Having some of that positive stuff directed at me ended up being really hard to handle, even as I was meeting people who I wanted to meet, to hug, to praise. I have no problem praising others. I want to, it feels important, it’s a part of what I’d like to see the world become– affirming, supportive, other-centered. But getting praise? Being the object of interest? That’s another story.

My adult-childness developed not in the scenario of overt abuse, neglect, etcetera– really, I know, it could have been so much worse. But even as the adult child of “merely” divorced parents who were preoccupied with their own (admittedly real) shit, the fact remains that I was forced to step forward to care for myself, to try to care for my brother. Whether or not I succeeded is beside the point– the fact is, I was made to try. I was never told, “this is something you shouldn’t have to take on.” Rather, it was a relief to them, that I was able to take care of myself.

Suffice it to say that having grown up not receiving praise for extraordinary efforts, having had success expected of me as a matter of course, and having no attention paid me should I fall short of whatever their mark happened to be, being on the receiving end of positive attention is . . . anxiety-inducing. It skews my perception of what’s ordinary, where the expectations lie. I keep thinking, “it’s not hard,” or “if they really knew,” or worse yet, “what’s the catch?” Except, of course, this is BlogHer. They do really know, it is hard sometimes, and there is no catch– these women bare their own wounds, and by their support and praise clean and bind those wounds I voluntarily bare for exploration. And yet, I still find it hard to believe– as much as I put my content out there for catharsis and on the off chance that it might be helpful to someone else, spare them the misery I’ve felt, I nonetheless doubt I have something important to say.

It got to the point where I had a little bit of a meltdown Saturday night, and had to get out, go have dinner with my husband while I didn’t really talk. (He’s very patient with my semi-catatonic states like that.) There was so much to take in, and overwhelming is still overwhelming, even if the stuff you’re being overwhelmed with is good. I missed most of the closing party because I just needed to be quiet and have no more input for a bit– which makes me sad, because there were lots of “old” and “new” friends I wanted to talk to. But I couldn’t do it, without a time out to put my game face on. I did get back in time to catch up with some of the folks I wanted to see– but now I’ve some regrets for others with whom I didn’t get to spend more time. Great– now I’ve got self-inflicted wounds, too.

In high school, I had a friend who was perpetually insecure, who was actually great, fabulous, wonderful. It came to be a joke between us when I would reassure her or praise her about something, that if she couldn’t believe herself, she should at least believe me, because as everyone knew, I was always right. The tag line was, “because I said so.” So that’s my resolution (among other things) coming out of BH: even as I am trying to put my “because I said so” out into the blogoverse, I am going to try to remember that my own stuff is interesting, “because they said so.” Thanks, they.

One of them asks aloud, “is this really happening”?

Another one answers, “no, it’s just another psychotic moment she’s having”.

I respond with, “I cannot be sure”.

The faces around me are familiar.

Their smiles are not.

Are those jagged teeth I see behind their veiled, semi-friendly smiles?

I begin to wonder how quickly my flesh will be ripped apart, once again and fed to the monsters.

“Not again”, one of the voices whispers.

“You may as well go ahead and prepare yourself, it’s really happening. Again.”

“Oh God, please not again”.

The walls slide up as if out of nowhere and enclose me. I hear them chanting as they dance around the outside of the wall.

“The time is now”, they chant over and over.

The time is now.

If only laughter really were the best medicine. For now, I’m sticking with my Celexa.

I’ve been told to “snap out of it”, to turn up some music and dance around my living room, and to quit taking things so seriously by people who couldn’t understand why I was debilitatingly depressed or anxious.

They meant well, but they had no idea what they were dealing with because they have never experienced it. Their advice only served to make me feel like more of a failure because I was unable to control something they thought was so easy to solve. It made the gulf between me and what was “normal” even wider.

What’s the worst, most ignorant, or most insulting advice you’ve ever gotten from someone in regards to your mental illness?

But those bads are balanced against, outweighed by the goods. I’d forgotten how good the sleep is. I’d forgotten the calmness, the lack of anxiety, the energy to push through and get things done, the mental clarity and ability to concentrate. I’d forgotten contentment, creativity, and spontaneous joking and laughter. And suddenly, I’m remembering as all these things come back. It’s more than la recherche du temps perdus– a remembrance of mental health past– but a recollection, a resumption, a re-tasting of my mental health madeleine, melting on my tongue, filling my senses, not evanescent, but ever-present.  At least until the next round of side effects.

Mr. C. says, Dissociative disorders often take a lengthy time to heal, making it difficult or impossible to get well on the eight outpatient visits that might be authorized on the average insurance plan.  The advantage to going inpatient is that you can often move more quickly through your healing.  Another advantage is that you don’t have to go home, be responsible, and function after intense therapy sessions.  If you are unable to function effectively in your daily activities (such as having a job, acting the part of parent or spouse, caring for personal hygiene, etc.) consider something more intensive than regular outpatient.  There are also levels of care that are in-between standard outpatient care and inpatient care, including intensive outpatient (usually treatment a few hours on most days) and day treatment (treatment all day and staying at night at a place of your choosing).  Of course, each of these comes with its own cost, which is a factor to consider also.  Inpatient is usually the most costly, as you might guess. 

Although I have worked in a state hospital where dissociative disorders were occasionally seen, I don’t have first hand knowledge of inpatient settings that actively focus on these disorders.  Even though I can’t recommend any particular program, here are a couple of websites that you might be interested in:

 http://bsd.clinicalsocialwork.com/treatmentcenters.html

http://www.networktherapy.com/directory/find_facility.asp

I recommend that you get as much information about a program as possible before signing on the dotted line.  Look at their webpages online, and contact someone as well via email or phone.  Tour the facility if possible.  Find out about their treatment philosophy and see if it sounds like something that would work for you.  Ask about their treatment team.  It would be important for them to have a psychiatrist on board.  Get information about their daily schedule–how much treatment does a person get in a day, and what kind of treatment is it?  Find out about cost and if they have scholarships or financial help (if you need it).   If you can find anyone that has been to the treatment center, ask them about their experience. 

I’m sorry for your suffering and hope that you will find the best treatment possible to relieve it.  Best wishes for good healing!

My therapist is very good at stopping me when I hit one of those points and encouraging me to feel and experience the moment. My preference is to just glide right by those icky bits.

I always wonder why I resist this, getting to the other side of the pool of tears? I still resist that process over and over when I know it is what helps get me safely to shore.

This particular trip, brought about by me beginning to cry about a memory. Then I told him there was a voice in my head screaming.

I told him, there is a voice telling me to shut up and quit being a baby.

He asked, “who’s voice is it”?

I said, “mine own” or, “maybe not mine, maybe hers”.

He said, “yes, I am guessing it is her voice you are hearing. Why shouldn’t you cry when you feel pain?”

Because it is a waste of time and nothing gets solved by crying.

While in the zone of regression, I cannot make eye contact with my therapist. If I do, I will lose sight of the process and the little one will go back into hiding.

I begin to sob, painful, deep sobs. I ask aloud, “why did you hate me so much, why do you hurt me?” I was just a little kid that had no idea what was going on or what I’d done to cause your rejection of me. She hurt me.

There are people that always ask why it is necessary to re-experience your history. This is the reason it is important, to release those trapped emotions that you were not allowed to experience at the time the damage was inflicted. My guess is that our brains go into defense mode in order to move past the experience not realizing that they get trapped in there.

My biggest reason for doing this kind of work is to set that pain free. I do not regress in ever session, I’m not sure I could handle it, the payoff is usually an insight that allows me to connect the dots.

It drains me emotionally for the rest of the day, I compare it to a car accident with internal bruises.

One of the hardest things for me to do is to say that I can’t. It goes against the very positive message that I’ve had engrained into me my whole life, that I can do anything. Saying otherwise feels like giving up, and I hate that.

The psychologist I was seeing last summer never suggested that I couldn’t do things. The issue at the time was the same as it always is, that I was going between unemployed and underemployed, and my parents weren’t pleased by it. My psychologist suggested that instead of letting my depression drag me down to the point where I was sleeping instead of working, I should see working as a step in treating my depression, and most of our sessions were spent discussing ways to become employed, her encouraging me to take on more work, even suggesting places for me to apply. When I did start working full-time, my 9-5 schedule kept me from staying in bed all day, and both my psychologist and my parents declared that it was therefore helping me to get better. I didn’t tell them that I was struggling to keep my eyes open at my desk, and spent every lunch hour napping, and that I was still miserable.

Then I went back to school, and was no longer working, and was struggling with my classes, and my parents were on my case to get a part-time job during the school year. After a few months of going lower and lower, I found myself trying to explain why I hadn’t gotten a job to my new psychologist at student counselling.

“So, you’re having trouble keeping up academically, and you’re sleeping through classes. And you’re exhausted all the time. And you were hit by a car, and you’re still recovering from that. Well, it sounds to me like you’re not in any position to be looking for employment on top of all that, not if you’re not going to be thrown out for not paying the rent any time soon.”

“But my parents-”

“Your parents are right, you’ll have to work at some point in the future. But maybe right now you can’t, and that’s okay.”

A few months later I was referred to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed me with ADHD. I tried to articulate to her how exactly I managed to lose things and forget things so much.

“It’s not as if I want to, it’s just that when I need to remember something, I don’t know how to make that information be in my head at that moment. I’m always thinking about something else, and I’m not even thinking that I should be trying to think of what I need to remember.”

“Of course. You don’t forget thing because you’re trying to. It’s not even because you’re overly indifferent. You would remember if you could, but you just can’t.”

Both times it made me feel a lot better to think that I couldn’t, because if something is truly beyond my limitations, then it means that it’s not really my fault. It’s difficult to explain it to a lot of people though. I have a lot of conversations, especially with my parents, along the lines of “what do you mean, you just can’t? Is there something physically stopping you? Have you been tied down or something?”

The idea still bothers me a lot. I hate to think that I have limitations, and I hate even more to admit it to others. And I never want to use my problems as an excuse for not trying hard enough. But a mental illness by definition means that sometimes I can’t. If it didn’t limit me, it wouldn’t be a mental illness, because there would be nothing wrong. So I’m trying to learn to acknowledge those limits, and work from there.

Originally published here.

Being an Art Star is about struggling to remember.
[Rev Jen]

Bipolar disorder gives me colors, hues that “normal” people can’t understand. My mania is the color behind your eyelids when you look at the sun with your eyes closed. It burns brightly and strongly, and it is hard [so hard] to turn away. You can’t move–it’s just there.

My depression is the black-blue in the center of bruises, the color that sits dully, the one that makes you cringe when you press it. It reminds you of pain. It is tender to the slightest touch.

The other day, I told my friend that I wanted to stop feeling the feelings, and most of that is true. But a small part of me, the smallest part per billionth aches for the feelings. It’s the part that relished their return, the part that wanted to get out of bed and drive around the city, the part that wanted to drape itself down a staircase and cry. It’s the part that feels most alive when it feels sick, the part that wants to smile at the cars that drive by. The part that wants to break itself into pieces, the part that wants to fuck and fight and talk shit and sleep and cut. It is self-destructive and can be [was once] all-consuming.

So we talk about why I want to take more medicine. Yesterday, I had some depressed moments. I thought of driving to the lab, stealing one of the razor blades. The fantasies expanded, more than they ever have [I've never cut]. I thought of which one I would chose, the one least likely to have chemicals on it. I would boil a pot of water and drop the razor in. I would wait, slowly, patiently. When it was done, I would lift it up. When it cooled down, enough to use but still warm with the memory of water, I would press it in. Where? Somewhere less noticeable. Not the flashy, needy, begging wrists, no matter how much that vein shines and pulsates out. No. The ankle, perhaps. The upper shoulder.

The upper shoulder–when I first started treatment, I would write on my left shoulder in brown thin line Sharpie. I would remind myself that there were four things that were important, that I wanted, that I needed: prayer, honesty, fidelity, love. The things you turn to when razors cut across your mind, the
things you turn to when you are stuck.

So I remember that the only thing that can fight a broken mind is that same mind, wanting to be fixed. That same mind, that same ache for things to be ok. It’s the aching yearning mind that reaches out for help. That mind compels you to talk when you don’t want to. That mind helps you remember that the palette you have in your mind is beautiful but poisonous. Bright things usually are.

So, with one part relishing the darkness, wanting desperately to succumb to the heaviness of depressed eyelids, the other parts push back, open the mouth, and say–to whoever is listening, but mostly to that one rogue part–”I want to stop feeling that being human is an irrevocable injustice.”

This is why you keep living. This is why you keep shaking the pills into your hand. This is why you torture yourself with therapy, why you eventually give up all of the bad thoughts you’ve been hoarding. For true happiness and true sadness, for human emotion that your human peers can relate to and comfort. For this, you give up being a superhuman. For this, you finally become what you’re meant to be. Yourself.

Originally posted here.

It was my eighteenth birthday, and I was working my full time job as a sales floor clerk at a pet shop. I was working two full time jobs at this time, the other job was as a waitress.

Due to it being a special day, my birthday I was on the hunt for a person to procure some alcohol for me. Typically, I had an older sibling that was more than happy to help me out. She and I however, were feuding and had not spoken in a month.

We had been roommates until a huge physical fight erupted and I ended up with a black eye. I moved out, living in my car and friends’ couches for about a week while waiting for an apartment I’d rented to open up.

The addiction hunger won out, and despite our feud, I headed to her house knowing that my chances of getting ripped without her, were slim at this point. In hindsight, I realized I should have planned it better.

I arrived and there were a few people there with plenty of mind altering drugs and lots of alcohol. I started out with some other person’s prescribed medication and beer. Later, I moved on to more beer, pot, and Xanax. I was determined to get as blown away as humanly possible. Looking back on that time in my life, makes me sad. I had a secret death wish, and I was in a hurry.

Later in that evening a woman I’d never met showed up with nose candy and we all sat around snorting cocaine. Several others bypassed the snorting for injecting it into their veins as I looked on. It was a weird thing to often find myself in a room of people that were shooting dope into their arms. I’d always been afraid of needles and watching was as close as I could get to participating.

Until that evening of my eighteenth birthday.

I was completely blotto and began to wonder if I should just give that needle thing a go. Of course everyone was on board with my interest, dope fiends don’t start out wanting to party like that alone.

A trusted source did the deed and I immediately ran to the bathroom and threw up. This is a very common reaction to shooting dope for the first time. I never went back for seconds on that needle thing and I’m very grateful.

As an addict, it could be fatal for me to forget what it used to be like. I put myself into some very dangerous areas during my active addiction, areas that people die from every day. It never occurred to me at that time, the reality of what I was actually doing.

I can honestly tell you that I do not have many regrets about the things I did in active addiction due to it all being a part of who I am today.

This story, happens to be my biggest (if only) regret from my past. Do not mistake my use of regret for not being ashamed of my life then, and ashamed of things that I did. I have plenty of that. The reason it is my biggest regret is in part due to the permanency of it. Luckily it isn’t AIDS, or a liver disease, and for that I am grateful. It is that I cannot donate blood.

I know that isn’t as serious as those that have killed others in drunk driving accidents, or did wind up with a life threatening illness. I’m not sure I could have ever gotten sober if that had been a part of my story.

]]> http://realmental.org/blog/archives/264/feed http://realmental.org/blog/archives/263 http://realmental.org/blog/archives/263#comments Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:15:00 +0000 bipolarlawyer http://realmental.org/blog/?p=263 I go through phases.  Distractions.  Obsessions.  It occurs when I am depressed, and don’t want to face work, bills, life.  Sometimes it’s my same favorite books, reread over and over, every night, sometimes for months.  For a while, it was crossword puzzles.  Right now, it’s a few different TV series online, which is crazy, since normally I don’t even watch TV.  While these obsessions are ascendant, while my depression drives me to distract myself, everything else takes a back seat.  I can’t concentrate on work, which is bad.  I don’t pay bills, even worse.  I hardly talk to my friends, or my husband.  Instead, it’s the addictive call of whatever helps me block my biochemistry’s hold on me, if only for a few hours.  But like all addictions, it’s dangerous.  And the time’s come for cold turkey, though I hardly know (as I always do, which should give me strength) that I can do it.  It’s not alcohol, drugs, or gambling, but the inattention to what’s really important is still there.  That’s the scary part– that the distractions become all there is, because I’ve blown everything else.  Wish me luck.