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Psychologist Helen Block Lewis said, "Guilt is about doing. Shame is about being." In fact, shame in PTSD recovery and otherwise is an emotion that is tied not to a specific behavior but instead to whom you feel you are deep inside. Most often it comes from an imagined defect in who you are. That's right, imagined. Trauma creates so many lies, myths and distortions it's easy to lose sight of fact and reality. That's when shame can really sink its teeth and start shaking you around.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty . . . whoa, did you see that squirrel run across that wall, well, I guess it’s a fence, chasing . . . eggs . . . I need to go to the grocery store because we have no food because I keep forgetting to go and I’m tired of fast food . . . that squirrel was fast and he’s gone . . . I love fall . . . I keep forgetting to schedule my daughter’s senior pictures.
Wait. What was I doing? Oh yeah, reading this nursery rhyme.
Ugh! How am I going to be able to hold down a job if I can’t even read a stupid nursery rhyme? I guess I wouldn't have to remember going to the store then because I wouldn’t have any money. I’m so useless. How am I supposed to concentrate when there’s so much pressure in my head? Make it stop! What is wrong with me?
On World Suicide Prevention Day, let me start with the good news: suicide is preventable.
That exact thought, however, haunts a family that has lost a loved one to suicide. The regrets are undeniable. There is a plethora of what-ifs and should-haves that nag at you from within; the guilt is unbearable. Looking back, we see so much that could’ve been done. In hindsight, you might even be able to pick the exact day, the exact hour, the minute, the second, where if you had looked a little harder, spoken a different word, been a different person, well, you just might have changed it all. Looking back, the signs are so obvious, but in reality, the answers are never that clear. Families, living their ordinary lives, doing their ordinary things are not at all equipped to deal with the extraordinary task of saving a loved one from suicide. Most of the times, they aren’t even aware.
I wasn’t aware.
When struggling with a mental health or substance abuse disorder, there are a variety of treatment methods available. One of the most commonly known methods that is used at many different locations and in all levels of treatment is group therapy. Group therapy is a form of psychosocial treatment in which a small group of patients meet regularly with a therapist to talk, interact, and discuss current problems with one another.
Yesterday I talked about how to predict who is at risk for a suicide/suicide attempt. Today I want to talk about how to use that information to prevent suicide and what to do if you see the signs of someone experiencing suicidal thoughts.
We can quote textbooks and specialists all day long, but in the end, it is how we perceive ourselves and our individual conditions that really count. In that respect, is attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) truly a disorder? I don’t like terms like illness, disease, or disorder because they all imply there’s something wrong, and I don’t entirely feel that’s the case.
Like many people, I have been diagnosed with more than just anxiety. While it is possible to be diagnosed with just an anxiety disorder, I was not fortunate enough to be one of those people. As I have discussed before in this blog, I have co-occurring bipolar and anxiety disorders.
As readers of my blog will know, each of these disorders is awful in its own way. Occasionally, I’m asked which one I hate more. Sometimes, I wonder this, myself.
In the United States, one person every 13.3 minutes dies of suicide. Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among young people (15-24). More people are killed by suicide than by homicide and yet it’s never suicide that people fear.
Some people say that no matter what we do, there will always be suicide so efforts to stem the tide of deaths are pretty much useless.
I say that’s poppycock.
I say we should aim for zero suicides. I believe that not one more life should be lost.
And suicidologists (yes, that’s a thing) would agree with me. September 10th is International World Suicide Prevention Day. Here’s what you need to know about predicting and preventing suicides.
I am an avid video game player. Recently I discovered Half the Sky Movement: The Game. Based on the book, it educates the player about poverty issues around the world. It's not all sweetness and light--one character is sold into prostitution at age 11, another character has an abusive husband--but it educates the player and offers solutions in the form of charitable gifts. It made me think about offbeat ways people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) can educate others about the disease.
Roughly 10 years ago this week, I was moving out on my own and attending graduate school. Many other big changes were happening at the same time in my life, but looking back, I can honestly say that those two had the biggest impact on my eating disorder spinning out of control around that time. It is no surprise that major life changes or transitions can, unfortunately, be triggers for a number of events or conditions in one's life, including eating disorders.
Here's a bit about my experience on this and how it related to my mental illness.
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.