Mental Illness

DeepGreenEyes said:

This is a treatment I read about a few years ago, that some swear is effective; the empirical comparisons suggest it is comparable to other treatments. Still, worth investigating.

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My friend is a psychologist who used to employ this treatment when she had her own practice. She said, done correctly, it is astounding how well it works. Now, it doesn't always work and it doesn't work for everyone but that's true of about everything.

BiBunny said:

I have never made it a secret that in late 2010, I was diagnosed with Bipolar I. I was also diagnosed with social phobia in the past, but I've found that with the treatment for BP, the anxiety in social situations has become manageable.

In retrospect, my illness destroyed my life. I wasn't able to finish graduate school, couldn't get a "real" job, couldn't make new friends, alienated old ones, wrecked my credit, left my finances in shambles, hurt a lot of people, and lost the people I loved the most.

I'm on two medications now. They saved me. I feel certain that without them, I would be dead now.

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I'm so happy for you, BB. I see (read) such a huge difference in you these days. Life may not all be roses for you but there are clearly some daffodils and sunflowers in there.

I'm curious, if you don't mind, what was the catalyst? What made you finally seek treatment. (No need to get too specific if you don't want, just thought it might be useful for other folks who reading this).

I dislike the notion that the mentally ill are supposed to sequester themselves from society and not inflict themselves on everyone else. Crazy people deserve to try to be happy just as much as anyone else does. If you abandon someone in their time of need, you're the biggest sonofabitch that ever walked the face of the earth.

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I agree that the mentally ill deserve to be happy as much as anyone else. But sometimes you have to walk away from someone who's in the throes of mental illness...for your own sanity. Sometimes it's about your own survival, or the survival of your children. I don't think this makes a person the biggest sonofabitch to walk the earth, I think it makes them human. Circumstances vary, of course, but not everyone is capable of handling or coping with the more extreme forms of mental illness, particularly if the person who is ill won't seek treatment.

There is definitely no shame in seeking treatment. My mom knew that what I was going through was bigger than her and her daughter. She placed me in therapy more than once. Strange, dealing with simultaneous love and anger over the enitre situation. Thankfully, I was wise enough at that young age to realize that she was only trying to help me.

The real irony began when she asked if I had an interest in martial arts. She is not a fighter any shape or form, but ... by God her daughter was not going to suffer. She didn't understand me, but she recongnized early I needed a different sort of mental and physical discipline.

And she was right!

*group hug*

It's refreshing to see so many who would offer courage, heart and support.

Interesting thread...

desertslave said:

I was diagnosed (finally!) with ADD when I was in college. My first Dom was the one who figured it out and sent me to his little sister's doctor to confirm it. The fact that certain illicit substances didn't behave the same way on me as 'normal' people was a big red flag for him.

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That's what happened to me. I'd had the same doctor since I was a baby. While no psychiatrist, he was an internalist, which I feel is an important differentiation from general physician. Anyway. When I started college as a kid (the first time)...well, I just had a lot of issues. I finally went back to my doc, and he said he'd always thought I maybe might've had ADHD. He just didn't want to officially diagnose me with anything and stick me with that label for the rest of my life, especially since for the first 20 years I seemingly managed it well enough on my own. Which is appreciated, since mental illnesses of a variety of forms are just so damn negatively connotative. College was hard, though, and I couldn't manage it on my own anymore.

I think in terms of ADHD, it depends on what the predominant issue is. Hyperactivity, depression, impulsion, etc. Mine was impulsiveness, which I wont lie led to some early life mistakes involving kink. It was just really the combination of being an already impulsive hormonal teenager on top of ADHD and being away from home for the first time. Kink was just how it manifested, because it was a part of who I am.

As I got older I leveled out. Less hormones. Less hyperactiveness. Less impulse control problems. I was able to manage it on my own again, without a prescription, as I aged. But the kink still remains.

My two cents.

Keroin said:

I agree that the mentally ill deserve to be happy as much as anyone else. But sometimes you have to walk away from someone who's in the throes of mental illness...for your own sanity. Sometimes it's about your own survival, or the survival of your children. I don't think this makes a person the biggest sonofabitch to walk the earth, I think it makes them human. Circumstances vary, of course, but not everyone is capable of handling or coping with the more extreme forms of mental illness, particularly if the person who is ill won't seek treatment.

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There are simply some things you can't help and love someone out of no matter how hard you try. This was a very expensive lesson for me to learn. Thanks for saying this. It is so true.

Everybodyyyyy...stop being so niiiiiice. *Whines* You're embarrassing meeeeeeee.

Cattypuss said:

http://www.mind.org.uk/news/3908_unlucky_in_love_try_dating_with_a_mental_illness

I suffered with severe clinical (unipolar) depression for 30 years. Anyone worth having will want you with your mental illness. They don't have to LIKE the fact that you're mentally ill, but if they can't see that it's part of a whole person then they're seriously not worthy of your care.

It's like people who only see the wheelchair, not the very real and very complete human being sitting in it. Fuck 'em! (not literally )

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Yes, ma'am, the bolded part hit it right on the head!

catalina_francisco said:

As with many forms of mental illness, Bipolar is no picnic....I am glad you are feeling better now despite the problems you are still dealing with...hopefully all will continue to improve for you.

Catalina

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Thank you, Cat. I do still have a lot of stuff on my plate, but...it's gotten a lot better. Lonelier, but better.

Keroin said:

I'm so happy for you, BB. I see (read) such a huge difference in you these days. Life may not all be roses for you but there are clearly some daffodils and sunflowers in there.

I'm curious, if you don't mind, what was the catalyst? What made you finally seek treatment. (No need to get too specific if you don't want, just thought it might be useful for other folks who reading this).

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Thank you, Keroin. Daffodils, sunflowers, and tulips.

The biggest catalyst was that I got scared.

TL;DR ALERT!!!!!

I grew up in a family full of crazy people. (Just because I'm the only one in the family with a diagnosis doesn't mean I'm the only crazy one. I'm just the only one who had enough insight to get help.) For most of my life, I never really had a "normal" to compare myself against. I thought as long as I wasn't as nutty as anybody on my mother's side of the family, I was clearly ok. Hell, I figured that as long as I wasn't like them, then what I must be feeling must be normal, and everybody must feel this way.

Yeahhh...not so much. Just because you're not as crazy as the craziest person you know doesn't mean you're perfectly sane and balanced, LOL.

Tangent: By the way, did I mention that my undergrad degree was in psychology? Lack of insight for the win!

Anyway, when I crashed, I'd been running on a manic high that lasted for nearly three years. It wasn't a pleasant one, either. I don't remember a lot of details, and what I do remember I'm ashamed to admit, but...here goes.

In the fall, I've always gotten sort of depressed for as long as I remember. But in Fall 2010, I got depressed...while staying manic--which, psychiatrically speaking, is a "mixed state," but I prefer to call it "rabid Bunny being chased by the devil." Some days, I was wound so tight, I couldn't sleep. Other days, I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't work. (Nearly got fired from an awesome position, actually.) The only things I could feel were fear and rage. And, damn, I was good at both of them.

I was destructive (mostly of the self-destructive variety), irrationally angry, convinced the whole world was in on a plot to get me (what they were going to do with me when they "got" me, I have no idea). I couldn't sleep at night because I was afraid someone was going to break in my house and kill me the second I went to sleep. And when you're in that kinda shape, the lack of sleep is...less than good.

I felt like I was running from everything and everybody. Nothing was safe. The paranoia level was through the roof. I'm ashamed to tell you the fucking delusions I had and the things I did to combat them, so we'll gloss over that part, LOL.

And as if that weren't bad enough, the intrusive thoughts started. They weren't hallucinatory voices that I was hearing because they were clearly my own thoughts, but they weren't thoughts that I was consciously forming, if that makes any sense. Shit would run through my head, and I'd be like, "Where the fuck did that come from?"

They weren't so bad at first. It was a nuisance more than anything. But as the sleep deprivation got worse, the paranoia got worse, and so did those crazy thoughts. When the thoughts started being along the lines of "All you have to do is drive this truck as fast as it'll go, head-on into that patch of woods on the side of the road, and it'll all be over" and "You have a bottle of Ambien and a bottle of Jack Daniel's, so why run from this shit anymore?" and "There's a perfectly useful shotgun if you want to make it all stop," it scared me badly enough to do something. I didn't actually want to die, but I was afraid that I'd somehow talk myself into it without really realizing what I was doing.

TL;DR: I got sick of wrestling my own demons because it scared the shit out of me.

Keroin said:

I agree that the mentally ill deserve to be happy as much as anyone else. But sometimes you have to walk away from someone who's in the throes of mental illness...for your own sanity. Sometimes it's about your own survival, or the survival of your children. I don't think this makes a person the biggest sonofabitch to walk the earth, I think it makes them human. Circumstances vary, of course, but not everyone is capable of handling or coping with the more extreme forms of mental illness, particularly if the person who is ill won't seek treatment.

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I probably should've been more clear.

Bouncing off the walls, batshit crazy, and convinced that there's nothing wrong? Protect yourself if you must. A scared, suicidal person who's got nobody to reach out to but you asks you for help for the first time ever, and you bail? Please go directly to the ninth layer of Hell without passing Go or collecting $200.



God, I feel like such an exhibitionist right now. I promise, I will stop talking about myself now. I just hope that maybe, if there's somebody lurking and reading who has this kind of problem, they'll see that there's a way out.

Also, if anybody wants to PM me about shit they don't wanna talk about in the thread, my PM box is open. I don't tell secrets that aren't mine to tell.

FurryFury said:

Okay so does anyone know any treatments for PTSD that actually work? Because I think my girl needs that but she has been to many therapists and they haven't helped.

A couple of them have tried this thing with lights. My girl thinks that therapy is total B.S.

BiBunny, I agree that was very courageous of you to share with us. *hugs*

However as someone with a mother that is not only mentally ill but also toxic to herself and everyone else, I have to say that in order to save oneself, sometimes strong limits are needed. I wouldn't say I've abandoned her but she would. She also wants to control me and eat my soul but anyway . . .

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It sounds like the 'thing with lights' is EMDR and it is designed to help treat people with PTSD. Not everyone can work with it, but I can tell you from personal experience it can work. The light thing didn't work with me but there is a method using alternating sounds that worked with me, and it was tremendously helpful with my spouse in working through issues from her childhood that included incest/sexual abuse and basically coming from a background that is shit.....if done by someone who knows what they are doing with a patient who is compatible, it can be like a sledgehammer in breaking through stuff, though it can be rough. Other forms of treatment can work for PTSD, I believe variations on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help as well, and there are probably others.

As far as there being an epidemic of mental illness in the west I think that is not really a true perception. First of all, a lot of what people go to therapists for, like low level depression and the like, are not really mental illness, in that while they are issues that bother the person, it isn't to the point where it is stopping them from functioning, and a larger part of therapy is working with someone to get rid of baggage and feel better about yourself and so forth. Plus things are being diagnosed that once weren't, 40 years ago ADD kids might be classified as 'troublemakers' or 'emotionally disturbed' or worse, called 'lazy and stupid' (it is also true that the diagnosis of ADD/ADHD has been over done by lazy schmucks, especially school counselors, who use it as a catchall for kids acting out; among other things, it is used against kids who are out there on the IQ chart who are simply bored by the way schools teach).

I think that there are things modern life has in it that can exacerbate issues, the internet, all the load of communications/social networking and so forth, has made life more fast paced and stressful and has added new things to the vocabulary but to argue people are crazier is a bit silly. First of all, in the past mental illness was something the was kept in the shadows, the uncle with depression who killed himself wasn't mentioned, the 'crazy aunt' was whispered about and depression was something kept secret, it was considered shameful to admit you were down, but believe me, people were depressed, they just kept quiet about it (Churchill, for example, suffered from depression, what he called his "black dogs"). And if we want to talk about insanity, keep in mind a supposedly civilized country in the 20th century went on a rampage of behavior that few would call sane, it was mass insanity. Likewise, great to claim it is a western thing, but all one has to do is look at Pol Pot's Cambodia, China in the Cultural Revolution, and things like ethnic cleansing and whatnot to see that the west doesn't have a monopoly on craziness. Difference is in the west we talk about it, in the east they are still in the phase where you hide it or claim it doesn't exist, yet all you have to do is pick up a newspaper or read about life in those places to see mental illness is there, it either is denied or is taken care of by locking people up away before anyone notices.

FurryFury said:

Okay so does anyone know any treatments for PTSD that actually work? Because I think my girl needs that but she has been to many therapists and they haven't helped.

A couple of them have tried this thing with lights. My girl thinks that therapy is total B.S.

BiBunny, I agree that was very courageous of you to share with us. *hugs*

However as someone with a mother that is not only mentally ill but also toxic to herself and everyone else, I have to say that in order to save oneself, sometimes strong limits are needed. I wouldn't say I've abandoned her but she would. She also wants to control me and eat my soul but anyway . . .

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Lots of treatments exist, but typically a combination is needed. Some of these would be

Antianxiety drugs
Exposure treatment
Relaxation training
EMDR (which is that light thing you mentioned) by the way, it shouldn't just be lights, she should also be trying to relive the incident, getting in that mind set.
Support groups
Family can also help a lot with recognizing emotional states and learning how to make decisions when experiencing such.

Most important is attitude, you must be willing to develop your perspective, and grow from the treatment. If you expect it wont work, it wont.

BiBunny said:

Everybodyyyyy...stop being so niiiiiice. *Whines* You're embarrassing meeeeeeee.

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I don't want to embarrass you but .

When the thoughts started being along the lines of "All you have to do is drive this truck as fast as it'll go, head-on into that patch of woods on the side of the road, and it'll all be over" and "You have a bottle of Ambien and a bottle of Jack Daniel's, so why run from this shit anymore?" and "There's a perfectly useful shotgun if you want to make it all stop," it scared me badly enough to do something. I didn't actually want to die, but I was afraid that I'd somehow talk myself into it without really realizing what I was doing.

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I've seen it described as "I don't want to die. I just don't want to live." by a person diagnosed with bipolar.

Bouncing off the walls, batshit crazy, and convinced that there's nothing wrong? Protect yourself if you must. A scared, suicidal person who's got nobody to reach out to but you asks you for help for the first time ever, and you bail? Please go directly to the ninth layer of Hell without passing Go or collecting $200.

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This!

I just hope that maybe, if there's somebody lurking and reading who has this kind of problem, they'll see that there's a way out.

Also, if anybody wants to PM me about shit they don't wanna talk about in the thread, my PM box is open. I don't tell secrets that aren't mine to tell.

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Sorry, i just can't help myself:

For those with mental illness and wanting professional help, finding the right doctor/therapist is vital but not always easy. LOL, I had a really good psychiatrist who worked alongside my really good psychologist, then like has been happening a lot with my medical professionals over the last couple of years, he got sick and has gone on extended leave until he recovers. So a replacement was put in place and I went for my appointment which happened to be just after a particularly bad weekend depression wise where I was seriously suicidal, totally broken down into a bawling, moaning, hysterical mess on the ground.....I felt sorry for F, but the upside was the way he handled it and the support he gave elevated him even higher on the pedestal I have him on if that is even possible.

So I thought given I had scared myself and didn't want this to continue or happen again, or for F to have to go through it again, I would be honest and tell the replacement doctor what had happened, all the gory details. LOL, when summing up at the end of the apppointment his expert opinion was 'Good, seems you are handling things fine without medication and are stable at the moment with no presenting problems, so lets see how it goes and come back and see me in 3 months'. Any surprise I cancelled my appointment with him for the coming week as I figure renovating and hopefully getting it done on time will do more good for me and my head than seeing him again?!!

Catalina

Catalina, that is #@%!^&*!!!! ugh.

that is also a great example of why the mental health profession terrifies me so and why it has been several years since i sought out such "help" for myself.

I do. Just like on a plane when you are advised to put on YOUR oxygen mask FIRST before helping anyone else you MUST take care of yourself first to be of any use to anyone.

You have a right to put strong limits in place. What you can't do can be done by others.

You have a right to encourage positive behavior and avoid negative WITHOUT guilt. I told my mother years ago she could have my attention but not by yet another suicide attempt and hospitalization because she was pulling me down into that black hell she was in with that shit. Also because the more I did for her the less she did for herself.

It KILLS me that I can't help her in so many ways, mostly because she won't let me. I want to be there for her like I am for everyone else but her behavior toward me is so toxic I can't do that and survive. I might not care if others weren't counting on me too but they are.

So eat right (but don't feel too guilty about some comfort food during the rocky times), exercise (but forgive yourself when you don't and start back again), activitly pursue peace and happiness however that works for you, (looking up positive quotes, reading good things, watching mindless stuff in movies or TV, gardening, therapy, whatevs) and just take care of YOU.

Then do what you can for them and NOT feel pulled down. That's it. All I got.

Your enough has to be enough because you have to survive too.

*hugs*

FF

KoPilot said:

Going through this same shit, except with a grandparent. Anyone have any tips?

...she asks, expecting none.

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Good to know. This is one thing my girl will be trying to get helped on this summer.

YourCaptor said:

Lots of treatments exist, but typically a combination is needed. Some of these would be

Antianxiety drugs
Exposure treatment
Relaxation training
EMDR (which is that light thing you mentioned) by the way, it shouldn't just be lights, she should also be trying to relive the incident, getting in that mind set.
Support groups
Family can also help a lot with recognizing emotional states and learning how to make decisions when experiencing such.

Most important is attitude, you must be willing to develop your perspective, and grow from the treatment. If you expect it wont work, it wont.

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Re: Normal. There IS NO such thing. Quite a relief to me to learn this. The concept wasn't nailed into my head until I read this wonderful book, The Short Bus A Journey Beyond Normal by Johnathan Mooney.

catalina_francisco said:

LOL, when summing up at the end of the apppointment his expert opinion was 'Good, seems you are handling things fine without medication and are stable at the moment with no presenting problems, so lets see how it goes and come back and see me in 3 months'. Any surprise I cancelled my appointment with him for the coming week as I figure renovating and hopefully getting it done on time will do more good for me and my head than seeing him again?!!

Catalina

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Yeah, the last time I wasted my time with a shrink I went over my childhood, my extensive list of phobias, etc, and he told me that I just needed to learn to accept myself, that I'm fine. I haven't bothered since - I do not have a time to wade through the 99% of idiot psychologists to find the 1% who aren't.

I love you ladies but how does it make sense to not seek help and yes, go through as many as it takes to find the right person to help, when you need it?

ownedsubgal said:

Catalina, that is #@%!^&*!!!! ugh.

that is also a great example of why the mental health profession terrifies me so and why it has been several years since i sought out such "help" for myself.

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graceanne said:

Yeah, the last time I wasted my time with a shrink I went over my childhood, my extensive list of phobias, etc, and he told me that I just needed to learn to accept myself, that I'm fine. I haven't bothered since - I do not have a time to wade through the 99% of idiot psychologists to find the 1% who aren't.

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FurryFury said:

I love you ladies but how does it make sense to not seek help and yes, go through as many as it takes to find the right person to help, when you need it?

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It takes energy depressed people don't have. This is one of the worst barriers.

I got to a point at one point where not feeling better was simply not an option, and I'm not even a chronic person, it was just baaaad. I can't imagine how people who are always chased by something this bad do it. I was a mess. 23 years of denial were crashing down on me, my own mom was in the inpatient hatch after a failed relationship, and I was left thinking "there is no one to manage my life and pick up MY shit if I melt down. I have real non-self created problems like paying rent" which made me melt down.

Would people date to find mr right and give up the first time a guy gives them a moronic pickup line and a clammy handshake? I'm not saying anyone here is doing that, but I've talked to a zillion people who have formed opinions of the whole idea of therapy based on watching something on TV, or one horror story a friend told them.

Yeah, my first attempts with therapists were pointless. Useless. I had to go to the U of M, tell the psychiatrist I was not happy leaving without meds, and then go to three diff. shinks, all on siding scale beg-a-thon basis. I didn't just have depression/anxiety, I had a headache that lasted 5 months and did not register as anything on a CT. They had to hook me up with an antidepressant that did double-duty on my headache, it was fun trying 7 meds.

All of this PALES in comparison to what Crohn's has been like, but it was a good trial run. For others, it's infinitely worse.

The last shrink never supported my kink, but she pretty much saved me as a new adult. I know you're not supposed to compartmentalize and you're supposed to tell them eeeeeeeverything and all that shit, but I take a "work on the problem you are paying to work on" approach. I avoid anyone who wants to *start* with family-of-origin no matter what you are coming in for. Getting people to go over the family AGAIN is big bucks because it never ends.

Also, taking the good with the bad. You must. It's like religion. There's some a pony amidst some stupid irrelevant shit that's really culture and definitely not any kind of higher being saying anything. Find the pony and get out of there.

WickedSpitFire said:

Interesting thread...



That's what happened to me. I'd had the same doctor since I was a baby. While no psychiatrist, he was an internalist, which I feel is an important differentiation from general physician. Anyway. When I started college as a kid (the first time)...well, I just had a lot of issues. I finally went back to my doc, and he said he'd always thought I maybe might've had ADHD. He just didn't want to officially diagnose me with anything and stick me with that label for the rest of my life, especially since for the first 20 years I seemingly managed it well enough on my own. Which is appreciated, since mental illnesses of a variety of forms are just so damn negatively connotative. College was hard, though, and I couldn't manage it on my own anymore.

I think in terms of ADHD, it depends on what the predominant issue is. Hyperactivity, depression, impulsion, etc. Mine was impulsiveness, which I wont lie led to some early life mistakes involving kink. It was just really the combination of being an already impulsive hormonal teenager on top of ADHD and being away from home for the first time. Kink was just how it manifested, because it was a part of who I am.

As I got older I leveled out. Less hormones. Less hyperactiveness. Less impulse control problems. I was able to manage it on my own again, without a prescription, as I aged. But the kink still remains.

My two cents.

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Yup, yup, nodding a bunch here! I think I started a new downward spiral when I hit my mid-40's when my hormones started going out of whack. ADD and peri-menopause don't mix well at all. I'm not ashamed to say that I've found a medication that's helped me moderate the whole mess somewhat. The only downside is that it has some crazy effects during discontinuation which frankly scare me silly. I'll be crossing that bridge when I get there, though. For now, it keeps me saner than I was otherwise. It was horrible having this alien in my brain whispering things that I knew (in other parts of my head) were wrong, but they were sneaky, insidious whispers. I'm just glad I spoke up to Master and my doc when I did.

I'm not fond of more meds, but I'm used to taking something to keep me alive already, so what's one more pill? <shrug>

The thing about a grandparent is that we have an idealized image about what that is and should be. We make it up from movie of the week, we make it up from the 15 minutes they may have been what felt like a good grandparent, we warn ourselves that they will pass with all this stuff unresolved.

BUT you also eventually say to yourself - they are xxx years old. They are not going to change now. You accept that. You love them, but you don't have to give them your life. You set yourself free. You let the things that hurt pour off you, because the crazy is talking, and it's not really them. Some people are so expert at pushing your buttons because they really believe it will make you connect with them. You stop playing the game. Sometimes you do leave.

Every moment of stress I have with my grandmother and every moment of stress I had with my grandfather was in somehow expecting to get other than what-you-got.

This applies to parents also.

You have people in your life. Chances are if family is poison in some way, you are not able to fully decontaminate when you aren't with them- I know I'm not. My time exposed to them isn't zero, but it has to be limited and it has to have very strict boundaries. If I didn't have anyone else in my life ever and I could be drawn into the circle of crazy, that's one thing.

Sometimes what might seem "selfish" is very much about other people, also.

FurryFury said:

I love you ladies but how does it make sense to not seek help and yes, go through as many as it takes to find the right person to help, when you need it?

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i adore you as well Fury, but perhaps you would feel somewhat differently if you had experienced more than a decade of hell from various practitioners of mental health care, including an involuntary (and completing debasing, degrading, humiliating) commitment of six weeks and two days. the ingrained lack of regard or concern for your humanity, your personal story, your needs, in deference to worshiping the DSM as gospel law and blind prescribing of medication. you take the unbelievably frightening and courageous move of putting yourself out there, admitting to a strange outside source, "yes, i need help," only to be disregarded or treated as less than human.

and yes, there are the drugs. while i fully recognize that anti-depressants have worked miracles for many, the fact must also be recognized that there is no medicinal cure for us all...particularly those of us with severe, life-long unipolar depression. couple that with any other mental or emotional health issues and you have a cocktail that the vast majority of medical professionals don't want to, and just plain don't know how to understand, much less "treat." i still burn with shame and embarrassment thinking of the time i volunteered for a medical trial (specifically aimed at those with "severe long-term depression), passed all the physical exams with flying colors and was assured by nurses and other staff i was as good as in, only for the psychiatrist to tell me in the final interview that i was just "too depressed" to participate. his exact words were actually, "we need the deeply depressed, yes, but you are just TOO sick." i had to plaster on the fake smile, say yes i understood, then get up and walk out of that place without stepping out in front of traffic like every fiber of my being screamed to do.

still, i've been on many different courses of medicinal "treatment" for my depression, the very best of which resulted in me being superficially functional 80% of the time without any zest for life AT ALL. not much of a smiler at the best of times, those drugs left me with a permanent expression of blank sorrow that even disturbed total strangers. and of course there were the heart tremors and insomnia and weight loss...and i repeat, that was the best. i do not want to think about some of the worst.

sometimes true help is found in very unexpected places, from very unconventional sources. and sometimes...(and this is the part no one seems to want to acknowledge)...a person's mental illness cannot be significantly helped. sometimes it is just a matter of how long they will maintain the strength to bear it.

Netzach and Ownedsubgal, I hear you.



*HUGS*

These are part of the many reasons I have to strongly encourage my girl and my mother to get the help they so clearly must have.

ownedsubgal said:

Catalina, that is #@%!^&*!!!! ugh.

that is also a great example of why the mental health profession terrifies me so and why it has been several years since i sought out such "help" for myself.

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It sure isn't easy, and perhaps for me it becomes a bit more difficult at times because professionally I know what I should be able to expect, but do not feel I should be the one to tell or guide them. Thankfully my psychologist is fairly good and I feel safe enough with him to relax and be honest about where I am at and know he listens and hears me.

Catalina

Netzach said:

It takes energy depressed people don't have. This is one of the worst barriers.

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So true...I look forward to the day I can answer 'great', instead of 'incredibly tired and exhausted' when I am asked how I am doing by doctors etc. I hope it happens, but must admit I sometimes find it difficult to imagine that reality after decades of depression and no energy.

Catalina

Grief fuled chronic depression snared me. Successive years of treasured family members meeting violent ends broke me. I tried the route of keeping myself busy, active and social to no avail. I did not get out of bed. I did not answer the phone. I did not take care of my children. I slept. I stared at my bedroom celing. I almost never showered.

My hubs tried to shake me out of it by raising my ire, but I couldn't even raise enough care for the survival technique.

What it took was another treasured family member who had the courage to lay beside me in my pit. She silently smoothed my filthy hair for about 15 minutes. I was ready to crawl back toward the world after.

No psychologist in the world will have that sort of power in my life, ever.

And I still stand by and say that there is no shame in seeking medical treatment. I refused it because it was not what I needed.

FurryFury said:

I love you ladies but how does it make sense to not seek help and yes, go through as many as it takes to find the right person to help, when you need it?

Click to expand...

Sometimes it's out of pure frustration and a healthy dose of skepticism. I've been blessed with an excellent primary doc who is very willing to send me to specialists for whatever I need if he feels it's something out of his depth; however, I've heard countless stories of doctors who are significantly less than responsive to physical OR mental problems.

My knees had been going to hell for several years when I finally went crying to my doc. I was only 44 at the time, but I've had a lifetime of injuries and injustices done to them. The first surgeon I saw agreed that they were basically at the end stage of their usefulness, but flat out refused to discuss joint replacement because he felt that I was too young. I waited a few years, doing whatever time-buying procedures my primary doc (who has a sports med sub specialty) could come up with. Three years later I went to a 2nd surgeon. He expressed concern over the age thing but was willing, if I lost some weight first. Not unreasonable, but seriously, when you're in severe, chronic pain the idea of exercising the offending objects really isn't funny. Surgeon 2 then dropped my insurance, right after I met his weight goal. The crying jag wasn't pretty. I finally got my new knees three years ago, and I will love that surgeon until the die I expire!

The point is, if someone has experienced roadblocks in their healthcare before, they may not have nearly as much faith in their doctor, their insurer, or even themselves to the extent that they may need in order to pursue and even demand the care that they need. Additionally, they may not have the knowledge necessary to fight for themselves. I was a medical assistant for over 15 years, so I know the language and know the ropes quite well.

I wish everyone who is suffering an illness could have an advocate to negotiate on their behalf. Expecting those in mental or physical pain to be up to the task is often unrealistic.