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One of the challenging things about being a person with a mental illness who talks about psychiatry (and doesn’t hate it) is that all those people who do hate psychiatry perk up and get mad. These people often identify as “antipsychiatrists” and I’m not their biggest fan. While I consider it quite reasonable to question your doctor, psychiatrist, treatment, therapist and other treatment aspects, I consider going after an entire branch of medicine ridiculous. There is no “antioncology” faction in spite of the fact that a large percentage of people with cancer die (depending on the type, of course).
And this manifests in many of our lives. It’s not that antipsychiatrists just attack me; it’s that people of that mindset attack your average person who is just trying to deal with a mental illness. It’s the people who say, “mental illness doesn’t really exist” or “psychiatric medicine doesn’t work” or many other things that many of us hear online and in our real lives all the time.
So how do you talk to these people who have decided that your disease doesn’t exist and you shouldn’t be in treatment?
Last month I wrote a post about finding the right work to fit with ADHD symptoms. One reader, Jeff, wrote in to state that he found journalism to be a fantastic career for him because there is "lots of variety [and journalism] allows for spontaneous changes in direction throughout the day."
I like Jeff's thinking on this issue because as the DSM IV states, I "often [have] trouble keeping attention on tasks or play activities." So, like Jeff, I prefer a lot of variety in my day as well as some spontaneity.
Often, we tend to focus on the negative aspects of having an eating disorder or other mental illness.
It (almost) destroyed my career. My relationships. My marriage. My life.
All of this is true. I am still rebuilding the trust and intimacy of family relationships. My marriage is over; we will be filing for divorce soon.
And I almost died from anorexia.
However, I also have grown and become a better person because of my struggles with anorexia.
Earlier this week I wrote a piece about being scared of trying antidepressants and as one commenter pointed out, there are increased risks associated with treating a person with bipolar with antidepressants. In fact, some would say that treating a bipolar person with antidepressants can worsen the course of the illness (always contraindicated as monotherapy and possibly undesirable altogether). Now, when I wrote the article I was only thinking of unipolar depressives, but, as one commenter pointed out, being diagnosed, correctly, with bipolar disorder, in itself, can be a challenge.
And this is absolutely true. Studies have found that it takes 5-10 years (from the time of the first episode) for a person with bipolar disorder to get an accurate diagnosis. There are many reasons for this, predominantly that people don’t get help when they have their first episode, but a major contributing factor is also misdiagnosis. People with bipolar disorder are often diagnosed with depression or schizophrenia first and this can have devastating outcomes.
Articles about lying in abusive relationships usually talk about how the abuser lies. Not this one. I lied all the time during my abusive relationship. Mostly I lied to myself, but I lied to my abuser, too. The whole time I felt my lies were justified - I had to lie to protect my family, myself or him. Despite my lying in the abusive relationship, I feel I kept my integrity. Before you laugh me out of town, take a minute to see why lying in abusive relationships is almost the only way to get by.
I was sitting on my patio about an hour ago. I live across the road from an elementary school. Children were doing what they do best: Screaming and throwing things. Ruining my first coffee.
Though I have read little concerning the connection between mental illness and sleep, I have always believed there to be a strong connection between the two. This idea stems from the personal experiences I have had with my sleep disorder, and how it seems to effect my mood and thinking.
Mental illness is a vibrant, evolving discipline that is never the same two days in a row. The skilled professionals in our midst are continually wrestling disorders and syndromes to the ground, subduing them, and teaching the rest of us how to deny them a second chance.
But, to paraphrase Zig Zigler, “Every time a window slams shut on your fingers, a trap door to the basement opens.” In other words, mental illnesses are leaving us all the time, but new ones are always emerging to take their place. Indeed, without a steady stream of newly minted mental illnesses producing an endless succession of chat show guests, virtually all TV hosts would be unemployed.
While the traditional wellsprings of mental illness may still be relied upon, forward thinking psychiatrists, pharmaceutical companies, and tattoo parlors are looking to social networking – dubbed “social nutworking” by insiders – as the greatest growth area for psychological disorders in years to come.
Here are just two of the newly minted mental disorders resulting from our cultural obsession with water-skiing squirrels.
Adults live with anxiety and fear everyday. Maybe not fear of dying, but fears that weigh us down and cause us to be tired. I'm not the only one who notices how tired we are collectively. Yesterday in a therapy session an eleven year old girl asked me if I was tired. Things have been extra busy around my house, I have been up late and up early. I said, "Yes." She said that whenever she asked a grown up if they are tired, they always say yes. This made me pause. All grown ups are tired? I could relate, I have noticed that, too. What are we doing to ourselves? Why are we all so tired?
Have you ever had a day that just killed your self-confidence? No matter how hard you try, you can’t pull yourself out of the funk? And then, negative thinking takes over?
Let’s say you have a presentation at work that you are not ready for or you finally get the courage to call that romantic interest, alas no response. Both instances can feel like huge failures. Afterwards, you mind is filled with doubt; maybe you were nervous while giving the presentation and made a few blunders or the voicemail you left was filled with “ums” and awkward pauses. Then, your mind spins into a downward spiral; in pops another negative thought about yourself, and another, and before you know it negative thinking has brought your self-confidence to an all time low. So how do you bounce back?
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.