Going through deleting old photos to clear up space and came across some of my paintings in progress. I started painted Whitewater Roar in a small group art class. I chose what I wanted to paint, based on a photograph I had taken of the Huka Falls, New Zealand. A professional artist gave me some tips as I painted (other students worked on paintings of their choice), then I finished it at home.

My brain naturally goes off on lots of tangents. My psychologist said that creative brains do. It's also exaggerated by my diagnoses of bipolar disorder (type 1 which has full mania) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

'Loose associations' is an indicator that one is in a mood episode. It can become distressing in extreme levels, as my brain is linking loads of things from decades ago to recently, very fast. This is very taxing on the brain and can be anxiety-inducing if the links go back to trauma, overwhelming me with trauma triggers (all the links are actually potential triggers).

However, if this can be managed, the going off on tangents, going with how my brain naturally works, can be therapeutic. I can turn the triggers into part of my storytelling instead (I currently write about romantic and sexual relationships with bipolar and PTSD in storytelling form (memoir, novels).

I had my DNA analysed last year when AncestryDNA was running a discounted promotion. I chose them over other tests as they were more likely to give me a percentage New Zealand Maori, plus from both my parents and also my grandparents. More recent (hundreds of years) rather than ancient.

I was curious to compare with family narrative. Mum from Maori, Scottish, English, Irish descent. Dad from Dutch and German descent (and my Oma's family was believed to be from Prussia).

Plus I was sick of people with their identity politics saying 'but you're white'. I am 'brown' and I am New Zealand born with mixed ethnicity. How brown I appear depends on the lighting and whether I have been avoiding the sun. Plus compared to other skin tones. 

If I point out that I am part-Maori, I get told 'but you're white passing. You have white privilege' to try to dismiss me in debate. Maori typically have brown skin and my skin-tone is in the middle. I don't fit the 'black' vs 'white' identity politics.

I have been through a stressful process of being assessed for impairment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for the purposes of lump sum payment as compensation. For what is called sensitive claims (includes sexual abuse trauma etc) with ACC in New Zealand.

This can only be done after having therapy to treat the PTSD as much as possible. A lot of people pull out of the process. 

I spent most of my spare time today editing the captions for this video (after I finally figured out how to do it). I copied a transcript below. It shows that my communication has impairment. I was dissociating somewhat when recording the video, which affected my cognition, processing and verbal communication. It can be much worse.

​People have confused my disabilities with autism. Trolls on social media targeted me mainly because I accept my diagnoses from my clinicians (bipolar 1 disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder) and mild social anxiety disorder and no longer call myself autistic. I am mostly affected by PTSD in this particular video.

It takes me a long time to write and edit to try to be clear, so abusive trolls who accused me of being ableist were being ableist themselves.

Update: my psychologist said I was in a mixed episode in this video, with loose associations and difficulty with my cognition and speech (some slurring).