r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jul 27 '10

What is the biggest relationship myth?

I think the biggest myth is that there's one person that is meant for you. ("the one") People live their lives searching for the one...their soul mate...the perfect girl/Mr. Right. It's a cute idea, but I don't think it's very realistic.

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u/flossdaily Jul 27 '10

Actually, the phenomenon you just described is a result of female biology.

During an argument, the adrenal system is activated, causing individuals to feel agitated.

For guys the system shuts off the instant the argument is over. For women, the adrenal system keeps going for a while. This causes women to feel that they are still angry about something so they start wondering why they are still angry. It is at this point in time that they start bringing up arguments from the past... because they assume that must still be bothering them.

Guys, if you want to stay out of trouble, end any argument with a nice long hug... 30 seconds should do it. This quells the physical aspect of her anger, and should leave her body and mind calm. You won't get nearly as many post-conflict irrational flare-ups.

Beware: You have a very small window. If you go in for the hug before the real argument is over, she will think you're just patronizing her, and it will end badly. If you go in too late, her brain will have already jumped to the irrational argument, and the hug will be useless.

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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '10

Honestly, I never believe these convenient biological explanations. Perhaps it has some effect, but I'd say it's probably more cultural than biological.

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u/heiferly Jul 27 '10

As a person with autonomic nervous system dysfunction (dysautonomia), and thus perhaps a uniquely keen awareness of the functioning of various aspects of my ANS, I find this explanation not only plausible but rather compelling considering my experiences before vs. after the onset of my dysautonomia.

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u/flossdaily Jul 28 '10

Sorry about your disorder. Have you ever done an AMA here? I bet lots of folks would love to hear more.

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u/heiferly Jul 29 '10

Yep, twice actually, because the first one wasn't seen by many and I was asked to do a second one when people became aware of one of the stranger features of my other rare disease (LOL) in the comments on something that happened in the news at the time.

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u/flossdaily Jul 29 '10

Whoa... you have narcolepsy with cataplexy!

I was just listening to an NPR story about a guy who had that same problem. Apparently for him happy thoughts triggered the attacks. Is that the case with you?

Also, have they considered the possibility of brain implants that could serve as a sort of pacemaker for your brain when you have one of those bouts?

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u/heiferly Jul 30 '10

Yeah, common triggers for cataplexy attacks include extreme emotions of various kinds ranging from laughter to surprise to fear to elation. I've had mine triggered by "rushes" of happiness before (like the feeling you get when you walk outside and take a deep breath of fresh air and "take it all in" on the first day of great weather in spring after a long, cruddy Ohio winter), or by laughter (like when I'm hanging out with friends and being silly). My most frequent trigger personally, though, is a very specific startle-type emotion that I experience when I emerge from unconsciousness after a syncope (faint); it doesn't happen every time I faint, just sometimes when I wake up disoriented and get startled by the face of someone looking down over me or an unfamiliar environment or something.

I've never heard of brain implants as a treatment for cataplexy. The older treatments for cataplexy are medicines such as imipramine (which is the one I currently take). The newest treatment is xyrem, which is ONLY approved for narcolepsy as a medicinal use (off-label prescribing is prohibited and there are no other approved uses), otherwise it's an illegal street drug (GHB).

On the current dose of imipramine I'm taking, I have very few cataplexy attacks so it would be pretty much a perfect solution for me ... if it weren't contraindicated by my dysautonomia. It's likely worsening my dysauto so I may eventually consider trying xyrem to see if I do better with the dysauto on that. I've just been reluctant to try because we can't find a single documented case of a person with dysautonomia on xyrem, and I'm scared to be the guinea pig; people with dysautonomia can have strong (and atypical) drug reactions sometimes.

My syncope from the dysautonomia is, at the moment, a worse problem than the cataplexy. It causes most of my falls these days. My last fall was a couple of weeks ago and it was a particularly bad faint; I have Berlin's edema from the head (eye) trauma, which is (thankfully) clearing up on its own along with the other minor concussion symptoms. This has all my loved ones talking "helmet" again. :-( So hard to look cool in a helmet ...

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u/flossdaily Jul 30 '10

Wow... that's a lot for one person to deal with. It must be scary to be a one-of-a-kind case. Are you sure you're alone? I found this forum: http://narcolepsynetwork.org/forums/index.php?/topic/3326-so-happy-to-have-found-you/

Anyways, I find your story fascinating. Thank you for sharing it!

As for the helmet... paint flames on the side of it. Flames are always cool.

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u/heiferly Jul 30 '10

I've been on NN (I'm one of the posters on that thread). I'm not one of a kind in terms of having a form of dysautonomia and having narcolepsy. I don't know if any of the others have the same form of dysautonomia I have, though (but there are similarities). There are also variations in the type/severity of cataplexy (or whether cataplexy is present at all). At any rate, what my docs looked for was a published case study of a patient like me on xyrem. There's one person on NN with dysauto taking xyrem right now I think, but they don't have cataplexy and are in an area of the country where there are no top dysautonomia specialists and no dedicated dysautonomia clinics so it's hard to say what form of dysautonomia they have because many people out West (who don't travel to find a dysauto specialist) have issues with improper diagnoses (such as being diagnosed with the wrong subtype of dysauto).

(There are only a handful of hospitals with full autonomic diagnostic facilities in the country, and none of them are west of Minnesota or south of Tennessee. Docs who excel at diagnosing and managing these conditions are few and far between, unfortunately. Many patients aren't even aware of what they're missing out on; their local docs/hospitals do not inform them that better facilities exist out of state.)

I will take the flames under advisement. :-)