules appointments for forty-five minutes and comes from a solid training program and is close to our age and is up to date on meds even my therapist hasn't heard of. He explains all of the possible meds to me, how they work and what they do and what kind of side effects they have and we make choices together. He's a complement to my therapist and I don't mind paying partially out of pocket for him.

eta: I fully support the 'write what you know/fear' stuff. I joked in therapy that I'd written a fanfic where a character had a therapist who told the character stuff my therapist had told me that I kind of blew off. I meant it as a proof that I listen to her even if I do not internalize. She asked to read the story and we ended up with some interesting discussions about it because what she saw about me in that story was different from what I saw about me in that story. (If you can tell your therapist about your fanfic, you've got the right one.)

[zippitgood]

*hugs*

That was a rough stretch of time. I'm glad your fic can be a source of strength for you during all this.

[treefrogie84]

*hugs*

[suzvoy]

Man, I wish mental illness could get mental illness itself so it would realise just how badly it's screwing people over.

Sorry you've been dealing with all that :-/

[lapfulofmisha]

I feel all of you. I have ptsd, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. I almost got fired over an anxiety attack once - I'll skip the gory details but I wasn't able to leave my house, or even open the blinds or turn the lights on, for 9 days.
I'm on disability now, for both physical and mental stuff. 3 psych meds, 4 kinds of pain meds, and 2 other meds just to get out of bed in the morning. And man did you hit the nail on the head, Sep:

But the stories I write? I make the rules, and there, that just might work.

Being able to slip into another world and control everything that goes on (as much as the characters will let you - sometimes they do their own thing despite your best efforts) is the best therapy there is.