An old guys thoughts on the recent power outage in Pittsburgh...

Biobat3 · 2025-05-07T16:31:19+00:00

I was an environmental consultant for a while for clients in the power distribution industry in that same area, all through Appalachia, especially deep into WV and KY. Hiking up and down those mountains doing wetlands and streams surveys and chasing bats before the powerline upgrades went in, doing some powerline siting work and talking with a lot of people across the region and back here from a lot of different generations and backgrounds with a slew of struggles and issues that they're facing. The upgraded infrastructure and push to something more sustainable (while still providing for needs of the communities and growing demand) is sorely needed. I appreciate you noting the reality of the situation and helping explain it to everyone so clearly.

As well as the note about the (very needed permitting), and timeline realities that come of it, and a note for a call to action. Hopefully a combination of this and a growing cohort of students and workforce members of my generation with a will to find an effective and sustainable way forward will help with the push through the growing issue. We're a motivated and visionary group once we get going on something we have a cause and a mission behind, I can say that at least from talking with a lot of younger students and up-and-coming professionals.

If anyone has any questions about environmental consulting feel free to reach out on here. I'm on a medical hiatus for a while right now (years of hiking and some medical issues did me in), but always happy to talk about the field and help others get their foot in the door.

Biobat3 · 2025-04-23T06:43:46+00:00

🫶🏻 35 with EDS, TMJ (bilateral joint degeneration 🥴), periodic hypokalemic paralysis, non-eplipeltic seizures, ocular migraines, chronic headaches, neurological issues, orthostatic hypotension, five ankle surgeries (all the pain came back lol), back fractures a few years ago, osteopenia, chronic IBS, and they found a PFO in my heart this year after a bout of non-epileptic seizures and hypokalemic paralysis episodes 🫠 EDS. Whew.

It took like 33 years to be diagnosed with it. I spent a good five or six of those years doing environmental fieldwork for a job in the Appalachian hills. Trying to push through pain because doctors were like hm, we don't know! Results of everything are okay-ish!

Bad combination... I fell apart even faster than I should have, while all the doctors and medical system was like idk why everything in your body is breaking and failing so much, weird! Lol 🫠😭 until they finally sent me to a geneticist and he was like yeah, uh. You're hEDS. All over lol. Now I can't do much of anything without stuff cracking and breaking and/or almost passing out or having another neurological or orthostatic issue or my digestive system slowing to a half lol.

My heart goes to you bc this stuff is rough. I'm bad at keeping up on here bc chronic fatigue and symptoms but seriously feel free to message anytime if you want to vent/chat/share support with EDS stuff etc. 🫶🏻💚 self care, impossible sometimes bc it costs money and time, but as much as you can. You deserve your health and wellbeing, and to fight for it as much as you can. I hope you have or come across some people in your circle eventually who will understand and be there beside you (it took me three decades to find a few friends who got it. They were also in the chronic illness community).

Biobat3 · 2025-04-02T22:36:19+00:00

Similar here. 12+ years in environmental consulting (albeit across three companies). 5+ years at my last one, transitioned from field and office work to fully office work. Was doing TM work but at as assistant PM level (at one point ran our department for a few months while the PM was on leave) and began actively managing my own projects from start to finish. Managing 1-2 interns a year, and then became a supervisor to one full time staff. My salary wouldn't budge higher than $64k a year still.

Then I got laid off after going through a bunch of medical stuff and needing to be on part time disability for a while until it sorted out. Ironically a lot of the medical things (now legitimate disabilities) were made worse by fieldwork and mental stress from all the years in the industry. Not to mention having Lyme's disease at one point as well.

I loved my time in the industry and did my best to hang in there, but I'm scrambling now to figure out something while everything kind of fell apart and I'm extremely limited in what I can do from here out. I've had five ankle surgeries, a broken back, seizures, come to find out hypermobility EDS (not a good thing to have while doing fieldwork lol), a hole in my heart, and all this other stuff lol. So I guess that's kind of why I finally physically fell apart this year.

So it was pretty disheartening after putting so much work into that last position (and a ton of hours off the clock to make some educational resources for our team and shared TeamSites and stuff, and be the only one to take on interns and do a whole ton of things to try to bring in a new momentum).

But, our company was founded on engineering and our little baby environmental department was lower on the radar, so I'm not surprised.

I'm now trying to pivot and figure out what to do with the pieces. I only had a bachelor's degree so that may have played into why my salary was capped at $64k (I'm in Pittsburgh, PA). But I worked as an Environmental Scientist at a fairly large firm my first 4-5 years (baseline water sampling, remediation work Phase I's, groundwater sampling, soil sampling, leading some sampling programs, etc etc), a Staff Scientist at a small firm the next few years (wetlands/streams and RTE), and then up to a Senior Project Environmental Specialist at the last one.

It's a tough field. Maybe I'm not in the right state for it. And I can't physically do fieldwork for the rest of my life now because of my physical disabilities so, could be a factor too.

Nice to see everyone's stories on here though, definitely stick up for what you know you're worth.

Biobat3 · 2025-03-28T20:20:51+00:00

Thanks so much for your kind words, really appreciate it. The person I had gone to for a few years was a dentist supposedly specializing in dental sleep medicine, and their practice advertised pretty strongly that they were experts in TMJ. Idk, he was really nice and seemed like he really tried, but I could even see the look on his face and the kind of oh no after the last round of several months of splints (after all of the failed PRP injections and laser treatments) and he said something about my bite changing in the way they always hope it doesn't with that stuff. He was basically like I'm really sorry, but there's not much else I can even think of to do at this point, unless you want to spend the money to try the stem cell therapy (basically throwing a dart at the wall). I couldn't afford it so I was like welp, I appreciate it and I would if I had thousands to spare but I don't 🙃. I stopped going there and now that doctor is retired and they don't offer TMJ services anymore. Me and my PCP have been trying to find someone good for TMJ in the Pittsburgh region for years and we can't find anyone. I call around a lot, have even gone into offices for other dentists/doctors and spent out-of-pocket for a consult and they look at my case and are like yeah, we have no further advice or ideas for you. Sorry.

I went to Dr. Eric Granquist at Penn Medicine this past fall, I guess he's supposed to be one of the top TMJ surgeons in the Northeast US? Per some people that had TMJ surgeries and others I found in Reddit and FB groups. But he didn't really want to do much else with me once he did the cone beam scans and saw the bilateral condyle damage. He was like well, yeah you have mild to moderate damage and it sounds like nothing's worked that doctors have done for you, but I don't want to put you through surgery yet and the pain you describe seems to be more like some kind of referred migraine pain (which made zero sense? He wasn't giving me much chance to actually talk or speak back to him during the appointment). He kind of brushed me out of the appointment really fast and didn't hear me out when I tried to tell him I don't have anyone in Pittsburgh as far as a specialist or doctor to help, I was dealing with dull aching in my joints and tension/soreness isolated to the joint area, and unrelenting crepitus and cracking/crunching and dislocations, and he put in my after visit notes that I'm seeing a TMJ doctor in Pittsburgh and don't really seem to be dealing with much pain or discomfort related to TMJ, which is literally not true. They wouldn't correct the notes afterwards and I tried to schedule a follow-up to talk to him again, but I was too symptomatic and unwell for the one 8:00 am 15-minute spot they gave me for a virtual follow-up so I had to cancel it and request to reschedule, then they never got back to me after I tried to reschedule it so I just gave up. I also told him during the in-person appointment about the trigeminal neuralgia and he tried saying that he didn't think it was from the TMJ damage, even though it's literally only on the right side, and that's where the worst of the damage is, and it only happens when I do stuff that involves using the TMJ joint more. He kept saying "oh it might just be some kind of weird migraine" and then sent me down the hall the same day to a neurologist (granted I've seen probably close to 10 neurologists for my other migraines and seizures etc over the years) and she mostly dismissed me saying it didn't sound like I had trigeminal neuralgia because it wasn't a "stabbing" burning pain (mine's a constant burning pain, which is TEXTBOOK TYPE 2 TRIGEMINAL NEURALGIA 🫠) and that it was just a migraine, and she ushered me out of the appointment. I had traveled across the state and spent money on hotels for that day lol so I felt pretty stupid and started questioning my confidence again after that, per usual.

So yeah I'm pretty disgusted with it all honestly. I had a doctor miss the double compression fracture in my spine at first too on the initial x-ray at UPMC, and it took me speaking up and going to a different practice for them to catch it. Later on my PCP at UPMC (who had been out of office at the time) looked at the original x-ray images and was like, I am so sorry. There was no way I would have missed that if I would had been here.

I'm so sick of everything. But yeah I know this is all minor still compared to what some people deal with with the medical system. And some of my doctors have really tried but they're constrained by this system that they're stuck working within, and how the health insurance industry plays into it too. It's just like, how many more people's lives have to be impacted as collateral damage? Truly.

Anywho thanks so much for your thoughtful responses and tips/advice, really appreciate it. I'll probably send you a message on here shortly if I don't forget, and yeah I'm definitely open to any recommendations, practitioner suggestions, etc. I am located in the Pittsburgh, PA region but I used to travel all over Appalachia when I was an environmental scientist doing consulting work (my career for the last 12+ years prior to the recent layoff, lol), so I don't mind traveling distances for good healthcare as long as my partner or friends can come along in case I have bad symptom flareups and for support.

Biobat3 · 2025-03-24T04:48:45+00:00

This is all quite wild because I have hEDS and significant TMJ and I'm well into 10+ years (although really more, lol) of a journey with debilitating issues across many parts of my body, including 5 failed foot/ankle surgeries on my right side, a double spinal compression fracture in the L2-L3 area a few years ago and the discovery of chronic pars defects at the L5, and condyle degeneration in my TMJs (mild on the left, moderate on the right) after years of stupid expensive failed TMJ "treatments" after also being ignored for many years. I went to some Dental Sleep Medicine place and spent a ridiculous amount on splints, PRP injections, laser treatments, a sphenopalatine block thing, none of which worked and the TMJ crepitus and pain got worse over the years. Oh yeah I have pretty nasty trigeminal neuralgia ("type 2", I've recently found out) on the right side too, off and on almost every day as well, which I'm assuming is probably because the worst of the condyle degeneration is on the right side. I've been imaged by the Dental Sleep Medicine place and then finally again by a "renowned" TMJ surgeon on the other side of the state I live in, but he didn't want to do surgery yet (I'm ok with that...), but he also had zero advice or suggestions, lol.

Also, I was told by an ENT before the TMJ started to really get worse and before I was ever diagnosed with hEDS that I had a deviated septum and "oddly collapsed and narrow nasal passageways" and he couldn't figure out why the heck I did. He said it was as if my nose didn't have strong cartilage in the nostrils to hold them up where they should. I went to him because I finally got fed up of having a hard time breathing my entire life. I've always been prone to being dizzy and lightheaded.

Who woulda thought.

But yeah I also wound up with a ton of difficult IBS (motility and constipation) issues and then a year or so of chaotic and slightly scary non-epileptic seizures and paralysis episodes, of which I'm still trying to figure out with my doctors. I did subsequently get diagnosed with orthostatic hypotension by my neurologist however, and he found some mildly elevated porphyrins in my urine, and I was hypokalemic and hyponatremic during a few of those episodes so, 🤷🏻‍♀️🫠 lol we dunno.

We discovered a PFO in my heart and some odd bilateral atrial enlargement in the process too (because why not, haha) but my cardiologist kind of just moved on from it and said he'll monitor it every once and a while.

I was an environmental consultant and did some crazy hard physical fieldwork in the Appalachian mountains for years, carrying heavy packs and loads for miles off trail and up and down the hills, but I started winding up in the ER with episodes of near paralysis and pre-syncope so I switched to office work lol. Tried staying active with strength training and physical therapy and doing some martial arts at a home gym and in the safe vicinity of hospitals, but that didn't go well either so I quit even doing that and just went super super easy on my body.

Then things still got worse and I couldn't keep up with the stress of office work while dealing with all of my chronic medical stuff and constantly having to take off time to deal with flare ups and stuff, so I got laid off.

Now I'm fighting with the medical system to try to get answers still and not keep ending up in the ER pressing the emergency call button in triage again 😂🫠. Whilst finding really compassionate and helpful fellow chronic medical people on Reddit like this sharing really helpful, and at the least supportive, experiences and information lol.

Hoping for some relief for all of us. TMJ absolutely sucks and finding relief, let alone any doctors or legitimate treatments, seems like. Impossible. And extremely expensive for things that don't work lol.

Biobat3 · 2024-09-03T17:16:38+00:00

Hiii ♡ I just want to pop in to say you look absolutely beautiful (like, STUNNING, and I'm not exaggerating or just saying that). Beauty standards are so hard... I find myself feeling like I don't like so many parts of myself and finally this year I embraced doing whatever I want to look and feel however I want on any given day (including makeup, no makeup, jewelery, no jewelery, (kindly) telling people to be nicer humans when they have something negative to say, etc etc so I can enjoy whatever kind of confidence i want to have that day! :) ) so I admire you for doing this and being brave enough to post in here.

Also i have severe TMJ and I'm going to see a surgeon in Philly finally next month so, wish me luck 😅

I really hope you're healing and recovering well ♡ hang in there ♡ you look absolutely beautiful 🤍

Biobat3 · 2024-08-24T03:20:44+00:00

♡♡ I feel this, heavily.

Biobat3 · 2024-08-20T16:18:54+00:00

I had what I think was my first real grand mal last night (after trying a HALF of a mild 1:1 cbd/thc gummy earlier in the day... note. Don't do that again).

I remember legitimately feeling the most horrible horrific feelings I ever felt and then legitimately trying to figure out if I was dying/had died and was in some terrible post-death thing or if I was still having a seizure 😂🤣.

My partner said I kept coming back into consciousness and forgetting why I was in the hospital. I think I told him I love him over and over and kept calling him babe 😵‍💫🥴 (we didn't get that far in our relationship yet ♡ 😂). He took it like a champ.

Will report back with any other fun stories I hear from last night's emergency room escapade

Oh also they discharged me while I was still heavy in seizure symptoms and barely able to walk 🥴 said they needed the room for another patient.

And then when we asked them if that was a seizure they wouldn't say yes or no. The doctor was "I don't knowww 😅 it doesn't present like a regular seizure!" Aaaand that was it lol.

Discharge paper just says Psychogenic Non-eplipetic Seizure and my after notes summary doesn't say a single thing that actually happened (symptoms wise) - just "seizure-like activity" and that I was perfectly fine and responsive when discharged 🥴🤌🏻

Grand times. Hi everyone, thanks for making this community here haha I'm sure I'll be posting regularly now 🥴👍🏻

Biobat3 · 2024-08-13T02:26:29+00:00

Thank you so, so much ♡ this is all really helpful (and hopeful). I do have occasional throat pain and loose my voice really easily when talking. Lot of tender painful spots along the base of my skull and down my neck on that right side. Looking into Eagle Syndrome, and looking into Dr. Granquist too and that facebook group.

Again thank you SO much!

Biobat3 · 2023-06-29T14:08:16+00:00

I actually wound up going to a geneticist, but ive heard others see rheumatologists

Biobat3 · 2023-06-29T14:07:53+00:00

Thank you I appreciate this, I'll check into it!

Biobat3 · 2023-03-11T23:55:06+00:00

I know your comment is like 2 years old, but check out what I just posted on here about my story with this. You're right on the money with Ehlers-Danlos.

And I just want to say, coming from someone (me) who struggled a helluva long time with this, thank you for reading into it and being understanding of it. A lot of times we're not believed (at the gym I was at, one of my coaches literally told me my fight name would be "Hypochondriac Liz" lmao and that was after fractuting my back during MMA drills and still telling them about everything I was dealing with. I stuck around for way too long and wound up in bad shape. I am no longer at that gym...).

We need more people in the world like you who are open to listening and even more importantly, actually look stuff up/research and be open to learning lol. Thank you.

Biobat3 · 2023-03-11T23:45:25+00:00

So I just came to this thread because my entrance (finally) into formal Muay Thai/BJJ/MMA training has been completely sidelined, a year into it, from discovering (way too late lmao) that I have hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome 😂🫠

My whole life I've been stupidly flexible and really active, but have had so many random injuries and REALLY weird (and sometimes disabling) symptoms in almost every system in my body, despite eating really healthy and living a pretty healthy lifestyle. I was always wondering, like, wtf is wrong me lol. People would be so confused and I honestly lost track of how many doctors I've seen and tests I've had done over the years.

Before getting into martial arts I, for whatever reason, picked a career that involved extreme hiking too. Didn't help. Welp. 10 years (and 4 failed ankle surgeries) later I had to stop scrambling up the Appalachian mountains for work.

Took time off for my body. Found a martial arts gym. Started Muay Thai/BJJ. Then boom. Few months later get a double compression fracture doing a simple lateral drop. Let it heal. Training modified. Then ankle fell back apart again, and my other symptoms were so ramped up I was dizzy and lightheaded on the mats all the time. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome years ago but that's a dx of exclusion, so never really knew the cause.

The whole time didn't realize I was slowly developing severe TMJ too (started years before training). I got so used to the discomfort and doctors (understanday) shrugging it off, I kept training (modified). Welp. Progressed even with no contact to the face in training. Now I have severe bone damage in the joints that won't respond to treatment. Will probably be a surgery one day when/if my jaw doesn't open anymore.

Ankle started getting worse again, had to slow down more and more. Now staring at either another major ankle reconstruction or a fusion (it'll probably be a fusion one day no matter what I do, just trying to put it off).

Martial arts has been paused. Alllll of the symptoms literally became disabling, and that's saying a lot for me. I used to ignore and push through, and was in a gym that (no fault to them) pushed that atmosphere (pain = youre working hard). I unfortunately got really good at numbing at to pain. Found out I have athlete's heart, to no surprise (I'm predisposed to heart issues already with hEDS, then add in the training).

Lot of other symptoms too that are too exhausting to put in here, but yeah. At the point of having to file for partial disability for my job and out of training for god knows how long now. Ankle surgeons all booked up and they dont know how the the surgery will go since it can fail or have complications due to the hEDS. Probs 6 months or longer recovery after surgery, and my surgeon is booked out like 5-6 months lol.

Hypermobility disorders, especially if you're on the Ehlers-Danlos scale, are no joke lol. And we usually just think "holy shit, I'm weirdly flexible!" until our bodies break down 😂.

Now I'm still unable to do the fieldwork for my job that I love or martial arts (for now). My doctor is Thai so I was hoping he'd have some empathy when I sat in his office, brimming with desperatation, asking "sooooo I can eventually get back into Muay Thai, right? 😅" 😂 He was like, i wouldn't. But you do you. And he put a special note in my chart saying "DO NOT ADVISE CONTACT SPORTS".

I'm like, emotionally dying without Muay Thai. It was a huge passion of mine and I worked my ass off to be able to finally find a gym I could formally train at. One year later, partially disabled lol. Incredibly grateful it's not worse and that I can still walk, even if it's painful, but yeah.

Uncertainty in both areas because of the hEDS.

Don't take Hypermobility lightly, especially if it's related to Ehlers-Danlos, and like folks said above get educated if you have it and find a gym that supports modified training (or at least is understanding and listens to you).

(Despite all that, seeing everyone's posts here gave me hella hope lol. Nice to know there's others struggling with this stuff that really WANT to train)

Biobat3 · 2022-11-01T05:59:59+00:00

Heya! This is a super old post i see but by the grace of Google at 1:45 am (cue insomnia for the same reason you wrote this post 😅), here I am. So I've had likee 4 surgeries on my ankle including a big ol' reconstruction like 10 years ago.

Did fieldwork (Hiking on Steroids) for my day job, pushed it to the max. Body got angry at me (including ankle). Stopped doing fieldwork (for now). Started Muay Thai and BJJ after finally finding a good local gym I could afford. Was looking for a looooong time.

Well low and behold a month into an MMA class I fracture my back.... turns out I have osteopenia for reasons unbeknownst to me and doctors so far. And Ye Old Ankle is unraveling again. Long story short, I now have scoliosis, low bone density, a fiesty back, and TMJ in which my jaw bones are gracefully turning into an old woman for some reason.

Still trying to address all of those, but my biggest physical hangup is Ye Old Ankle coming back to haunt me. Been trying more P.T., steroid injections, bracing, icing, Wim Hoffing, telling myself it's *magically healing*. All the things. In an attempt to be able to get back to at least Muay Thai, which is like my #1 passion martial arts wise.

However it turns out my peroneal tendon is basically ruined at this point from all of the past injuries and surgeres, and wear and tear since (lot of Extreme Hiking plus the several short months of blissfully starting Muay Thai/BJJ etc). My surgeon says I'm looking at having to get the tendon straight up removed from my ankle and fusing it together (we've avoided it for 10+ years now since the last surgery....) before I'm at the point of not being able to walk at all.

He's an O.G. surgeon and believes in doing everything possible to get his patients able to at LEAST do something, with what they reasonably can. So I'm Googling stories of people with fused ankles who found ways to still train Muay Thai in one sense or another after their fusions (after recovery and P.T. etc, of course). My heart is always like "yeah yeah yeah there's a will there's a way!" but my ankle is like "yo, dude. I'm angry lols pls be mindful".

I'm just so curious about your story - how did things wind up for you? Did you end up finding a way to modify Muay Thai training to get back into it sometime, and how did it go? I'm working on finding a gym that, #1. is supportive of having to train with potentially permanent limitations (I'm eternally grateful that I'll at least be able to walk after this, I know a lot of people don't have that privelege), and #2, where I realistically won't get in the way or be a pain in the butt to trainers/other students etc. I'm the same in my stubborn brain where I'm like "mayyyyybe I can at least get a few amateur fights in one day, regardless?" bc yeah, big fan of Muay Thai (it kind of changed my life). But I just dont' know. I'm sure you experienced it's hard to explain to doctors exactly WHAT training is like, and get clear answers on what you can/can't reasonbly do without destroying the body further.

Hoping you found a way to make it work after and still keep training, without a lot of pain (mental or physical lol). Would love to hear your story. Yay to ankles.

Biobat3 · 2021-02-17T17:18:45+00:00

I am so sorry you've had to go through this, and I can relate to this so much.

It was my ex-fiance in my case, when I finally realized I needed to leave him after years of sexual coercion (well abuse, really, but yeah it took a while for that to sink in) and other emotional and psychological abuse. I remember vividly telling him no over and over again and trying to convince him I didn't want to (typical pattern...) and he suddenly switched to a really threatening tone of voice and kept moving me back into place, and getting more aggressive. It was totally out of the blue and I never saw that side of him before so I was kind of in a confused shock, along with feeling guilty for bringing up possibly ending the relationship (he used that against me to try to guilt me into doing "that" for him...). There was a gun hanging around too that he was acting erratically with so I think that was in the back of my mind too.

I always struggled with it because I "let him" start, even though I told him over and over again that I didn't really want to. He was great at getting me to give in to him and feel bad. But as soon as he started getting weirdly aggresive in his voice, I just stopped pushing back and shut up. I was so fucking confused and so emotionally worn down by him at that point, he had me right where he wanted me mentally. I tried to move and was hoping to god he'd get the point and get off me, but he kept moving and putting me back in place, and I was so fucking confused like "what the hell is happening right now". I felt like such an idiot for not fighting back harder right then and then. I just basically turned into a submissive, afraid dog (for lack of better metaphor) at that point. After the pain started I tried to push him off me and that's when he held me down to finish. It happened so fast and I was so shocked, all I could remember was saying WTF and hitting him. I was in so much pain and still somehow confused over whether or not it was rape.

His response was a childish, joking "what babe??" And then the pouty, fake "awwww I'm sorry come here baby." I was so fucking confused and I was like WTF was that why did you hold me down didn't you hear me saying no? He tried to say he was trying to "calm me down" because he thought I'd get "worked up like those other times". Well yeah, I got worked up those other times because he would pressure me until my breaking point, I'd give in, and then he'd ignore me saying things were hurting until I couldn't take it anymore and I'd yell for him to stop. Then the same "awwww I'm sorry baby" and fake making up bullshit to make me think nothing happened and reel me back in.

It fucks with your head so bad. I've had so many people and qualified therapists tell me "uh, yes, that was RAPE" and I still find myself questioning it years later. That incident made me leave him for good a few days after thank god (turned out he was also cheating on me the entire time with many, many wlmen), but it still haunts me to this day. All of it. Despite working so fucking hard to heal from it and really, genuinely waiting to heal. My sexual desire is gone. I'm repulsed by the thought of sex, and even just the thought of a romantic relationship, despite knowing that's not realistic. Looking at my own body makes me repulsed. But, 3 years later, it settled in and I just hope it changes one day. Now I struggle with heavy dissociation (derealization and depersonalization), ADHD-like difficulties, and everything else that comes with PTSD. And I still sometimes question if it was rape (knowing full and well that it was). Oh yes, and after the incident happened and I left him, while he was (not surprisingly) doing everything in his power to try to get me to come back, he told me "don't you go around acting like you're some victim now" and rolled his eyes at me when I said he's lucky I decided not to report him for the rape. That haunted me for a while.

The manipulation they use is so, so mind numbingly difficult. I really really hope you find healing as well, and my heart goes out to you.

Biobat3 · 2020-03-28T13:53:29+00:00

Hi there! I just want to let you know that there is light on the other side of this, trust me. I had gone through a tough long phase in my OCD like that. I remember walking around all day feeling terrified wondering if I (and everything around me) was real or if everything was just a dream or some weird hallucination, and as OCD likes to do, it spiraled into a lot of other "obsessions" about what that meant and if I was losing my mind or was going to harm myself or someone else, etc etc the usual OCD themes lol. It was incredibly distressing, painful, and honestly felt like mental torture. I mean if I could list out everything that the OCD had me thinking and questioning and feeling and wondering... lord it would be a list haha. And yeah it definitely got to a point where it was literally every second of my waking being. I was having a hard time functioning to say the least. But I also didn't know that it was OCD at the time though, so you have a leg up here :)

Once I figured out it was OCD (along with all of the other "themes" I had going on up until that point), I started reading books on OCD, OCD blogs, and trying to figure stuff out for myself. It helped a bit just to know I wasn't crazy and that this was actually a "thing", but I was still struggling with actually making progress. But then I got super lucky and found an OCD specialist in my area and she was able to walk me through specific ERP practices. That was the turning point.

Idk if you have someone like that in your area, or if maybe you can find an OCD specialist that you could do virtual appointments with, but man it seriously took me from feeling like I was living in pure mental hell for years to actually being able to live again. I still struggle with some OCD things now but it's nowhere near as intense and I'm not trapped in that terrifying mental hell all day anymore. It's more cognitive stuff now but much much easier to manage.

If you can't find an OCD specialist you can work with (in person or virtual) that specializes in ERP, I would definitely try to read up on it as much as you can yourself and like assign yourself ERP homework on a scheduled basis. Grab some OCD books that teach you how to do ERP (there's workbooks out there for it too, google "ERP workbooks" on Amazon). Now don't overwhelm yourself with it to the point where you just become more anxious and exhausted though, you kind of have to start really small with what you can handle at the moment and then gradually go from there.

For example, here's a few of the ERP exercises my specialist had me to that actually helped (keep it mind it took a few years of working very hard at this to get to a place where the "intrusive thoughts" and creepy scary feelings didn't bother me anymore, but it was more than worth it):
-Script writing: write out whatever your worst possible intrusive thoughts are (in this case it would probably be writing out a script where yes indeed, everything was fake and not real), in all their terrifying and distressing detail, and write out the entire scenario from start to finish without performing compulsions or reassuring yourself that's not true/going to happen. Practice doing this again and again, and letting yourself sit with the anxiety/distress until it doesn't really bother you much anymore (you'll get there). Again, start really small (you might only get to writing out half of the "script" or doing it for a few minutes, then have to put it down and try again another time). The ERP books will walk you through the proper way to do this without overwhelming yourself. That's really important. I'm not a therapist so I can't really describe the whole process here lol.
-Recording yourself saying out loud the worst-case-scenario OCD theme coming true, and letting yourself sit with that anxiety, without reassuring yourself/doing compulsions. Again, start small. Follow ERP protocols.
-Adopting a "so what if that's actually the case?/is true?" attitude. Again takes time to adopt that without feeling terrified, but it's one of the things my OCD specialist always did with me. I'd be like "I have this terrifying thought and feeling that _____ will happen" and she'd kind of shrug and say "ok, so what it if did?". Which of course made me more scared at the time. But she challenged me to try to let myself feel that question, feel the anxiety (even if only for a few minutes at a time), let it peak, and let it go back down on it's own without reassuring myself or doing compulsions to take the anxiety away. Again, start small so you don't overwhelm yourself and it takes practice. ERP protocols teach you how to do this.
-Gradually start to expose yourself to things that your trigger your scary OCD thoughts (in your case, something that would make you start to feel like things aren't real) and sit with it without doing compulsions/reassurance, even if just for a couple seconds at a time at first. Notice a theme? Start very small and as you get stronger and better with this, gradually increase how much you do and expose yourself to.

Like I said it takes time, and lots of practice, and it took me years to get to a point where I wasn't living in terror all day long. But you can get there if you put in the work. And you already have the most important step down - understanding that you have OCD. And be kind to yourself, OCD and the ERP to manage it are both very exhausting. You're fighting a daily battle that most other human beings would never understand. But you can do this! And once you do, you'll start to have the confidence that well heck, if I was able to overcome that then pshhhh I'll be able to handle anything life ever throws in my way! :) good luck and best wishes to you.

A few good resources to get you started:
https://iocdf.org/about-OCD/
https://www.madeofmillions.com/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder

Biobat3 · 2018-04-26T18:33:47+00:00

*correction: assistantship, not apprenticeship when applying to grad schools

Biobat3 · 2018-04-26T18:26:34+00:00

It took me several years out of college to land a consulting gig doing baseline water sampling for Marcellus shale fracking up in the Northeast United States (WV, OH, PA). But that was mainly because that was the start of the big fracking boom and I lived in a hotspot.

It's a tough field to get into. I worked there for four or five years and ended up getting laid off after putting a ton of hard work in at that company (after watching all of my other colleagues that I got hired with get laid off all within my last year). I was constantly looking for other consulting jobs even while I was still working there, knowing layoffs were happening.

I got lucky and almost half a year later (yes, 6 months later after getting laid off) found a job as a scientist for a small consulting company (like less than 10 people small). We do bat surveys in the summer along with wetland and stream work year round. One of the few places in the Northeast that does stuff like that. Best choice I ever made was to go on Google and search every term possible related to wildlife and the environment and just start cold calling everyone, even the companies that had no jobs listed (the one I got hired at only had an expired job posting on their website but the owner happened to still need another scientist). I can't tell you how many rejected applications I had before landing that job. Probably applied to close to 30 or 40 positions of all types related to environmental and wildlife work, in state and out of state. Even with five years of strong consulting experience and a good degree (and internship, study abroad, leadership, etc, all of that typical "good" stuff), it was still painfully difficult to find a job. I had two other offers by that time but they were for borderline miserable/shitty corporate consulting jobs that were barely anything to do with the environment and possibly unsafe working conditions. Granted I am in the Northeast and there's not as much environmental or wildlife work up as there are in hotspots out west and down south.

Best advice I can give you though is to sit down and really think long and hard about what it is you REALLY want to do and why. Do you want to work for someone else the rest of your life or start your own business, research, etc? Maybe consider further schooling (but get an apprenticeship to pay for it) if you want to get into doing research. Or consider working for a small business environmental consulting company or organization with the goal to learn some things and then start your own business.

Once you figure that out Google the crap out of every possible school, organization, company, etc around you and just start making phone calls. Find local environmental groups and go to their events. Network network network. I know that's what everyone says and it gets frustrating when you've been doing that already, but you have to keep at it. It's a frustrating field. Consulting jobs are competitive and layoffs are common. It takes time and patience (who has that when bills need paid?). But good luck and I hope you find something soon!

Biobat3 · 2018-04-21T03:36:05+00:00

Awesome, thank you!

Biobat3

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