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When you are struggling with a mental health disorder or substance abuse problem deciding to seek inpatient treatment can be one of the best, but also scariest decisions of your life. This decision can be even more difficult if you have no idea what to expect when you arrive at a mental health or addiction treatment center.
Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.~Mary Balogh
Bliss Only Takes a Moment
Have you ever stopped to think what you can possibly accomplish in a split moment? Have you ever looked back at a moment and thought, “Geez I was feeling really happy in that moment”?
It only takes a moment to create a profound, persistent satisfaction and a sense of well-being. It only takes a moment to create a positive feeling of immense fulfillment and joy that springs from within and without. While it is not something you can just pick up at the local Walmart or order online, you can choose in a split moment to create bliss.
No matter how old you are you may be struck with some summertime sadness. Sadness can surge in the summer months and set your self-esteem into a tailspin. Whether you're a college student who's back home for the summer sitting in your childhood bedroom, or an adult longing for the days when they were able to spend summertime on vacation, let's face it: summer isn't as fun as it used to be.
All too often we’re told (or we tell ourselves) the wrong things in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)recovery. For example, a woman recently wrote to me:
How do you maintain acceptance of PTSD and its symptoms while pursuing healing?
My answer: You don’t have to.
And then a man I met at a survivor event last week asked me:
If you’re constantly pursuing healing aren't you in a different state of mind than acceptance?
My answer: Yes, and no. Both these questions depend on how you define “acceptance.”
We all have songs that bring us back to a certain moment in time. Sometimes it can be a song from your childhood that makes you feel a sense of innocence. It could be a song shared in a past relationship that brings forth some fond memories. Sometimes powerful lyrics can bring you back to a place of happiness, hardship or love.
However, songs have the ability to flick a switch in your brain and bring forward thoughts you want to push away. The problem is, sometimes music brings you to the point where you can’t make yourself to push stop. You may visualize a time when your arms were filled with fresh scars and those images could bring you to the brink of making those self-injury marks again.
I was on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR last week, discussing Congressman Murphy’s “Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act,” Bill HR 3717, along with Congressman Murphy and Dr. Fuller Torrey of the Treatment Advocacy Center. I was booked as the opponent of the bill, which isn’t quite accurate. There are many parts of the bill I think are valuable.
When I think about depression I think of crushing sadness. I think of heavy, devastating sadness that will not move or shift for anything. I think of a sadness that penetrates your bones and makes life feel like it’s not worth living. I definitely identify sadness with depression.
But is depression really just profound sadness?
We are stronger than anxiety. We are not anxiety's prisoners. It’s true. No matter what our anxiety is doing to us in the moment, and no matter how beaten down we feel, ultimately we have power over our anxiety. You are stronger than your anxiety
If you’re familiar with depression, you’re familiar with black and white thinking, or thinking in absolutes such as, “I can’t do anything right.” I find that even when I am not in a depressed state, noticing black or white thinking can be one of the first signs that my mood is starting to wobble. I’ve learned that with mood, I’d rather address a slightly low mood from the get-go than wait until I have to dig myself out of a deeper depression. And the key with addressing black and white thinking is to move from black and white to gray. Black and white is limited. Gray embraces the range of possibilities.
Last week brought me a lesson in the need to be prepared when mental health triggers come, as they inevitably do in our recovery. These triggers can be dangerous because they can instantly transport us to a place of emotional turmoil and intensify our symptoms. In order to manage our illness, we must be prepared at all times. We never know when we can be triggered and we need to take steps to ensure we and others around us are safe.
This past week, there was a national firestorm with the release of American POW Bowe Bergdahl from captivity in Afghanistan. I had not known the story prior to this, but when I heard the circumstances of his experience, I was triggered in a way that hasn’t happened in a long time.
I believe she will only be able to rid herself of her demons, and hopefully her BPD as well, when she's ready to confront the abuse of her father. If she can put the blame where it belongs, she may stop projecting that victim/perpetrator cycle on the present men in her life. These demons are a metaphor for the purgatory she has created for herself. That reality has consequences in the real world, but it need not be real in the tangible sense. Exorcising her demons will require the expenditure of real physical energy and probably the destruction of aspects of her personality. If this ever happens, and it's possible but not probable, then these demons will evaporate. They are only as real as one's personality is real. In short, reality is not the question, it's what you make of the things you feel to be real.