Sleep-wake disturbances after traumatic brain injury

I'm 23M and have been in a constant state of distress and pain now since Jan 2021. I was diagnosed with EDS by a rheumatologist after meeting all markers as well as suffering from frequent shoulder dislocations. My current issues started one night as a pounding heartbeat and by the next morning developed into extreme pain and tightness all over my chest and back. It felt like overnight all my ribs/breathing muscles were glued together and lost the ability to move and allow my lungs to expand. I've been experiencing this intense discomfort 24/7 every waking moment for 2 years now. Feels like my chest is frozen solid and I'll try to breathe but I can barely inhale until I come up against this overwhelming restriction/pressure. My sternum, spine, and ribs ache like a very sore muscle that hasn't moved in forever. No amount of rest helps. I can hear clicking and popping anytime I shift or slightly rotate in almost every area of my back and chest unlike before. I flare up just by doing something simple like lifting a heavy object or trying to foam roll. It feels like I have no oxygen in my brain and reality is fuzzy and disorienting. I'll get body jolts when I'm going to bed because my brain is in flight or fight all the time and thinks I can't breathe. Oxygen will drop to low 80s but only when I am laying down and going to sleep. Doctors have performed every test on me and have no idea what could be causing my symptoms. I feel stuck and in hell. No idea if its my diaphragm not working or if all my muscles are so tight that there is inflammation and zero movement. Dislocated ribs? Can this be related to EDS? Covid? I desperately need some advice.

TBI (traumatic brain injury) is one of the most common causes of deaths and failure to return to society according to the latest statistics. Cerebrolysin is a drug approved for use in patients diagnosed with TBI.
It is a mixture of neuropeptides derived from purified porcine brain proteins and multiple experimental studies have proven its neuroprotective and neurorestorative properties both in vitro and in vivo. In our meta-analysis, we analyze the latest clinical study reports on the use of Cerebrolysin in patients with TBI.
The authors searched the databases: Pub Med, Cinahl, Web Of Science, and Embase from database inception until 11th July 2022. Ten clinical studies were eligible and included in the final analysis, including both retrospective and prospective studies of 8749 patients.
Treatment with Cerebrolysin was associated with a statistically significant change in GCS and GOS. Mortality of any cause and the length of stay was not affected by the treatment.
Our findings support and confirm the beneficial effects of Cerebrolysin treatment on the clinical outcome of patients after TBI. Further multi-center studies to optimize dosing and time of administration should be conducted.
Full: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/13/3/507

Hello! Posting here before my doctors appointments because I'm just feeling a bit worried about it and would love to hear other people's experiences and perspectives.
I started 150 wellbutrin XL towards the end of August 2022. I was going through an extremely traumatic and stressful time in my life, and it helped tremendously for a few weeks. Then one day, I forgot to take it, and after that it became a habit to not take it at the right time or at all. I began to feel restless, and started drinking so much that I was afraid I was becoming an alcoholic. I ended up becoming a regular at some local bar in a shitty town and got involved with people I usually wouldn't, while engaging in toxic behaviors and constantly fighting with an ex of mine. It got so bad one day that my best friend had to take me to the hospital because I was experiencing the worst depression of my life. I was inpatient for around a week, and they prescribed me 10mg of lexapro along with my wellbutrin.
A little while after I got out, my psychiatrist increased my dosage to 300. I've been taking that since the end of December. Since the increase, I have felt so happy. So hopeful. So good. I stopped drinking, I stopped associating with toxic people I felt addicted to, etc. I haven't missed a dose or felt depressed or restless at all and have been more motivated and hopeful overall.
I've always been a spiritual person, and believed in things such as the law of attraction/manifestation, astrology etc. Recently, I've been trying to use manifestation as a tool to help me achieve my goals and writing down the things I'm grateful for every day. I listen to music that has affirmations in them, and have integrated them into my art as well. I genuinely feel like things are going to well for me in my personal, spiritual, creative, and business life.
Although I've been feeling so wonderful, I am starting to become afraid that I am slipping into or have been in a hypomanic episode. I've only experienced depression before, whether subtle or prominent, so I'm not really used to feeling this way for so long. Recently I haven't been able to sleep at night or stay asleep. I've been sleeping maybe 4-6 hours a night, while waking up in between. I feel a little tired throughout the day, but still have some energy (not enough to clean my entire house or anything usually). I have been feeling very confident lately, as I've started to dress the way I always wanted to, and I've been creating art that is well loved and doing in person markets while making new connections. I feel magnetic. I feel beautiful. I feel like I can tell when someone finds me attractive. I feel like I have amazing energy that causes people to gravitate towards me.
While I'm concerned about the lack of sleep and confidence, I am mostly concerned about the fact that I shoplifted an entire cart of groceries/clothes/home decor today. I had been reading up on it a lot recently, and I decided that I just wanted to do it. I didn't do it because I needed to or to sell the items, I think I just did it because I wanted some new things or for the thrill or because I'm tired of large corporations being so greedy. I just put everything in my cart, and walked out the door confidently. No one (that I noticed) looked at me any way or followed me or seemed suspicious. I assume because the entire time I acted like I wasn't doing anything wrong.
I don't necessarily feel morally guilty about it (although I'm prepared for the comments about why I probably should), it was nice to finally be able to get some new things for myself after working so hard, going through so much trauma, and having to put all of my money towards bills/back into my business. I'm not really afraid of getting caught because I know the laws, I know how their security works, I know the process of convicting someone for theft from that specific store (I used to work there years ago). I know the whole deal with the building a case until you hit a felony amount of money etc. So it's not like I did this impulsively without any prior knowledge or anything.
Anyways, sorry for such a long post, I just wanted to include everything so that you guys can get a better perspective. I'm just wanting to know if the lack of sleep could just be caused by the increased energy from the wellbutrin, if my confidence really is just the result of using positive affirmations and utilizing the law of attraction, and if me shoplifting really was just a one time thing and result of me wanting to 'treat' myself after working so hard and essentially being fed up with capitalism.
...or if all of these things really do indicate hypomania, and if I should be worried. I really want things to continue going well for me, I want to continue feeling good and better about myself and creating meaningful art and being in tune with myself spiritually. I'm trying to be as self aware as possible so I can hopefully prevent myself from slipping into any destructive behaviours again.

I'm not sure if this is okay to post here but I wrote this to help me with some sad emotions I was going through. Tell me if you liked it!
Have you ever felt like you were, devoid of emotion, carefulness, dedication, love, attention, direction?
In the eyes of the world
it's a state of emotion that all humans have felt since the dawn of love
it's funny to think that my problems are so little
I am so small, insignificant
in a state of wishful existence
in a world of blissful ignorance
after leaving the gates of childhood, the door behind eternally locked by time
and that's when I wonder
is my life emotionless? careless? lazy? hateful? ignorant? unguided?
do these emotions ever disappear? or do they simply change?
Is there a veil before my eyes? is my questioning misinformed by the cadence of my hormones?
emotion is the state of my body that tells me how to feel.
the feeling to care of her
the feeling of wanting to stay by her side
the feeling of impatience
the feeling of butterflies fleeting
the feeling to be noticed
the feeling before going on an adventure
it's all too much for me.
I sit here and wait for a savior
the one that my hormones chose
the one that my brain decided
the one that my heart demanded
exasperated, I sigh in relief
trying to subdue the feeling
I tell my friends
I want to sleep
I want to never wake up
But I also tell them
see you tomorrow
see you next week
bye!
And sometimes I wonder if that's the last thing I will say to them
wishing for it to be over
this feeling
this common chemical reaction
it feels so special
but at the same time, it's not.

You Matter to Her in a Way No One Else Could
When you died and were reborn, you became divine. You were love, and you were violence, and you were my miracle. A God sprung forth from the decaying machinery of your broken body. Koishi, the God of Love and Hate—have mercy on us all.
Down by the shore of one of the great Lunar seas, there sat a lonely shack thatched with feathers. Inside, there was a massive wani no less than eight leagues long… and her infant son. To that crocodile who had never known true familial love, that delicate little child—who cooed and smiled at his mother’s every move—was nothing less than a miracle. Such a delicate life in her claws, who knew nothing but unconditional love for his mother—to the crocodile, it was proof there was still good in the world.
She was tired, but the crocodile forced herself to stay awake. There was something she needed to do—a memory she wanted to share with the most important person in her life.
So, with all the caution and tenderness in the world, she picked up her child with her jaws and coaxed him into her throat pouch. The newborn child, perhaps having some shared instinct with his crocodilian mother, did not cry or struggle. Instead, he let out a giggle as he poked his head out from between his mother’s jagged teeth. With a snort, the dragon climbed out of her thatch hut, and crawled along the shore, drawing a meandering trail in the sand as she went.
When she reached the point where the water came to shore in gentle waves, the crocodile set herself down in the sand, letting the waves wash in and lick at her child in gentle sprays. Her child giggled as the Lunar sea’s tickled him with its pure waters, and as he did, his mother couldn’t help but feel at peace.
Nothing. Nothing at all would be able to take this from her.
Her miracle.
Toyohime opened her eye to clear blue skies.
She flexed her fingers, and instead of feeling the cold steel of the ship she started to tear apart, she felt so many tiny pebbles, warmed by their time in the sun. Sand? She brought a fistful of the stuff into her vision, before letting it fall through her fingers and run down her face. It was too real to be a dream.
Toyohime sat up to observe her surroundings. As far as the eye could see, there were infinite stretches of sand collected into wind-swept dunes that obscured the horizon. It was hot. Unbelievably so for what was supposedly the void. She felt a gentle gust of warm wind pass by her and toss her hair. This place… this impossible place… was she dead?
She rose to her feet, fighting biting aches and pains from her battle not too long ago. No—not dead. Somehow, she had survived—there was no other explanation. And as she looked down to assess the damage she had taken, her suspicions were only confirmed. Her right arm was missing, and in its place was nothing but a healed stump. The nasty cuts and bruises she had received in the fighting had all healed over for the most part, the only evidence they happened at all being residual scars that were yet to disappear. The ground was covered in dried blood. She must’ve been laying here in this sand trap for hours.
She brought her free arm, completely healed, up to the general space where her right eye was to find an arrow still protruding from it. Wrapping her fingers around the shaft, Toyohime tore it out in a fluid motion, causing the wound to reopen and drip blood onto the sands below. But, through some miraculous action, it was mere moments before the flow of blood stopped as the wound healed shut. Her right eye was still inoperable, but this healing ability was downright uncanny, even for a god.
She flexed her fingers. It felt like there was a hole in her head from which memories and feelings poured out. The mystery of how she got here, who she killed, and whether she could even trust her own senses had no answer—Toyohime knew she herself had made sure of that. She supposed there was a good reason. The less she knew, the better. That was something she could trick herself into believing.
Though no matter how much she forced herself to forget, she had the horrible feeling she had done something unforgivable—something she would kill over. In a sea of atrocities however, she could hardly even begin to suppose what that might have been. Maybe the heat was starting to fry her brain.
After spending a few minutes snapping the arrows lodged in her body by their shafts, Toyohime looked to the horizon, and then up. Ahead, there was a massive sand dune, no less than five times her height, and beyond the crest—a black pillar of smoke. Toyohime was not alone.
As she made her way up the shifting incline, Toyohime got to thinking about her next course of action. If this wasn’t a hallucination, then it most certainly had to be some extension of Koishi's will. Land in an impossible space… the creation of something impossible like that could only be a factor of a deteriorating mind, or God. And Toyohime had no time to consider the possibility of a crumbling psyche—not when she had a duty left unfulfilled.
But then… that would mean this was the paradise of Koishi’s mind. Surely, by her side is where she would find her salvation. She had already come to terms with it—that there was nothing left for her in the old world. Koishi could pervert and corrupt reality in whatever twisted ways she wanted—as long as it was the creation of her heart, it would be sufficient. Everything beyond that was not worth saving to the former princess.
… But that also meant there would be more enemies. More people she had to kill. She was ready. Ready to kill and ready to die in the name of love.
And as she planted her boot upon the peak of that sand dune, she saw the whole world become bare before her. A fair distance away was the crashed wreck of a golden ship, releasing plumes of black smoke as it burnt away. From this distance, it was difficult to make out any finer details, but she was sure the occupants had escaped. Satori was resourceful and stubborn, if nothing else. Dying in a crash was an impossibility.
She then traced a line from the ship through the shifting sands—to a city upon the horizon. Massive towers of glass and steel pushing against the sky, half buried in the sand, bending light around them as they reflected the intense heat of the sun. It gave the sight an unnatural fuzziness, as if the city was threatening to disappear at any moment.
As she traced the decaying visage of those buildings upwards, she saw a thin line reach beyond and into the sky. The line separated into two before converging back on itself. Above the city, etched upon the sky itself, was a pitch black gap in reality, opened and filled with so many eyes. And above still, the object of Toyohime’s desires and her sole driving factor—Koishi Komeiji.
Though the God’s eye was open, as well as the myriad collection of smaller eyes and drooling jaws that had lined every square inch of her squirming appendages, it was hard to tell if she was awake or conscious. Toyohime knew Koishi best, and if she had any guess as to what Koishi had been doing in the time they spent apart, it was receding back into the numbing comfort of her own mind. Even now, Toyohime figured she was still dreaming, avoiding the cruel weight of her responsibility. What manifested outside of her mind must’ve been some sort of twisted runoff.
Down there, hidden in the dunes, Toyohime knew there were those who would take this dream from Koishi. Those who would hurt Koishi. Those people would’ve done just as well to dig their own graves and build their own coffins. Because so long as Toyohime drew breath, she would protect Koishi with everything she could muster—that was her promise and the nature of her impossible, unconditional love.
Koishi was Toyohime’s second chance.
This time, one way or another, there would be no opportunity for a third.
Mima, on the other hand, had woken up quite a bit earlier than Toyohime had.
She had not suffered any fatal wounds or debilitating strikes leading up to the point where the reality around her started to crumble and distort—but she had briefly lost consciousness regardless. She figured that might’ve been a good thing; an action so absurd and so against everything she knew, perpetrated by an impossibly powerful being… even if a mere glimpse didn’t physically tear her mind to ribbons, she had no interest in trying to understand such a nonsensical event.
Mima awoke not in a desert, but in a grand sprawling city of seemingly human construction. Though the sun still hung overhead, the impossible hills and mountains of sand that caged the city in, always seemed to shift and move in the most calculated way… such that the sun was always put out. Caught in the shade, the city looked like it was in a perpetual night, in spite of the blinding yellow of the endless desert just beyond its limits.
Though that was the case, the city was far from dark. Street lamps, blinding neon signs, blinking traffic lights, apartments and houses with windows illuminated by the fluorescent lights within… It gave the impression the city was alive. It seemed exactly as a real bustling city at night, with its breathing and blinking—but there were no people. No matter how far Mima walked, no matter how many buildings she popped in, she would encounter no souls. She would find, in those buildings, immaculate setpieces filled with lived-in charm, hints and implications of life—but not people. Not even Yukari, who she wandered the streets in search of.
She recognized this place. This city—Tokyo. It couldn’t have possibly been, but it was the same Tokyo she grew up in, back before the Moonlight Descent and before the Kaiju. Before her chance meeting with the youkai who used to be her friend. This city, trapped in the middle of the desert, caught in an artificial night that obscured the flow of time—somehow it managed to be the perfect recreation of a long lost city, as if someone had taken a scalpel to the part of Mima’s brain that held onto the precious memories of her past life. It was comforting, being back in familiar territory, but it also carried along a pervasive uneasiness. The nostalgia said it was real, but the rational mind knew better than to buy into an impossible mirage—made all the more uneasy by the deathly silence of its streets.
After wandering around for a dozen minutes or more, Mima eventually came to find Yukari in a 24-hour fast food joint. She was sitting, out of her suit and miraculously healed, on a stool that faced the street outside, with her head down and a small pool of drool collecting at the point where the corner of her mouth met the countertop. Renko always said Maribel could fall asleep anywhere.
Mima floated back and forth around the gently snoring form of Yukari for a bit, considering her options. She changed back into her Renko form for a second, and after adjusting her hat a little, she reached over to tap Yukari on the shoulder… but then shied away. Glancing at Yukari, then back to her bag, she rummaged through its bottomless contents and pulled out a whole host of items: hand mirrors, makeup kits, two liter bottles of listerine, mints and peppermint breath spray and assorted beauty products.
She stole a quick glance back at Yukari to make sure she was asleep before going at it—in one go, she dumped every minty product she could into her mouth before swishing the unholy mixture in her mouth. It was not a moment later that she coughed out all of that liquid ice with a retch and a gag. Sheepishly, she turned her head to see if Yukari had woken up in all the commotion. Luckily, she was still knocked out something fierce. Mima might’ve guessed she was dead, if it weren’t for the occasional snore.
Undeterred, she opened a hand mirror and began to apply her makeup. Carefully. There was a subtle art to it—she only needed enough to hide any unsightly blemishes she might’ve gotten from her rather shut-in lifestyle as a ghost. Anything more, and Maribel was bound to notice Mima was purposefully fixing her appearance around her. None of that. Mima was trying for a more subliminal approach… It’s what worked in the past, after all.
Well, upon further thought, Mima figured “worked” was too strong a word. She did die before she saw any results, after all. But enough of that, Mima thought—now that she regained her memories, she’s finally gotten another shot. This being the apocalypse and all, she figured she should probably make it count.
She clicked close her portable hand mirror and, along with the rest of her stuff, threw it back into her field bag. She stole one last glance at Yukari, who was still sleeping soundly, before straightening her hat and clearing her throat.
“Maribel…” she said in a quiet, sing-song voice. She placed a hand on Yukari’s shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. “Maribel, wake up.”
No response. Mima pouted as she shook her around again. “Merry? It’s so scary around here—I need someone super strong and amazing by my side. Maybe we could hold hands?”
Nothing but more snoring. Mima’s expression fell. “... Okay, seriously. Wake up.”
“Don’t make me break out the big guns, Merry,” Mima said, digging through her bag and pulling out an airhorn. “I’ll do it. You think I’m bluffing?”
A tense beat passes. Mima stows away the airhorn. “... Ah, I’m just kidding. I wouldn’t do something like that to you. You’re too cute, hehe.”
“I’m not above this, though.” She reaches back into her bag and pulls out a spray bottle filled with water… before giving Yukari’s face a couple of quick spritzes.
That quiet, tranquil expression to Mima seemed almost a timeless representation of the relationship she shared with Maribel quickly contorted into one of disgust. After a moment of being pelted with spray after spray of water droplets, Yukari finally was roused from her sleep, a squinty, grouchy mess.
“Who..? Urgh…” She mumbled with a groan. When Yukari saw Renko, immaculately constructed before her with enough accuracy to convince her she came straight from her memories, she froze. Her voice was barely above a whisper. “... Renko?”
“Hehe… Yep, it’s me! Your best friend. Best girl-friend, even. That is, a girl who is also a friend. Not a girlfriend, you know? Aha… Unless? Kidding, kidding.” Mima flashed an easy smile. “Glad you’re awake. Hey, before you say anything else—how do I look? I look cute, right? I know we’re in the middle of saving the world and everything, but I’ve actually been spending a lot of time taking care of my appearance.”
As Mima continued to ramble on and Yukari continued to wake up, her expression made a slow and gradual pivot. Where at first Yukari couldn’t hide her bemusement from her face—as well as that strange pained expression someone would have, seeing a loved one they have long since finished mourning appear upon their doorstep—she eventually came to settle on an empty stare and a neutral, apathetic expression. It hurt Mima a little, seeing such a radical turn in her demeanor.
“Oh,” Yukari muttered. “It’s just you.”
Mima didn’t think she intended it, but there was a layer of latent annoyance in her words. Or maybe it was disappointment? A thousand years or more apart did a lot to shift their relationship. That much was clear—and it hurt.
Yukari took a moment to look Mima up and down. With a scoff and a roll of her eyes, she delivered an unceremonious answer. “You look fine.”
Mima sighed in response. “Hey, I’ll take it.”
“More importantly…” As Yukari continued, she craned her neck around to absorb every detail of her surroundings: everything from the light fixtures above to the tables that were so meticulously set and prepared. “... Where are we?”
Her eyes naturally gravitated toward the front counter and the kitchen section that was just behind—meticulously wrapped burgers and fresh fries, set underneath heat lamps… it was as if they were all made recently. But that wasn’t even the strangest detail Yukari’s eyes were able to pick out. Upon one of the tables was a tray, filled with half eaten food—as if the patrons ceased to exist in the middle of their meal. This was beyond a mere liminal space, where it gave the impression of once being a place where people gathered—it was closer in relation to the scene of an ongoing disaster, where people had left in a hurry.
In that way, it didn’t carry much of the surreal quality of a place no longer meant for humans—it more so felt like a place with a cursed history, its sinister and mysterious narrative etched into its skin and flesh through the vestiges of human presence. Mima could tell, being a ghost herself, there was more to this place than the physical construction. As to what ‘more’ was, she could not place.
She could tell Yukari was thinking something similar by the way she walked around and took in the feeling of the place. Her posture was rigid and cautious, but not necessarily ready and waiting for danger. There was a quiet dread to the things that weren’t, but should’ve been.
“I’m trying to figure that out myself,” Mima replied, following Yukari around with her arms folded behind her back. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but… I think we’re back in Tokyo.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.” Yukari replied. She walked over to the table with the food and traced a finger across its top. No dust clung to the surface of her finger, as if the tabletop had recently been cleaned. She brought the back of her palm close to the food. It was still radiating just a little bit of heat, as if it had been freshly served. “That’s the part that scares me.”
“... Assuming this is all very much real, this must be Koishi’s doing,” Yukari declared, taking a moment to look down at herself. As she flexed her fingers, her eyes narrowed. Mima figured she might’ve just realized she had been healed and mysteriously back to her usual outfit. She still looked younger and weaker than she once was, but there was an undeniable, albeit subtle increase in the vitality she seemed to convey. As Yukari’s eyes wandered to the empty city street outside, Mima couldn’t help but notice that expression—that idle, faraway gaze that looked like Yukari had trapped herself in a vivid daydream. She couldn’t help but realize how much Maribel had changed—and yet stayed the same.
“Whatcha thinking, Merry?” Mima tried, shuffling up to Yukari’s side.
“Yukari.”
“Oh. Right. Ha, that’s my bad. My bad…”
“I’m thinking: why Tokyo specifically?” With a wave of her hand, Yukari opened a gap next to her. Through that little tear in reality was a bird’s eye view of the whole city, as well as the infinite desert that surrounded it. “... There must be some significance to this location, but I couldn’t possibly imagine what it could be. Not right now, knowing what we know.”
“Hey, I grew up in Tokyo, you know? Maybe it has something to do with that? And… y’know, we were teaching in Tokyo before…” Mima gestured vaguely around herself. “... Everything, I guess. Maybe Koishi’s reacting to our memories.”
“Could be. Could just as easily be something related to Koishi. Could be nothing at all.” The view through the gap eventually fizzled out, leaving nothing but the inky blackness of the pocket dimension Yukari held dominion over. She let out a sigh before stitching the gap closed with a wave of her hand. “I’d suggest we keep on moving. Collect as much information as we can about this place. But only what we need—the plan is still largely the same. There’s no telling when she will appear again. Best be as quick about it as we can.”
“Oh. Uh… Alright. That’s cool.”
“... What?”
“Hm?”
“What’s wrong? You disagree?”
“Oh no, ah…” A sheepish grin crawled across Mima’s face. “I was just thinking about how much you’ve changed, is all. It’s just… you know, a huge city missing all of its people is pretty mysterious, huh? Don’t you want to do more exploring? Poke around a bit and take in the sights? Like we used to—just one last time?”
There was an unsettling period of silence where Yukari stared straight through Mima with that flat look. She averted her eyes for a passing moment. When Yukari returned her gaze to Mima, it was steely and cold. “No. Neither of us are kids anymore. We have duties and responsibilities that we can not abandon. Not for anything.”
Yukari brushed past Mima. The gesture wasn’t very rough at all, but Mima felt it come at her hard. As Yukari opened the door, she looked back at Mima and gestured to her to follow.
“Let’s go.”
Orin did not want much from life.
There was Satori, her master, who she cared about deeply. There was Okuu, her best friend, who she loved. There was Koishi, the younger sister of her master, who she felt obligated to take care of. And of course, there was her job of transporting corpses, which she could do endlessly and without tiring. Those things more or less encompassed everything she cared about—Orin was a simple person.
So as she crawled out the emergency hatch located at the top of the ship her master had so recklessly buried into a sand dune, she couldn’t help but feel so hopelessly out of her depth. With a groan, she hoisted herself over the lip of the hatch before losing her balance and tumbling over.
As she tumbled downward, bumping her head against every little edge the ship had on her way down, the visor to her suit cracked and then shattered. But as she flopped down into the warm sand, her arms and legs spread in a state of absolute fatigue, she couldn’t really bring herself to care about the warning tones in her helmet—or the fact she was able to breathe the air here, in what used to be the void. Frankly, all she could think about was how much she wanted to go home.
“Orin! Are you okay?” A familiar voice called from somewhere outside her field of vision. It was followed by the hasty clattering of boots on metal as they no doubt clambered down the ship in a hurry.
All Orin could offer in response was a weak grunt and the extension of a thumbs up.
“Are… are you insane?” Another voice called soon after, all breathless and hoarse. It cracked with exertion, as if it had already been worn out by so much screaming. “Satori, what form of devil possessed you to do that? We could’ve all died!”
Satori, of course, didn’t respond. Not before she entered Orin’s field of view, her own helmet long since thrown away. Her face was etched with a rare look of concern, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief when she saw Orin manage a weak smile. Wordlessly, Satori jostled off the smashed helmet from Orin’s suit and brushed away any remaining debris… before pulling her into a tight embrace.
Orin, dazed and shocked from the crash, could manage little else than to rest her head upon her master’s shoulders as she was pulled in. But through whatever stores of energy she had left, she managed to raise her arms and wrap them around in loose reciprocation.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “I’m okay.”
Satori pulled back from the hug, but stayed kneeling by Orin’s side. Cautiously, she looked to the horizon, as if she had caught a vanishing glimpse of something stalking them from behind the shifting sands. She extended an elbow for Orin to grab on to. “Let’s go. Can you stand?”
“I… I think so,” Orin mumbled, hooking one of her arms around Satori’s elbow and placing a hand on her shoulder for support. Her master lifted, and in response Orin tried her best to stumble onto her feet, with mixed results. As she straightened herself out with the help of Satori, she heard her bones shift and crackle in strange ways—followed by an absolute lightning strike of localized pain in the leg and the fuzzy static that came to replace it.
After a sharp intake of breath and a pained wince, Orin settled into a decidedly unconvincing posture—she plastered a smile on her face and shifted all of her weight onto the other leg in a poor imitation of nonchalance, but Satori’s face only got graver. It broke Orin’s heart. For a moment, Orin tried to separate herself from her master so she could stand on her own—but Satori only squeezed her in closer, as if she would’ve lost Orin the second she let go.
That didn’t surprise Orin much. She knew better than anyone that the events one year ago were still fresh in her master’s mind. Even now, it haunted her every action, and now the consequences were starting to catch up with everyone involved. But to Orin, that didn’t matter. It never did—not so long as Satori was her master, and Orin was her pet. Satori could march to the deepest pit of Hell, pick a fight with a God, oppose reality itself… and Orin would march along right beside her, no matter what.
Patchouli, on the other hand, did not share the same sentiment. She marched up to the two, at least temporarily uncaring of the fantastical environment they found themselves in, and went straight to airing out her grievances.
“Recklessly engaging with Toyohime like that, against all better logic… one day, and this day might very well come sooner than you think, your obsession with that cursed woman will hurt someone you care about,” Patchouli snapped. As she looked to Orin, whose body was riddled with evidence of blunt trauma, her expression softened. “... It already has.”
“As if we had any other choice. It was our best shot to kill her, once and for all,” Satori replied, stone-faced and cold. “... Besides, let Orin speak for herself. As if you know what she does and doesn’t wish for.”
“... Orin wasn’t the only person who got hurt. Or killed.”
“It just so happens that Eirin conveniently falls outside my definition of ‘people I care about.’ I fail to see the issue.” Satori snorted with disgust, as if offended by the mere implication. Orin wanted to speak up and cut between the fighting, but couldn’t find the strength to oppose her own master. “That aside, who says I was the one who got her killed? She got herself killed, following her own incomprehensible mess of half-baked ideas and strategies. What are you coming at me for?”
“How could you be so cold toward someone like her? Especially since we were all fighting out there together, as comrades? Have you no shame?”
“I’ve no love for her. Not after what she did to my sister.” Satori stared straight into Patchouli’s eyes. Sometimes her master was like this—staring straight ahead through a person, as if judging the content of their soul itself. Sometimes, this was literally the case, given that she made liberal use of her opened third eye. “We might be fighting beside each other, but we’re fighting for completely different things. Yukari, Eirin, Kaguya, even you and I—we’re all fighting for something different. Those are just the facts. Just as it was a fact that Koakuma had darkness in her heart. It’s that kind of fact.”
“How cynical. Aren’t we friends?”
Satori fixed Patchouli with a steady glare as she thought through her answer. Even with an open eye, Orin found her master’s thought process difficult to parse.
“... No. We aren’t,” Satori settled. “It’s not a secret—I’m fighting to get my sister back. I’m fighting to kill the person who turned her into a monster. I’m fighting to protect my family. You are doing none of those things—you’re fighting for a more abstract reason: protecting the world, or preventing human suffering, or whatever other justification you assign to your actions. It’s admirable, but recognize that It’s only by convenience that we’re here, helping each other out.”
“... Is that right?” Patchouli muttered under her breath. “Then if it came between Yukari, or Eirin, or me, or anyone else… and your family. Who would you choose?”
Silence.
“It’s best to be honest with ourselves. It saves us the heartache.”
“I see.”
In the silence that came after, the atmosphere seemed to become heavier. Orin spent each passing beat being suffocated by the pressure. Her eyes darted from Patchouli to her master, and then back again.
“Er…” Orin started. “Let’s ah… could we just figure out what we’re going to do next, maybe? Without fighting—that would be nice.”
“Good plan, Orin,” Satori said. Though strangely enough, she wouldn’t take her eyes off of Patchouli. “I’m not quite sure what we would do without you.”
Patchouli looked away. Orin couldn’t help but feel vaguely responsible—though the second the thought even popped into mind, Satori squeezed a little tighter, as if in reassurance.
“... There’s no use in arguing,” Patchouli said with a heavy sigh. “Or rather, it’s a subject for later, when we aren’t all in danger. For now, I agree—we should figure out our next steps.”
The guns had long since run quiet.
Those satellites—their powerful bodies forged by the greatest minds, cast in the strongest metals, and mounted with the fiercest weapons humanity could muster—how could they have possibly matched the horror of God’s wrath? They could never, and for their hubris, their bodies and their souls were scattered and broken as a million glittering lights upon the ocean.
Those were the kinds of things Kaguya Houraisan thought about as she sat beside a flickering fire, her only source of light deep in the darkness of a desert night, not a few meters from the turned and battered wreckage of the CNS Beyond the Sun. In the void, It was battered by unseen force, turned three times—and upon the fourth, struck down and consumed by the void, as was the divine will of God. To its crew, it might have seemed like nothing less than a castigation of divine nature—but Kaguya knew it was nothing more than the temper tantrum of a child. As infant children must necessarily cry, Koishi must necessarily kill—it was her unconscious will.
Woe upon humanity, as its greatest accomplishment was brought low and made worthless before a child. Her own child. What a dubious honor it was—being the mother of such a terrifying, omnipresent killer.
Kaguya was on the ship when it was attacked by Toyohime. She was there to see Eirin march on to meet her. And she was there to see her die. It didn’t bother Kaguya too much—after all, she had watched Eirin die countless times. She will likely watch her die countless more, before all is said and done. But it was there, seized by the temporary shock, that Kaguya lost consciousness. When she woke up, she was deep within the fresh wreckage of humanity’s greatest weapon—alone. On what happened to her crew, and why Kaguya was spared, she could only make guesses.
With no direction and no plan, Kaguya spent what felt like hours wandering the claustrophobic halls of that great metal cage of a ship. But she was alone. Alone in such a way that not even the impression of humanity remained. Even the spot where she saw three men become atomized by Toyohime’s attack, which had burnt dark impressions of their silhouettes into the steel, was mysteriously void of any sign they were killed at all. The damage remained, but the people were gone—erased from existence in a way only God could manage.
When she eventually emerged from the dark recesses of the ship into a darker night, with nothing but the stars above and the inexplicable ground below, she could do nothing but start a simple fire. The night was cold, and she had a feeling it would be long. Warmth would be needed.
This, alone and huddled by a dying fire, must have been the end. Kaguya shifted closer to the flame, and held her knees closer to her chest. She didn’t know what to do. When her own daughter had sought her out, she didn’t know what to say. All she could do was recognize—that in pursuit of an easy life, she had made things so much worse. She wondered if it was too late to make things right between herself and Koishi. If Kaguya had looked up to her daughter now, and said sorry, would she hear? Would she care?
She wasn’t sure. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to find out.
As she stared at the stars above, Kaguya heard the shuffling of boots displacing the sand. The sounds came in an irregular, halting motion. When it came to a stop, Kaguya lowered her gaze to the figure who stood at the edge of her fire’s light.
A moon rabbit in a pilot suit, all ripped up, tattered, and blackened by combat. In the gaps of her suit, her skin had melted away from severe burns—and froze in place, creating large patches of gangrenous tissue that covered her body. As Kaguya’s eyes drifted downward, she noticed a patch of body that had a view to the other side. Somehow, by some miracle of medicine, the wound remained stable and closed.
Her face was concealed by her helmet, tinted and patterned by a spider web of cracks, but by the way she stood, so still and lopsided, Kaguya had the impression of an empty gaze just behind the facade.
The moon rabbit carried in her left hand a revolver, its chambers empty and on display as the mechanism that connected the grip to the top half of the hung loose. In her other hand, was an ax, splintered in half at the handle from excessive use and its blade caked in a thick layer of blood.
Without a word, the moon rabbit collapsed into a heap by the fire.
Kaguya rushed to the moon rabbit’s side and, upon removing her helmet, froze.
Atonement—she wondered if it was even possible.
Previous Chapter:
Interim Chapter 11

I know I’m not alone here. No one, not one single relative has epilepsy. I never had an injury, never got in a car accident, there’s no indication or reason why this happened to me.
I was a 17 year old girl, who just passed her drivers license exam, and gotten my official drivers license. I even had a car for myself and was one of the lucky kids to get a parking permit for the school lot so I could drive to school instead of taking the bus. What a year that was. Got my license in May of 2003..then in September of that year I had my very first seizure. I was so freakin confused.
I had heard of epilepsy before but really didn’t know much about it. As soon as the doctor saw my EEG and tests he knew right away I had Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy. My mom cried. She already had one chronically ill child (my brother was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 5). There’s also zero history of type 1 diabetes in my family as well.
When the doctor told me I couldn’t drive that’s when it hit me. I remember sobbing falling off the hospital bed. That’s when I knew my life would never be the same. He went on to tell my mom I wouldn’t be able to have children (I have 3 btw).
I have literally never let this go. I’ve asked countless doctors why, and they all say the same thing, it’s genetic with a lot of “probably” in there. I know I can’t be mad at the doctors for not being able to tell me why, because everything I’ve read about JME is that it’s not known. And that it’s lifelong. And treatment is life long.
My seizures came back after 11 years of laying dormant, like a volcano or something. Thankfully my doctor increased my meds and they have been under control for 4 years in May. After they came back, my doctor offered me the option to stay in the Epilepsy monitoring unit for a week to help me understand more. I happily agreed. My meds were taken away, and all it took was one dose. One..single..missed dose..to cause me to have a seizure again. Talk about upping my fears on my medication dependence!
Yeah it was good for testing, they got it all on video and EEG. We learned I’ll never be a candidate for brain surgery due to where my seizures come from in my brain. Oh and I also have a cyst on my temporal lobe which could be why I’m losing my memory so badly.
Anyway, I know that was long but I’m up late and reflecting that I’m never gonna let this go. Tell me how you feel. Are you in the same boat?
TLDR: I’ve had epilepsy for almost 20 years and I’m still angry I don’t know why.

I am 39f married to 45m narcissist. We have been together since April of 2020. We married a few months after we met. Those were the best days. In the beginning, I had never met a man so respectful and such a charismatic gentleman. He would always play talk saying he was just getting in good. I should have believed that. I have a daughter 9, from a previous marriage. It was an abusive relationship that lasted 27 years. How I managed to get out of it was pure work. Years of practicing positive thoughts. I have PTSD, bipolar 1, manic anxiety, and OCD. I see a doctor regularly and I go to any and every chance to learn and grow more to not show any symptoms. Fake it till ya make it. Now my husband has some me tal issues. He definitely is ADHD that's known. But there are others, anxiety being the absolute worst you can imagine, others that are undiagnosed. I was not aware of narcissism at all. 3 years prior to our meeting, he was in a tragic car accident and resulted in traumatic brain injury. Also after that, while taking a walk a car ran him over and left him for dead. His left leg is titanium from knee to ankle. Not only, all his previous relationships were toxic for him actually. Every time the woman left him for another man they cheated with. So along with the childhood trauma that no one wants to admit, he is drinker, previous drug problems from the past, pill problem from the past also, been to jail a couple times. He did got AA to quit drinking and a rehab with a 12 step program. So he still drinks only from time to time, but has been off drugs as pills without wanting to return to that. Now, back to the present day. He has Chronic pain from his leg injury and as of 9 mths ago, hurt his right foot somehow pedaling a bike to rush to see me at the hospital because I had our daughter. That was not planned nor we we're not aware I was pregnant. No baby bump. She is fully developed with absolutely no problems at all. Healthy. So I have a daughter 9 that doesn't live with me but comes for visits, and now another daughter, his only biological daughter that is his exact mini. He loves her and is very protective of her. He doesn't do much as of diapers or feeding with solids, he has done it but cannot stomach the mess of baby food. He does spend time with her and is so doting. He gets depressed and down off and on. He has not worked in a year or so because of the pain and problems worsening physically. Trying for disability. So I take care of him and whatever he needs. He is spoiled yes. But he is built to work that all he knew before so he does help around the house and projects if his liking. He is an angry and bitter man about his past. Holds anyone for anything they done wrong and when they cross his mind he is livid. There was no anger towards me until he lost his last job. He physically was unable to keep on so they let him go. It changed him for the worse. After that happened he went into a very deep depression and started taking his pain and anxiety and anger or anything that bothered him out on me. This was very new to me and very hurtful. I didn't what to think or how to feel because after a short time or a nap he would be normal and loving again. It was odd and confusing. Very hurtful and I started getting worse each time and then more and more. I eventually started fighting him back. Defending myself to his claims. I would get loud and yell because he just wouldn't stop going off. All of it was bs. He never told anyone else about it, just hurt me. Eventually it got so bad that I would physically hurt him then take the baby and leave for a while. One time I slept in my car just to be away from him. No cops ever involved. But he would go through the cycle and apologize and tell me all the good things he used to. He would tell me that the hurtful things were not true, he never felt that way, he would just do that to hurt me. At those times he would admit to the abuse and that he was wrong and hated that he would ever do that. But it would keep happening in cycles. I eventually stopped fighting and just would walk off away and cry. He always said something I did or said would just trigger his anger. So I naturally thought it was all me messing us up. Even went into a hospital for mental health for a week. It isn't me. His mom who I am so close to, told me in passing one day he was a narcissist. I didn't think about it enough or anything to change my mind that it wasn't stemming from his past. Well as of lately she brought it to my attention several times. So I finally saw something on narcissism on TikTok. Which I saw that, I immediately started researching everything I could find about it. I am an empath and he does go through the same motions as every other one. I mean I have read countless articles where the situation was so similar it could have been myself. Through this research I have also learned that it's very possible that he could never get better and in fact as he ages, it will worsen. Now it's been 3 very hard years for us. It has not been all bad. And I have reacted horribly to his outbursts. Now I have decided to try to stay the course. I love him and he does show me love too. I know how to play the game and am willing to play until he leaves himself on his own decision. He has never shut me out or left me at All even at his maddest times. No matter what I did. So I'm not convinced that he will leave. I do think that he has to rely on me so much that it is easier for him not to go. And when he is normal self I am above and beyond happy to help and do for him. When the darkness comes out, I notice it immediately because his tone always changes. He will start the devaluing and I will either agree with him in a nonchalant way or just completely play it off like I truly don't care. So I don't really take what he says in those moments to heart. Truly what he is saying to me is what he is and is doing to me himself. I know to not react to it at all so I don't or I react in a very positive loving way and manner he stops and changes his words back to sometimes even saying that I was right. So I will just play his game with him. When it's good times, it's better than I imagined heaven. When its bad, the hurt has been replaced with what's the sweetest and most positive way to end it quickly. We don't get physical or no raised voices. He says his hurtful things and I might even agree and apologize or walk away and start a complete different subject and that throws him off. Remember he's ADHD, I find a pleasant way to distract him from the madness. It's become just an inconvenience for me and I have struggled to keep my composure, but it's a work in progress. As it took about 10 years to be an automatic positive thinker and person in general, this will take time and practice too. But I think it will be second nature in no time. I have faith! #strong #boss

I don't know where to start with this. It'd be a stretch to say I'm suicidal right now, but the thoughts arise far too often for me to simply ignore them. And I know y'all are going to laugh at my post for how inconsequential the causes for my depression seem, but please understand that, to my mind plagued by a little something called Autism Spectrum Disorder, trivial and utterly stupid dilemmas can appear like life-or-death situations to my panic-attack-prone brain.
Maybe sequencing things chronologically will help me organize my thoughts, so I'll start with my family's background. I am the youngest child in my family; my parents divorced shortly after my birth due to my mother's infidelity, abuse, and general status as a not-so-nice person, and my primary caretakers ended up being my grandparents. I've still never seen my mom in-person ever since I could open my eyes, nor do I want to based on what I've heard about her. Anyways, my gram and gramps have taken pains to make my childhood as good as possible, but they're understandably not infallible. Being Christians, they took the verse about not sparing your child from the rod of discipline too literally, and I can recall times when my moronic child-brain thought they were trying to beat me to death (when, realistically, they probably just smacked my rear with a wooden spoon five times or so. Definitely painful, but nothing that'd injure or kill a person). Those moments are probably the earliest times when my autism's characteristic of blowing things wildly out of proportion began to take its toll on my mental health.
Fast-forward to age five, and my mind started hyperfixating on a subject it DEFINITELY shouldn't have at that age. Some random incident I'd rather not describe caused me to begin thinking about disturbingly sexual thoughts, i.e., ones I should've had no capacity to think of as a naïve child. I hadn't seen anything inappropriate to put that imagery in my head, but somehow I began ruminating on the subject until it became a habit to do so at night. This led to my first suicidal episode at the young age of five, where I was debating whether to come clean to my grandparents about the thoughts plaguing my mind or to grab the pistol I'd seen in a safe in their closet and try taking my life. Thank God I chose the former - and instead of disowning me like I'd anticipated, my family forgave me. I wish that was where the sexual thoughts ended, but I idiotically took my family's forgiveness for granted and continued entertaining those thoughts. That's come back to haunt me, as I'll explain in a moment.
At age seven, I got a Kindle Fire, and with it my first foray into the interwebs. Yeah... you see where this is going. My perverted baby brain managed to stumble across pornography and scar itself for life. I regarded myself as a Christian (and I still am a Christian), so I intuitively understood what I was viewing was horrid and that I should've stopped. Somehow, though, my moronic young self ignored the cognitive dissonance created by this crap, opting to begin watching the stuff in secret at any chance I got. I annihilated any conscience I once had in that area of my life, and it still hasn't fully recovered. I also developed other deleterious habits, such as reflexively punching my head with my fists during panic attacks until I sobbed uncontrollably. Embarrassingly, I still haven't gotten over this (or panic attacks in general), and it's the most dangerous trigger for suicidal thoughts as of late. These episodes can be triggered by anything from a death in the family to a somewhat lousy grade on a test I'd studied hard for, so it doesn't take much at all to push me near the breaking point.
I guess I'll jump ahead to the present now. I'm still struggling with a porn habit that seems impossible to break; it's ruining my entire life while bringing no pleasure whatsoever, but I just robotically indulge in it, violating the remnants of my conscience over and over without any reason to do so. I can only imagine my problem with it is analogous to a drug addict's struggles with substances (no offense meant to anyone dealing with that). If I go a mere couple of days without that crap, my anxiety skyrockets (as if its baseline levels weren't already through the roof; I don't honestly know what it feels like to not be burned out because trying to maintain perfect grades in school, fix my rotten brain to stop killing itself slowly, and manage social situations with absolutely zero social skills is more than I can handle). I'm effectively locked in this cycle of porn consumption by pseudo-withdrawal symptoms, and I can't muster the willpower to force myself out of this decade-old rut. This "addiction" wastes time, ruins familial and platonic relationships, kills my grades in school, and generally makes me see myself as the perverted, messed-up freak I fear I am. I've given God no reason to forgive me, but still I pray, whenever I can muster the strength to do so, that He'll deliver me from this trap I've ensnared myself in.
I'll stop rambling now. It's literally midnight and I need to get up for school at 5:30 AM, but I just needed to vent about this stuff and get it off my chest (no matter how incoherent and meaningless my "venting" may be). There was more I wanted to type here, but a sleepless night doesn't exactly sound pleasant right now when I'm already falling behind on schoolwork from calling in sick today over a migraine. Thank you for reading this far (and I'm sorry if this post has left an irremovable scar in your psyche for just how absolutely stupid my attempts at writing sound when I'm already sleep-deprived), and have a good day/night/whatever time it is! God bless! :D

Info: 21M, 5'7, 160 pounds, white, cervicogenic headache for 7 months as well as likely hypermobility type EDS, prescriptions are adderall IR 10mg 2x daily, no drinking or smoking.
Hey y'all, Ive been experiencing what have been diagnosed as cervicogenic headaches for a little over half a year now. They started after I tried going on a run and went a little to intense, I suspect I somehow strained a neck muscle resulting in referred pain from my cervical region to my head. The pain is side locked and only occurs on the top right side of my head. I additionally experience a sensation of tightness on the front right side of my throat. I had a cranial MRI which showed nothing out of the ordinary in the brain or the cranio-cervical junction, however my neurologist deemed a neck MRI to be unnecessary. Initially the headaches were a constant pain on that side of my head, however with some physical therapy exercises they've gradually evolved to an intermittent but still daily piercing pain that comes and goes in waves, almost like a muscle spasming repeatedly and then calming down. Other than the throat tightness, I feel no pain in my actual neck, and I do not present with any limited ROM, however my hypermobility likely complicates this (I am not formally diagnosed with hypermobility type EDS as rheumatology has been difficult to get an appointment with, however an orthopedic examination determined I am hypermobile, combined with a long history of injuries and fun joint related party tricks and hyper elastic skin provides supporting evidence that I have it or hypermobility).
Until about 9 weeks ago, I hadn't received any treatment for the headaches other than 10mg nortriptyline for a few weeks, which didn't seem to do much. I then started PT 9 weeks ago. I was able to go to PT 3x a week for 3 weeks, was given manual therapy on my neck, and was given isometric exercises to strengthen my deep cervical muscles plus a set of stretches that I've done everyday for the past 9 weeks day and night. I had to go back to school 3 weeks in and could no longer attend PT, but I've continued the exercises. The exercises are 3 sets each, held initially for 5 seconds (now 10), with 5 second breaks in between. The first exercise is applied pressure to the back of the head with both hands, and resisting this pressure by pressing my head back against it. The second exercise is the same concept but instead pressure applied from the front of my head. I then do an exercise where I press against either side of my head (3 sets each side), and resist using my neck muscles. The stretch is pulling my head down towards my armpit and holding for around 30 seconds, being careful not to apply too much pressure and or cause pain. I don't experience pain or discomfort from the exercises, and they've been manageable.
I've also been keeping track of my pain for the past 6 weeks via a pain journal/excel sheet, where I document my pain level on a scale of 1-10, percent of day I was affected by the pain, and percent of day I felt tightness in my neck. I also document medication use, hours of sleep in the previous night, caffeine use, running/exercises, and if I did a heat treatment. I've also recently made a tracker that enables me to log when I get pain and how bad they are, although I've had difficulty adhering to this and have only had it for a couple weeks. I've seen a slight downwards trend in my pain, however its difficult to tell if this is real improvement or just me getting more used to functioning with the pain, as well as just the nature of pain to fluctuate (aggregating the data in an attempt to mitigate the impact of fluctuation shows a more positive trend, but still hard to tell as I've had bad weeks where the pain increases). I will hopefully be soon starting PT again specialized in cervicogenic headache treatment, as they haven't completely remitted after 9 weeks of exercise. I'm also trying to sleep in better positions, and was instructed to sleep with a neck brace, although this hasn't seemed to do much.
I've found that running and caffeine seem to cause my pain to remit for up to 10 hours at a time, as well as my adderall to some extent. I'm aware that all of these have some shared and some different potential mechanisms of action for reducing pain, from vasoconstriction, to modulating neurotransmitter activity, to endorphin release, to anti inflammatory activity, etc. Sometimes they seem less effective but usually I get some respite. Bad sleep also makes my headaches more frequent and worse, as does prolonged poor posture such as holding my head forward or my head down. Stretching seems ineffective for me, as does massage. The PT I saw said that he could feel some spasticity in my muscles, and that even over 3 weeks it improved, but I don't have any insights past that. I've read that physical therapy as an intervention for cervicogenic headache can take up to 16 weeks to see significant improvement, but on average takes 8 weeks. I'm will be asking the PT I see some questions about what my expectations should be and if complete remission is probable, but I also thought I might as well ask here.
​
I'm mostly curious about:
•Do I show any signs of possibly achieving complete remission
•Is there anything I should also ask the PT I will be seeing soon
•Does the intermittent spasms/pain suggest the issue could be more complex than just muscular, and how might this affect my recovery (neurology exam was online and didn't really involve any testing, they mostly just came to the conclusion it was cervicogenic based on the info I gave and the clear head MRI)
Sorry for the long post and lack sorta general questions, just been feeling sort of hopeless with how difficult it is to identify improvement and how slow things are, if anyone has any other questions/information to give I'd love to hear it! Thank you!

I got out of the Marine Corps as an 0311/0313 in 2016. Outside of medical records from boot camp and stuff, and PHAs, the only notable thing in my medical SRB is a document from my corpsman just stating that I reported a back injury and subsequent back and hip pain in the aftermath to my corpsman. I was on orders in Spain at the time. Didn’t get looked at or treatment at the time. Took some Motrin and changed my socks.
When I got out I submitted a claim for lower back pain, hip issues, lower back issues, depression and anxiety (which I started to develop but hadn’t been diagnosed yet), and hearing loss and tinnitus.
I submitted the claim, and was scheduled for a hearing test and was given 10% and just denied for everything else without any appointments from the VA at a large VA medical center nearby. I was in college at the time and then started going to to a local contracted VA clinic about my back and hip issues. They gave me a prescription for 500mg of naproxen twice a day to take for 60 days before my scheduled imaging. Shortly before my next appointment I got a call and the contract had been bought out by another company and basically I was going to have to restart with them with a first available consultation appointment months later than my previously scheduled appointment. I was working and going to school full time and fighting full fledged depression and severe anxiety and just gave up.
About a year later after being indecisive about my major, I decided to put college on hold and went into the National Guard as a 25B information technology specialist to get paid for some good schooling and gain some experience (currently getting my IT degree). I got out of the National Guard after 3 years in August 2021. I was not working on anything with the VA during those years because I was serving.
In February of 2022 I resubmitting a claim for the same stuff (also added for a hemorrhoid I first noticed a few days into a field exercise the same week I got pinned Corporal in the Corps). It came back denied as well. Got a call from a guy at the VA who said because the claim for the same stuff was already denied I would have to submit and appeal.
Since then I was just focused on getting care for my issues. Started getting psychiatric treatment for diagnosed depression and general anxiety disorder and chiropractic treatment and physical therapy for my back all through the VA.
Unfortunately the back hasn’t gotten much better. Basically since I got out of the Marine Corps I haven’t been able to sleep through a full night and as the years have gone on (and I’ve gotten out of shape/lost supporting muscle in my back) the pain has just increased dramatically. I resorted to sleeping on the floor on a folded up comforter, getting 2 new mattress in 3 years, sleeping on my electric recliner, or sleeping on the couch. Rotating to a different place each time I woke up in pain. It’s negatively affected me for years with work and school from oversleeping when I would wake up, take some pain medication, apply my ice pack and find a new comfortable place to get back to sleep.
I’m being treated for these things at a VA medical center without being rated for them and I’m worried that because of how my original claim was basically just thrown out that I won’t have much luck moving forward. Getting ready to go to my states department of veterans services to get assistance submitting what I assume will be a supplemental claim.
What are my odds moving forward to get this all corrected?

Hello Redditors of AskDocs. Perhaps you can help solve my self-inflicted ailment. What began as a pain and stress-management habit is now a skeletal pathology.
PATIENT OVERVIEW
I am a 29-year old White male from Vancouver, Canada. 5’7 feet tall, 130 lbs. 100% pure from illicit substances. I have a genetic heart condition and my traumatized brain is afflicted by OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). I used to self-harm: that includes the habit described here.
I was isolated in a sexually + emotionally abusive hellhouse from birth to age 25. 95% of my existence was spent marinating in cortisol and tensing the body to contain my anguish. No friends, in-person schooling, or unsupervised mobility beyond the house—just a stircrazy, sedentary life caretaking my narcissist and submitting assignments or reading while off-duty.
HISTORY OF THE AILMENT
At age 12, I injured an ankle and received no medical care. One day that ankle popped, temporarily purging extreme discomfort. This ‘revolutionary’ discovery became my only pain relief. Later I injured the other ankle and kept ‘fixing it’ through cracks as well. By 13, the aches of sitting at a computer spurred me to crack the neck, back, wrists, shoulder sockets, knees, and calves. Alas, the more I cracked for relief, the more cracks were required to combat the increasing stiffness.
As my abuse trauma compounded, cracking became a self-medicating outlet to expel physical + emotional pressure. Finally, I could release the tension trapped in my skeleton, or unburden my mind, through the flick of a wrist. Minutes of symbolic ‘peace’ felt akin to a drug high. An OCD addiction began.
Throughout adolescence, my fingers, elbows, toes, jaw, shoulder blades, hips, ears, and sternum joined the snap-crackle-pop symphony. I cracked incessantly, forcing it long after nothing was left to pop and pain replaced pleasure. No doubt these aggressive daily repetitions incurred physical damage, which brings me to the point.
CURRENT PROBLEM
Though the OCD addiction has ceased, my wrecked skeleton now requires joint cracks to function. If I ignore the agonizing stiffness, it gets unbearable and my creaky hinges fail. I can’t pick up a mug sans sharp pain shooting through my palm from the thumb, or type sans my fingers seizing into temporary paralysis. My legs buckle if I don’t pop the knees into place. It appears that my bones are dislocating on their own and cartilage is greatly deteriorated. I worry about my condition at age 50, let alone the elderly years.
MEDICAL QUESTIONS

• How can I soften the stiff joints to end their dependence on cracking?
  
• Can repetitive joint damage be reversed?
  
• Will worn cartilage regrow?
  
• If exercise is advisable, what methods are best?
  

I am steadily healing myself from trauma, and already cured the psychological addiction to cracking. Now I must eradicate the body’s physical requirement to crack. Your advise is greatly appreciated.
I wish you all an excellent life.

Hello Redditors of AskDocs. Perhaps you can help solve my self-inflicted ailment. What began as a pain and stress-management habit is now a skeletal pathology.
PATIENT OVERVIEW
I am a 29-year old White male from Vancouver, Canada. 5’7 feet tall, 130 lbs. 100% pure from illicit substances. I have a genetic heart condition and my traumatized brain is afflicted by OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). I used to self-harm: that includes the habit described here.
I was isolated in a sexually + emotionally abusive hellhouse from birth to age 25. 95% of my existence was spent marinating in cortisol and tensing the body to contain my anguish. No friends, in-person schooling, or unsupervised mobility beyond the house—just a stircrazy, sedentary life caretaking my narcissist and submitting assignments or reading while off-duty.
HISTORY OF THE AILMENT
At age 12, I injured an ankle and received no medical care. One day that ankle popped, temporarily purging extreme discomfort. This ‘revolutionary’ discovery became my only pain relief. Later I injured the other ankle and kept ‘fixing it’ through cracks as well. By 13, the aches of sitting at a computer spurred me to crack the neck, back, wrists, shoulder sockets, knees, and calves. Alas, the more I cracked for relief, the more cracks were required to combat the increasing stiffness.
As my abuse trauma compounded, cracking became a self-medicating outlet to expel physical + emotional pressure. Finally, I could release the tension trapped in my skeleton, or unburden my mind, through the flick of a wrist. Minutes of symbolic ‘peace’ felt akin to a drug high. An OCD addiction began.
Throughout adolescence, my fingers, elbows, toes, jaw, shoulder blades, hips, ears, and sternum joined the snap-crackle-pop symphony. I cracked incessantly, forcing it long after nothing was left to pop and pain replaced pleasure. No doubt these aggressive daily repetitions incurred physical damage, which brings me to the point.
CURRENT PROBLEM
Though the OCD addiction has ceased, my wrecked skeleton now requires joint cracks to function. If I ignore the agonizing stiffness, it gets unbearable and my creaky hinges fail. I can’t pick up a mug sans sharp pain shooting through my palm from the thumb, or type sans my fingers seizing into temporary paralysis. My legs buckle if I don’t pop the knees into place. It appears that my bones are dislocating on their own and cartilage is greatly deteriorated. I worry about my condition at age 50, let alone the elderly years.
MEDICAL QUESTIONS

• How can I soften the stiff joints to end their dependence on cracking?
  
• Can repetitive joint damage be reversed?
  
• Will worn cartilage regrow?
  
• If exercise is advisable, what methods are best?
  

I am steadily healing myself from trauma, and already cured the psychological addiction to cracking. Now I must eradicate the body’s physical requirement to crack. Your advise is greatly appreciated.
I wish you all an excellent life.

Im posting this on my phone not sure if it makes a difference So i (f20) a month ago out of nowhere I was randomly throwing up. The next day started vomiting, had bad stomach pain, diarrhea and right side of face went numb and right side of mouth was droopy, right arm felt heavy, numb and tingly. So I went to the er. At the hospital I had uncontrollable shaking that was pretty bad ( they said it was my way of having a fever) They did mri for my head, for stomach they did ct scan, ct scan with the liquid, xrays, sonogram and tons of bloodwork mostly testing related to heart bc they thought I could have had a stroke and did an ekg. Didn’t really test anything blood work related to stomach. Gave a stool sample that they said would send to lab and I’d have results in 4 days. (Got told 3 weeks later after another visit to er that they didnt send it and someone lost it) Ct scan came back the my intestines were inflamed. They were going to admit me after going 2 days in a row but bc I ate a block of cheese in between bread, they discharged me. Said I was in perfect health and my heart was normal and the face thing was likely a reaction to whatever was going on with my stomach. They then gave me antibiotics that they knew I was allergic to. After 2 weeks of throwing up I felt normal for 2 weeks. Since march 8th I started throwing up again (bc I can’t handle burping and acid reflux), have severe nausea, headaches, burping a lot, a burning sensation in my left side and above belly button that tends to move to my back, have heart burn, tingling in arms and legs, body feels like it’s shaking, ringing in ears, heart palpitations throughout most of the day and will wake up from sleep with it being extreme, brain fog, confusion to the point that I don’t remember my room being a different color than it was 7 months ago, constipation, vision problems, loss of appetite, white tongue, lost 12 pounds in 2 weeks (I have not been able to previously since I have hashimotos)this caused me to have horrendous anxiety all the time and I have had 3 panic attacks which I never had before this. I went to a gastro doctor today (sadly it was the nurse practitioner) I told her all my symptoms, first thing she says was why r u here go to the hospital. she didn’t try to diagnose me and got argumentative bc my mom said that the hospital didn’t do much for me bc all they did was give iv the 3rd time I went. She said to take my old antibiotics that only has 3 days left. She kept trying to say it was from smoking weed evn tho I do not smoke at all and haven’t since I was 16. Then when she felt my stomach tried to say it was period cramps which obviously it wasn’t. Since my boyfriends mom said to see if it’s hpylori I decided to do some research before the doctors appointment and had most of those symptom. I asked for a breath test, she said no u can do a stool test even tho she knew I haven’t been able go as much from the lack of food. I had to ask 5 times and she finally agreed, prescribed another antibiotic that I was only supposed to take after breath test. She lied and said I had to do it through their group. When my mom went to the front desk, it was an appointment for 2 months away and an endoscopy for July. By that point my body would have collapsed. Called their office guess it went through to one of their other offices and the nice lady said I can do the breath test that’s not with their group and gave me a prescription. I go this week. I just want to figure out what’s wrong. I’ve lost out on so much this month and can barely leave my house. Basically have been stuck to my bed and can’t move around to much without feeling dizzy or getting joint pain.
Had to edit this bc I forgot some stuff

Hi all! I can't believe I can finally post of my passing the exam!!!
I thought I knew everything to expect from the exam -- but clearly not!!! I struggled with time management and flew through the 2nd and 3rd sections fearing that I would run out of time. I was in panic mode for 2 hours straight!
My naive-self thought that the time for each section was allocated evenly. I didn't know that the 4hours applied to the entire test and that you had to be the watchguard for the entire four hours. I had squandered precious time on the first third of the test (the first 60 was the hardest from the exam).
If you're reading this, plan time wisely! Now I know what they mean by that! lol. Even your breaks were on a strict time watch. I know everyone knows of the 10 minute break between sections, but after reading mind-numbing questions for over an hour straight, you want to cherish every minute of that break. You have no idea how fast that time really is! Within that 10 minutes, you have to run to the bathroom, get some sips of water, and each some crackers to quell the hunger pangs.
The second and third sections were in panic mode. I almost thought I was going to break down in tears because I felt so behind. I seriously thought that I could actually fail the exam because I was rushing through the questions.
I may have scored above target in all three areas, but I did not feel I was performing above target!
As for the test, the first 60 was more like study hall questions. There were several that made me second-third guess my answers in which I fell behind. The second and third sections were easier and the questions were easier to read. There was not much re-reading the question to understand the question being asked.
Also, I was going on two hours of sleep. Despite waking up early and doing all I can to keep myself busy, I was too wired to sleep. See my post from yesterday (I'm taking the pmp tomorrow and I am a jittery mess).
From my recollection, there were quite a number on communication plans, team members not getting along, stakeholders not being happy because deliverables did not live up to their expections.
I had tried to study early to avoid the mad cram at the end (which ended up happening anyways). I did PMTraining for online training. Their training did not help me prepare for the pmp. They were supposedly teaching to the 7th edition which restructured all the ITTOs of the 49 processes. The trainer said that we didn't have to know the 49 processes from the 6th edition. The mock exams on PM training did not correspond to the trainings and I inevitably bombed all of them because they were not really covered in the sessions. After the sessions ended, I ended up getting Andrew Ramdayal's Udemy course and Stuidy Guide to actually learn the 6th edition.
The lesson learned in this was that there was no getting around learning the 49 processes from the 6th edition.
I have joined Reddit about three weeks ago, and I wish I had encountered this subreddit earlier in my PMP preparation journey. I have received such great support and guidance in the short time that I've joined. Thank you to all who have answered my questions and amused and indulged me through my panic posts (posted about my anxieties last night and last week about my rage with study hall).
To all who are reading hoping for inspiration and encouragement for the exam -- YOU CAN DO IT!!!
...just be sure to allocate time in each section and keep mindful of the clock!
Resources used:

1. PM Training (did not have a great experience with them and they are overpriced)
2. TIA Udemy course (highly recommend; comes with the Mindset which is essential)
3. PMP Exam Prep Simplified by Andrew Ramdayal (recommend)
4. TIA mock exams (recommend for the cut to the chase explanations, but questions are much straightforward than how they would appear in the exam).
5. Study Hall (the dreaded-effing study hall. It is essential, as much as I resent it. The brain needs to be trained on how to frame these situational questions. Don't place your entire confidence on study hall. I find the answers to be arbitrary and contradictory)
6. Thirdrock's notes (sorry, I don't know how to tag him). Buy him some coffee! His notes are wonderful as a shorthand review. Notes are succinct and easy to review and covers so much ground!

Hi, I'm 18F 5'3 120lbs white and for about as long as I can remember I've been chronically tired just about every day with little to no medical conditions that I'm aware of. I also have trouble getting to sleep at night (takes about 2-4 hours on average), excessive sleep sweating (will explain when I discuss my medications), jaw clenching in sleep, and tend to sleep 12-16 hours if my sleep goes uninterrupted. I've taken a combo of Doxepin 20mg and Clonidine 0.1mg for sleep (no effect), Vistaril 25mg for sleep (no effect), Melatonin (little to no effect), and Trazodone 50mg (very helpful with putting me and keeping me asleep, initial issues with making me excessively tired after waking up but went away after a few consequent days of taking it nightly) but I have not been taking it recently in the past year because I've been busy with college and forget to refill the prescription. I also take Effexor XR 150mg daily for depression, which I believe is the cause of my sleep sweating. I have a lifelong history of (professionally diagnosed) major depression, social and general anxiety, and autism. I am suspicious of having complex ptsd although I have not reached out to my therapist or psychiatrist (this as well as major depression may be important when I describe the content of my dreams). I have a family history of autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and some others I'm unaware of, mostly on my mother's side. My maternal grandparents both have sleep apnea and have used cpap machines for several years.
Other bodily symptoms that have gone unresolved throughout my life are weakness, light-headedness, and difficulty with regulating temperature. Light-headedness and weakness makes it so that any physical exertion makes me feel like fainting. Every blood test I've taken has shown normal results, usually in the slightly low end of average, so no anemia or low blood sugapressure. I've taken thyroid tests recently which were also average. Only abnormalities in blood/metabolic reports are high gran % (67.6 in 2021, 64.7 in 2022), slightly low lymph % in 2021 (25.7) but normal in 2022 (29), low CO2 in 2021 (19) and normal in 2022 (24). These results are from my most recent tests. Everything else listed on these tests is within normal range.
Description of an average night of sleep: I get in bed around 9-9:30 and wind down usually on my phone for 30 minutes (bad, I know) and try to fall asleep afterwards. For the next few hours I toss and turn struggling to get comfortable or tired. Nowadays I sleep in a dorm with a roommate with little to no disturbances in the room (lights are all off by 10 usually and my roommate stays very quiet after this). Once I fall asleep which is usually around 12-1 am, I begin to dream very quickly and every dream I've had for about 5+ years has been very disturbing, bordering on nightmare for the majority of the time I'm asleep. I rarely wake up from these bad dreams in the middle of the night. I wake up somewhere between 8 and 10am tired in a puddle of sweat, usually with a sore jaw and face from clenching my jaw in my sleep. The rest of my day I am very lethargic and almost always fall asleep during my classes. Some days I nap for a for a few hours and experience more intense dreams with more sweating and jaw clenching than I would at night. I tend to go about my day very tired until the evening and then have trouble falling asleep as described in my falling asleep process above.
This is greatly disturbing to my life. Throughout elementary school to college I have fallen asleep in most of my classes during the day and it has impacted my grades. I miss many important appointments and gatherings with friends/family either because I am much too tired to attend or because I slept through it. I find that the combination of my depression and sleepiness is a harmful duo as I very rarely have the energy or motivation to do things throughout the day. Perhaps the sleeping problems are directly caused by the depression, but these symptoms have persisted since early childhood so I am unable to tell if one thing caused the other. I have discussed sleep with my therapist and psychiatrist and was given advice to resolve dream conflicts during the day to avoid conflict in my dreams and have been trying that for about 2 weeks but have had little effect.
Any advice at all would be very greatly appreciated. This may be more psychological than medical but I thought it'd be worth a try. If there's any questions I will be more than happy to give any answer I can.

I blame my second post this week on a conversation I had with a random person about a random topic. It set off a lightbulb above my head about something in the show. Since then, my brain has gone back into obsession mode. Still, one positive part of this is that I'm learning quite a bit in the process. I think the make of a good mystery thriller is that it makes the watcher curious to learn about the fundamental items that make it. With the maturity of the internet, I can fall down lots of rabbit holes.
Kier Eagan served from the years 1865 to 1939. 1865 was the year that the USA Civil War ended. 1939 was the year the USA entered World War II. Ambrose Eagan served from 1939 to 1941. After that, Myrtle had quite a long tenure into the late 1950s. I am not as interested with her tenure yet (eventually maybe I will be).
Another observation I just studied was the photo of Irving's father in his (Irving's) footlocker. The uniform could be either associated with WWI or WWII. Irving's age suggests he was in WWII. Irving also served. In the very same footlocker, an article is kept. It alludes to a poorly excused injury that permanently disabled a severed employee. Doctors recommended to use salves to fix the problem.
Everyone already knows this, but in the non-dinner dinner, Mark specifically pointed out that his study focus was on World War I. What not everyone knows is that the book Ricken wrote The You You Are is dedicated to Mark S., "the cartographer of the mind".
There is a lot of facts up there to connect with each other, but I'm most interested right now is the reference to "cartographer of the mind". I'm thinking Mark's focus of study wasn't just World War I. It was more specialized than that, particularly on shellshock. Shellshock was a phenomenon that the world hadn't yet seen and eventually it became a precursor to the diagnosis of PTSD. Those with shellshock would have done almost anything to stop the nightmares, the flashbacks, things like that. Perhaps Mark had a big part in identifying how shellshock - and subsequently PTSD - physically affected the brain.
I'm going to muzzle myself at this point.

45M and about a month ago I was waiting on some results for my first cologuard test. (had colon operation for striation in 2007) Thus this was a high anxiety situation for as I suffer from quit e a bit of HA in my life. The day before my results came I got a crazy twitch in my right thumb. Initially I assumed it was job and video game related so while nervous I went on with my life
Next day I started getting muscle twitches in my right back thigh. I immediately googled it and got the terrifying news you are all familiar with. It felt like a death sentence and I spiraled down the Google hole for days and the twitching spread everywhere. Legs, face, arms, neck, hands and even my eyes, forehead and back a few times. They definitely stop or become unnoticeable when I'm moving and active and I don't usually have any right after I wake up. Like my body has to get anxious first.
A week in I went to my PCP. He pretty much looked at me and had me stick my tongue out and told me there was no way it was the big bad. Ran some blood work. Ctk, phosphate, Magnesium, and a few others that were all normal. He told me to monitor and go on with my life. I had googled way too much to feel satisfied with that but I tried my best.
I did pretty good for a week outside of some testing. Playing video games to prove my hands were good. Kicking hacky sack to make sure my feet were good as well as some other tests I found on YouTube (I know...).
Then a couple of days ago I got this really bad globus sensation in my throat. So bad I couldn't concentrate on work or do much of anything. Totally freaked out. That went on for 2 days and faded away. Last night I went to take medicine and felt like my pills hung in my throat and couldnt get to sleep. Same thing happened this morning taking a pepcid. Trying to clear my throat with water I choked and my whole body went on high alert.
I am not here for diagnosis more for someone to tell me I'm crazy. I truly think it's just anxiety and some weird coincidences but a part of my brain is so terrified I'm wrong. Trying to stop googling everything and failing often. The twitching is better the last two days and is in very random places when it happens.
Honestly I think I just needed to tell some people who might understand what I'm going through. Thanks for listening. If this post breaks rules let me know.

After a full year of following every crazy freaking number the district manager wants from us. We had to do self evaluations (paragraphs mind you) rating ourselves on how we can do better. So after months and months of waiting. New year rolls in and we finally hear about our raises! We get 1% pay raise!
Something deep in my brain is screaming to quit and this is a insult. I can’t even afford to move out and I’ve been working so hard. 1% huh Claires? Damn after I did all those updates of your shit diamonds and rusting quality “gold”. Traumatizing any ages from 3Weeks - 100years old.

Quick Background:
The real separating factor between a "profitable trader" and a "knowledgeable market participant" (guru) is the ability to see a working setup in real time and not in hindsight. I often see many intelligent traders struggling to make the jump from being able to explain a chart perfectly in hindsight, to actually being able to develop that thesis before the move has occurred.
I firmly believe that traders in the process of closing that gap to profitability can force their brains to build the correct neural pathways that help the trader move from being a hindsight hero to actually seeing price action in real time.
The term for this is "neural plasticity" and without going too in-depth it is our brains ability to build and adapt its neural connections to give us different abilities. It is the same principle that allow someone to learn how to ride a skateboard or juggle a soccer ball. Tasks that are impossible at first, but with enough time and stimulation the brain "magically" adapts to be able to do them, eventually needing very little energy and mental focus to perform those tasks at a high level.
Brain stimulation is what causes the brain to want to make these neural pathways, and adequate sleep and diet (overall health) breeds the environment for the brain to actually make them.
Studying Exercise
With that in mind, I set out to stimulate my brain ever single day for a couple hours each night for months in a row.

1. Screenshots of my winning & losing trades each day.
2. Similar to flashcards, I would memorize the details of each individual trade. What ticker, what was the price action, where was it relative to vwap, what was the daily etc.
3. Look at the trade on my screen, then close my eyes and envision it in my head (this is the literal stimulation of your brain)
4. Zoom in so I could only see the first 30 min or hour of the chart, then close my eyes and envision how that price action played out. (more stimulation)
5. I did this until I could sit with my eyes closed and think of all 5-10 trades I took in a given day. List the tickers in my head from 1-5, what was the daily, exactly what did the price action look like (physically up and down and where), and where my entries and exits would/should have been.
6. Take a break eat dinner and in 30 min while I'm sitting at the table close my eyes and recall all of the trades again (stimulating again)
7. The goal is to be able to envision every winning and losing trade from any given day for the next few days.
8. My brain would literally feel a bit foggy or a bit of a heavy sensation after an hour of memorizing and envisioning trades. This is when I knew my brain was being stimulated.
9. Go to bed, wake up the next morning, recall those trades and have that information at the forefront of my subconscious to the point I would recognize little moves the price action was taking like "ahh" I thought that might happen.
10. Over time, your brain has been forced to see 1000's of examples of winning and losing trades and it subconsciously starts to see all types of possibilities when you pull a ticker and develop a thesis.

Consistency every night and always getting enough sleep is key. If you were learning to pogo stick you would not jump once a week and then forget about it. Your brain needs constant stimulation to actually make changes, no different from a skeletal muscle in this context.
Once a high level of pathways have been developed, the amount of time and energy to maintain those pathways decreases significantly. Nowadays I will only do this after a bad week of trading or if I am really trying to hit home a new concept.
Many, if not every, profitable traders have developed this "ability" to an extent. They can "see" with a high degree of accuracy how a particular chart will play out based on the factors they know and what they see currently. This allows them to be waiting for the moments they know may offer a potential trade, and get in early while there is still edge. To be aware of this process in your brain can allow a developing trader to supercharge it through constant stimulation without taking a day off, and can increase the speed to profitability. It did for me.
End
I hope this post helped those starting out or in the process of sizing up their trading. Feel free to ask any questions and I will do my best to answer timely (very quickly within first 48 hours). I also post educational threads, daily PNL, prints, and respond to all dm's on my twitter https://twitter.com/kycefn.

So this one is an interesting story about a oneshot i played with a few friends in the call of cthulu ttrpg.
so for context, my group was playing an entirely homebrewed system in a homebrewed setting for a while at this point, and we had not much experience with published systems at that point, we started off being interested by ttrpgs, but the lenghthy rules and the prizey rulebooks lead to us making our own systems based on concepts we picked up watching sessions of other players on yt. one of my friends came around to buy the call of cthulu beginners book or something along those lines, with a few szenarios and campaigns, aswell as all the basic rules and what we needed to know to create characters.
so, i dont remember to many details about the campaign itself to be honest, we just met to try the system out by .playing a oneshot, and while we did create the characters right before the session we all had thought about our characters at that point. we were 3 players, one friend of mine played i believe some kind of private investigatoex military guy who was arguably our most competent fighter, i played a surgeon and was therefore somewhat of our dedicated healer, and to be quite honest i did forget what our last player played, but its not relevant for this story.
So we all equipped our characters with a bunch of flaws, partially rolled, and partially chosen to fit our characters. we all went into this thinking that from what we had heard, this ttrp is pretty relentless and its more like trying to draw out your characters lifespan rather than ultimately really surviving and we used that oppertunity to create wrecks of characters with a bunch of horrible characteristics and flaws, and my character was not only the worst one and an insufferable prick, but he also heavily clashed with our frontliner.
so our frontliner i think was a traumatized alcoholic with trust issues and more of a "worker class" person, i feel like i should mention here that we played in a campaign set somewhere around 1900. my character was a surgeon, and arrogant and pride intellectual who basically saw everyone beneath him, especially those with a lower education level than himself. i want to mention, that ooc i am quite the opposite, despite having relatively high education, i dont value that at all in other people and i absolutely hate elitism. my character got worse tho, he was basically an outcast from his prestigious post noble, still kinda noble in their own heads, family. why was he an outcast? he pressured his sister into an incestual relationship, wich resulted in him being forced to leave Stuttgart Germany and move to London where the campaign took place. he would overall be an absolute asshole, talking down to people in a condescending way and generally being rude, but he did his job, even when he talked smack, because he was actually a great surgeon. what made him even worse was the fact, that his personal storyhook was, that while he would not openly talk about why he was sent away, or that he even was an outcast, in his head it was them that are being in the wrong, and that h8im and his sister were meant to be together, and he was trying to find a way to finally get her back. i openly declared that i definetly hated this man, and i do hope he dies before getting any closer to his final goal, but i would play him out, and i every now and then enjoy roleplaying asshole characters that not even i like.
so during the campaign we had to go into this forest and discover some stuff about cultists that do stuff there, and some fishpeople or something like that appeared aswell. the combat encounters were brutal and tense wich was pretty cool and we got seperated in a combat szenario. in rp me and the ex military private investigator that i from now on will refer to as Frontliner for convenience had some banter, talking smack to one another, he threatened my character, and i would disregard his words by claiming him to be an uncultivated prig. there was clear tension between our characters and we did argue in rp at lenght, but both of our characters had this "I do my job, you do yours mentality" so it wouldnt hinder the campaign.
After seperation in combat me and frontliner would reunite and head for a small hut in the forest, where a failed attempt to talk to the inhabitant resulted in another combat encounter in wich at the beginning my character got shot. he did not die but he took serious dmg and fell to the ground, but i managed to crawl behind some cover as the fight progressed. frontliner managed to take out the guy that shot at me while i patched myself up, and another fishperson came around to attack frontliner. i now semi ok again got back up and helped frontliner by shooting the fishcreature from behind, but damage was done and now frontliner was in need of some healing.
due to the stress of the situation, i believe one of my characters fears was the fear of any physical alteration that could lead to him being injured, wich is not great if you get shot, and some negative modifications to my rolls due to the injury, i got a way harder time to succesfully patch him up, and i didnt roll great, therefore i botched the procedure and hurt him some more instead of helping him.this would lead to further discussions, as now frontliner lost trust in my capabilities in being the teams medic, and my character being pissed of as his pride got insulted by such claims. the group got back together with all 3 members, and our third member tried to convince our now injured frontliner to let my character have another shot at patching him up now that we have a calm moment, wich he refused, claiming he would be better of not treated at all opposed to be treated by an incompetent idiot. this resulted in more unfriendly banter and more tention between the two characters.
i want to emphasise that the tention was not between us, just between the character, but what we didnt quite realize at that point was, that our third player was pretty unhappy with that. he out of character did not really say anything about it, but in character he tried to be the diplomate between our characters. we had one last tough encounter, this was a fight we couldnt win, even if we were all in good shape, instead it was our prompt to get the hell out of there. we manage to escape but the whole group got some injuries, and when we were in the clear i patched up the third party member and myself. third partymember now again tried to convince frontliner to let me patch him up, who was hesitant but did agree after a short discussion. well, my character now refused to patch him up, arguing that he had it coming, insulting my competence. that he did not want to be treated, and that was ultimetly what he got. third player tried to convince my character now, but frontliner kinda jumped in and also declared that he was absolutely fine with my decision, after all, he did not really want to be treated by my character.
now this was when the third characters player started to argue out of character, asking the dm to force me to patch him up, since my character is a dictor wich means he was under the hippocratic oath. this was true, but i argued that my character is an elitist asshole who got his pride hurt and he would be well able to break his hippocratic oath, especially considering he is not on duty as a doctor and in the middle of nowhere in a forest where he just witnessed demonic fishpeople try to murder him and the rest of the group. dm said i was right and that i was well in the realms of playing the character, and third player was pretty annoyed by this, especially since dm also ruled that due to his wounds not being treated properly he had to roll on a permanent injury he had to deal with from there on with that character.
well long story short is, the entire thing wasnt too bad, i am definetly the antagonist here, but it actually was only a horror story for the third player here, as he was not on board with the rp on the same lvl me, frontliner and the dm enjoyed it. we later talked about it, and frontliner mentioned how much he enjoyed the antagonizing banter wich i only could agree too, character dynamics like that can be really fun, but only if you can seperate the characters conflict from the players and your ooc interaction, wich we did. dm thought it was hillarious and she was impressed how we managed to keep playing the characters, and frontliner even mentioned that, halfway through he had a feeling it would end exactly like that, and he was 100% down to take the bullet and not get patched up due to the conflict between our character heating up.
im somewhat sorry for third player here, but i believe he should have out of character talked to us on the table to discuss what he felt was an issue, because he just felt we were stubborn assholes that just created tention in our friendgroup over a ttrpg, but that couldnt be further from the truth.
we never picked up the characters tho, after all the thing was planned as a oneshot and a test of the CoC systen, we enjoyed it, but the dm was overall pretty stressed with having to learn so many rules and she did not really feel like dming for a while after that, she was more interested in being a player, and overall our group had learned to love and hone our homebrew system wich is our most played system to this day.
i guess there are 2 things you can take from this story:

1. Its important to speak up when something on the table is bothering you, even when you play with close friends, they cannot be expected to read your mind and adjust based on that.
2. even character dynamics that in most cases are a recipe for disaster, in the hands of the right players and with the right people in the right cirkumstance it can be absolutely amazing and fun. be aware tho, that this is probably only possible if you either talk about these dynamics beforehand with the involved players to make sure everyone is on board, or you have to be really close friends with the other players to a degree that you know they are onboard. i guess the second one is a bit risky, but frontliner here got me and was totally on board.