RealMental

My daughter is on a mild anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication. For about two years (slightly less, actually) she’s taken it and it has helped.  She still goes to talk therapy on a regular basis, she still gets worked up over things, but I had the impression that her “worked up” is no longer getting in the way of her getting through the day.  I was wrong.

Every month when we have her medication management appointment with the psychiatrist, the doctor asks if Princess ever has thoughts of hurting herself or other people.  She always says she does not.  She told us that last Thursday, so we refilled the Rx with the same medication at the same dosage, because I thought it was working.  I was wrong.

Today I got a call from the school counselor that Princess was saying that she sometimes thinks about hurting or even killing herself. That she’s been getting messages through her account on one of the online game sites (the independent one with the upper age limit of sixteen, not one of the ones she accesses through Disney or Nickelodeon) with foul language and threats that this person is going to find who she is and where she lives. That after being upset by this person’s messages one time a couple weeks ago, she saw a knife in the kitchen and just wondered what it would be like if she just picked it up and stabbed herself so it would all be over.

I thought I was doing the right things to monitor her online activity. She does not use the chat room on this particular site, and when she is looking for games to play, alone or with her little brothers, I urge her toward the the ones allied with the children’s channels or ones that I know have a fairly strict filtering mechanism for user messages. I thought I had developed an open line of communication with my children about what’s going on in their heads. I was wrong.

The school had a speaker last week to teach the middle school students about cyber safety and cyber bullying. She and I talked about the presentation, and all of the things online that are OK and not OK to say or do, the things that are OK and not OK for someone to do or say to us. I didn’t think we had a problem. I was wrong.

I’ve got a message into the psychiatrist who handles her meds and am trying to get an appointment this week with the LCSW she sees each month for her other counseling.  We are going to review her messages tonight (the ones she has not deleted) so we can report the user sending her the offending messages.  I am going to protect my daughter and she is going to be OK. 

I really hope I’m  not wrong.

The past few months have been difficult for me: Mike’s stroke, financial problems, DJ’s death, sickness (Hello SWINE FLU). My anxiety, always a problem, became crippling. I couldn’t face social situations. The smallest tasks became overwhelming and I withdrew from Mike and the kids. More than anything, I wanted to crawl into myself and hide. It was physical too. I started eating more and moving less. Always tired, my entire body ached. My arthritis was also hurting more and I finally broke down and went to the doctor at the beginning of November. While I was there, he suggested I change the meds I take for depression. For the past few years I’ve been doing fairly well taking Zoloft. I still struggle with my emotions from time to time, but it helps. He told me that Cymbalta would do the same thing but that it would also help with my pain and fatigue. I hate taking pills, so it sounded good. At the same time, he gave me two prescriptions for pain relievers/muscle relaxers.

Sure enough, after a week of Cymbalta I felt a lot better physically but mentally I was much worse. I wasn’t sad or even ‘depressed’. It is hard to explain, but something was very wrong. Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head? You try and try not to think about it but every time you turn around you’re humming the tune or singing the words. The next few weeks went something like that, but instead of songs I would think about hurting myself. They weren’t suicidal thoughts; I didn’t want to kill myself. Washing dishes, I would imagine breaking a glass and cutting myself. Every time I shut the van door I would have to force myself to move my hand out of the way so that I wouldn’t accidently smash it on purpose. If I walked under a tree I would think about a branch breaking and falling on me. It was terrifying. For the most part, I was able to ignore the urges, but not always. Once I was cutting my toenails and kept feeling compelled to take off more and more of the nail until I had torn my entire nail off. I was looking at my bloody toe and I knew that it should hurt but I didn’t feel anything but relief.

I should have asked for help, but I didn’t want to seem crazy. Normal people don’t do things like that. I did talk to a couple of people about the drug but they didn’t mention any side effects like I was experiencing so I thought that it must be in my head.

Last Friday, Mike and I got in a huge fight. We have our little disagreements, but we very rarely argue. Something inside of me broke and I started crying hysterically. I insisted that Mike leave the house because I couldn’t even look at him. I knew I was in trouble. My first reaction was to take one of the other pills the doctor had prescribed. I’d had trouble with it before because it put me to sleep right away. I figured that it would calm me down and I could take a nap before the kids came home. Mike was supposed to be back soon and he could take care of things until I was back to myself.

The bottle said to take one pill three times a day. My brain was running around in circles. I should just take three pills once, right? The worst that could happen was that I would sleep all day and wake up feeling groggy. I took three and waited and cried and waited and cried. Nothing happened. My brain was still racing. What if I took three more? I’d get sick probably, but at least I would go to sleep. I took three more and waited and cried and waited and cried. Nothing happened. I took a shower, with my clothes on, and fell asleep. The water in my face woke me up and I remember thinking that the water had washed away the medicine. I should take some more…

I don’t remember anything after that, but my sister said that the bottle was empty. I woke up in the ICU and stayed there for two days. After that I spent four days in a locked psych ward at the hospital. No tv. No radio. No clock. Just lots and lots of time. They changed my meds and listened to me cry. Then they listened to me cry some more. Then they listened to me talk. And then they let me go home. I feel a million times better now, but ???? Now I feel like I am officially branded: MENTALLY ILL. It seems worse somehow than just getting some meds from the family doctor. Now it’s Major Depression with a side of Invasive Thoughts.

By KristyK

I woke up one morning a few weeks ago, and felt pain on each of my fingers.  I realized that I’d managed to mutilate every fucking one of them the night before.

This is a consequence of emotional pain, I am not present despite the fact that I am physically there.  If you told me that someone else did it while I was sleeping I would be more inclined to believe that.

The trouble with self harm is that sometimes it’s over before you realize what you’ve done.  Looking down at my fingers, all fucking ten of them, I was ashamed of myself for letting it happen.  No reason to be alarmed, mine coping mechanism just happens to be visible.  Many are not.

I wondered how I could go out in public with band aids on all ten of my fingers.

Portions of the shame I feel stems from the fact that I know better.  And by knowing better, I should be able to DO better.  Right?

I know why I do it, I know that it doesn’t solve anything.  I know that I do it to escape feeling emotional pain.  It is a defense mechanism set in place by my brain when my emotions are overwhelmed.  Like a safety on a gun.

This situation I’ve been processing is like a hurricane; it brings things from other places in my psyche, all triggering my latent mental illness and wounds of yore.

There is no cure (that I am aware of) to rid myself of the feelings that I have to feel, and the time that has to pass.   I have hope that I’ll get there when I get there.

Meanwhile, try not to notice the band aids on my fingers because I’m trying hard to pretend they aren’t there too.

I used to long for a diagnosis.  Something snappy from the DSM-IV would have done nicely.  I wanted an impressive-sounding label to stick on the mess that bubbled constantly inside my head and my guts.  If I had an official Mental Disorder, it would mean that people would have to take me seriously.  Maybe it would mean that I could get some help.

Sometimes I felt that I wasn’t being taken seriously enough.  Other times I accepted what others said.  “She’s throwing a tantrum.  Just ignore her.”  “Oh, she’s crying again?  Never mind, she’ll be fine.”  It was easy for them to minimize what they saw, because they were too busy, or too self-absorbed, or too contemptuous to stop and evaluate how much I was actually suffering.

I started cutting myself.  No one noticed.  I went to my doctor to discuss my mental health.  He had misplaced his Suicide Risk Checklist.  He looked through his files for 2 minutes trying to find it, and then decided it would be good enough to ask me whatever questions he remembered.  He forgot to ask if I had looked into killing myself.  I had, in fact, visited a website that provided techniques for suicide.  But he never asked, and I wasn’t able to summon my voice to volunteer the information.

I did ask him to prescribe me an anti-depressant.  I needed something, anything, to get me through my days.  Every hour, sometimes every minute, was excruciating.

The doctor told me he thought it was “just psychological”.  He wanted to refer me to see a psychologist for counseling, who happened to be his sister.  He said it might be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because my difficult childhood.  Finally, with reservations, he did write me a prescription for Zoloft.

I took it straight to a bookstore, found a book on the medical effects that are possible when people come off anti-depressants, and became too scared to fill the prescription.  I went back to toughing it out on my own.  I’m aware that I’m lucky to have that choice.

In the end, I diagnosed myself.  Moderate Depression, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  And after years of dealing with my moods I’ve learned how to keep myself on an even keel, most of the time.  It means I live a life that is relatively very limited, but within those safe boundaries I have found a way to be me that works.

‘And i only wake to the leftovers my mind let my body keep…’

Originally uploaded by pixie_trash

Photo by Natasha Williams. See more at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixie_trash/

Sitting still and feeling my feelings has become almost impossible. I have the urge to run, run, run and do, do, do and it doesn’t really matter what or where as long as I’m not there or maybe not me. But, of course, I’ll be there, wherever I go and I will always be me, as fucked up as that can be.

I think about when I was diagnosed with Bi-polar and wonder if that is me or not. Some of the symptoms fit some of the time and there are many bizarre things I’ve done over the years that could be slotted into that diagnosis, but I don’t know. The meds made me a zombie and I cried a lot. I was once diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, and I have lots of things that could slot in there, as well. But because I’m DID, I could be all those things or none of those things. I think I’m tired of diagnoses and searching for answers and trying new medications and the whole basket of things that come with being mentally ill. The labeling – I’m tired of the labeling.

So, I try and sit here, and feel. I try to identify what I’m feeling and to what extent. And that means I have to label everything going on inside me. It’s hard and not fun. It’s not the same kind of introspective afternoon where you get to think about your future and all the possibilities that are out there. No, it’s more like cleaning out the junk drawer and finding dimes and push-pins and keys you have no idea what they go to. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I love cleaning and organizing. But this internal stuff is HARD and I have to do it so OFTEN. It’s the only way to short-circuit the harmful cycles that come with not paying attention. When I’m no longer making choices, and instead I wander and react purely on my environment.

If I don’t do the work? I end up 3 states away and wonder why I’m there. I forget I’m married to a wonderful man. I go out and buy $700 worth of stuff we don’t need. I drink too much. I don’t eat. I fantasize about self-harming and prepare to do it. I sleep for an entire week straight. I obsess on everything I’ve ever done, ever, that wasn’t ok. I plan and plan and plan for every disaster that could happen. Ever. Anywhere. I dissociate without meaning to and don’t pay attention when I’m ‘not out.’ That one in particular leads to paying the car payment twice in one month when we can’t afford it because of the really large sums of money we sent in the mail to the IRS. I keep a headache going for days and abuse my liver with high doses of acetaminophen for weeks on end. I compulsively begin to straighten everything into sections. I draw lines with my fingers all day, copying words people say or shapes I see or images I have stuck in my head from childhood. I can’t follow a conversation with someone I care about and hurt their feelings with what looks like disinterest. And I get depressed to a level where ways to kill myself pop into my head with no notice. Jumping and dancing around what I feel.

Sit, Leah. Sit.

"Because I’m depressed", originally uploaded by Learnsomethingnew.

I really wish I remembered his name…