Tag Archives: Mental Illness

Did you know you’re supposed to be able to feel your face?

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I shared with my partner today that I’m starting to be able to feel my face- the way it behaves on its own accord, all the little twitches and emotions that play across it that I don’t plan on.

It’s wild. This is new to me.

I’ve always felt like some gray blob of consciousness with a dim glow, trapped in the skin of me which is hollow and full of darkness.

I can know the factual truth about muscles and bones and organs. I can even have seen them, I once got a peek inside my chest when my surgeon showed me a process picture of my top surgery.

Doesn’t matter, I’m a stupid sad little gray blob trapped in a hollow body filled with expansive darkness.

Doesn’t make sense but it’s my self concept. Trust me, I’m in therapy, and it’s ON THE LIST.

I asked my partner if it’s normal to be able to feel your face. She (surely) lied back to me that it was.

I woke up today and did things that I needed to do outside the house of my own volition, and alone. I returned pop cans. I picked up meds. I bought toilet bowl cleaner. I made phone calls. I did chores to get ahead for when my partner got home. I took care of an unpleasant post office form. I did an email I’ve been dreading.

I need you to understand that this represents a nearly unimaginable level of energy for me. I MADE PHONE CALLS.

I have wanted to kill myself since I was in the second grade. I’ve gotten better and I’ve gotten worse and I’ve gotten lists of different diagnoses and I’ve gotten tons of medical trauma and I’ve been in institutions and I’ve been to rehabs and I’ve gotten CBT and IOP and ECT and REBT and DBT and trauma informed therapy and gestalt therapy and the one thing I never did was manage to get a real remission.

There’s little tingles, little pulls of strings, an occasional stab.

I didn’t realize how dissociative I was until systems started coming back online.

I’ve been on Auvelity for only 3 days and I’m starting to feel less hollow…

GISHability

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For #gish item #158 and #disabilitypride we were asked to make a portrait of a disabled person out of something representing their contributions. 

I made this piece in honor of Marsha Linehan, the woman who has saved my life and many others with her creation of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy as a method to treat Borderline Personality Disorder, a disorder that she shares with her patients. It is made with quotes from her textbook and DBT skills. 

When it comes to explaining art, especially if it is fairly plain, you always get the question “how do you know when it’s done?” 

Of course, it’s never done. No such thing. 

But this comes from a basic flaw in understanding the artistic process. 

Artists just fix the most wrong thing they can currently see. Then the next most wrong thing they see after that. So it’s an easy assumption to make that by improving the amount and type of flaws an artist can see, they would improve substantially.

 But it’s not as if the painting has a certain number of flaws and after each one, check mark that part is done. Because every line and color that gets adjusted changes how the eye perceives. And the more flaws that you are attempting to rework at the same time, the more likely you are to become demotivated and just give up. 

This is a perfect metaphor for the process of growth through DBT. Thesis and antithesis reaching synthesis. Followed by re-evaluation. Then do it again. You continue to fix the most wrong thing that you can see. Until… when?

Until the risk of exceeding the limit of your skills is greater than the reward of the fix you are trying to make. “If I push this further am I gonna ruin it?” 

This is likely what people find most frustrating about the first line traditional therapies. The skill gap. Your ability to see flaws will improve before your ability to handle them does. 

This is the opposite in DBT.

Your ability to see flaws and cognitive distortions improves as you begin using skills and gaining experience with them. It is only then then you begin making the connections as to the true sources and solutions of your behaviors.

Those connections may have only traumatized you if you were still functioning at the same level as before. 

You need practice walking up to the line and knowing whether you can take another step or not and you cannot learn that academically. 

You’re gonna ruin a lot of work. Eventually you tune in your sensitivity and awareness so you can spend more time in the safe zone of fixing things before you reach the limit of your skills. That’s when you can actually begin the real and profound work safely and know that wherever you end up going with it, you have the capability and control over what’s directly in front of you to be able to handle. 

I had stopped making art for 10 years after a cruel drawing professor in college. I also was institutionalized 22 times during that decade. That part was more about identity. It was play that developed the confidence and learning that results in me now being introduced as an artist, and as the person that I’m actually comfortable living as day to day. 

Practicing non-judgmentally which gives you the time and experience to develop your own meaningful conclusions, and improving your eye but not practicing systematically, will both allow you to improve. One has gotten you into a productive practice, though, and established a baseline, and done so without relying on installing a harsher critic. 

I lived it before I became it.

And it is only now that I feel safe enough to go deeper.

But it is with a better understanding

And a better mindset.

And now… no one can take it away from me.

See I once thought that the goal was to get good at something. 

Now I realize you only need to be good enough to fix your mistakes to be quite dangerous.

And you’re already ahead of everyone that’s not even trying. 

But is this piece done? 

Not if Marsha Linehan says it isn’t. 

I’ll be fixing it up digitally to give away as a downloadable if she gives permission. 

Rusty

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I admit I am becoming drunk on the sense of possibility.
I should explain.
I’ve always been so goddamn suicidal that the answer to the question of what I wanted to do with my life was meaningless.
I wanted to die.
That was it.
That veil is lifting now and I’m remembering what it’s like to use my brain for things.
Good lord am I rusty.
But I’m getting better.
I’m seeing potential in things and ideas whereas before I only saw obstacles.
What a gift.
Now to go gently, so I don’t flame out.

Daily Habits

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I haven’t been talking much about how I’ve been doing. I think part of that is shame. I feel bad for doing so well, comparatively to before, during such a tremendous and world enveloping crisis. I feel like if I was suicidal when things were more okay, I should be crushed right now under a grief so total that it should destroy me. 

 

But I’m not. I’m growing, I’m changing, I’m experiencing a spiritual awakening. This, I’m realizing, is not instead of the grief but because of it. If I had not managed to develop the coping skills and system that I did, when I did, I surely would have been obliterated by the weight of the world right now. It was a necessity of the moment. The seed was placed in enough darkness that all the potential work it had put in allowed it to sprout. 

 

Early on in the quarantine I wanted and probably needed to go to a mental hospital. I knew that it would reset my year without hospitalizations in order to get bariatric surgery but i was ready to do so anyways. Then I heard that they would place you in an isolated room in the hospital for 5 days to ensure you didn’t have symptoms before even bringing you to a unit. I have enough history with hospitals to know that those 5 days would not be care, they would be abuse. They would be a constant stream on regurgitating everything that was bothering me to any medical staff that wanted to know, over and over again. I knew I’d be without belongings or clothes, for my safety. I knew I’d be educating half the people who came in to talk to me about trans issues and how to properly refer to me and a lot of them still wouldn’t get it right. The more I played the tape through, the more I saw that I could probably do the good things that a hospital does at home and without having to experience all the trauma. 

 

I could create routine, regular meals, a study of psychology on my own as “group time.” I could work on the level that was appropriate and interesting for me, rather than relying on whatever was pulled out of the binder that day to go over. 

 

So naturally, I started watching YouTube. A quick review of “mini habits” and how having low expectations to check something off as achieved for the day often led you to do more, since it doesn’t paralyze you. Knowing that you only have to open the book and read two pages is much less intimidating than telling yourself that you have to read for an hour, but it gets you over that inertia burst, that hardest part of the task, which is starting. You may set up and start meditating for two minutes and find that 20 have passed when you are done. Learning this theory was a key moment in establishing something that could work for my brain. 

 

From there I wrote out a spreadsheet with a variety of things that I wanted to achieve every day. I put this in Google Drive so that I’d have access to it across any devices and lose excuses for tracking. My list is living and growing week by week, as I learn that I am capable of achieving all of these things every day and find my interests pulled in different directions, I expand more. I’m currently thinking about spreading about my “reading” section into workbooks, philosophy, art, education, and psychology but I haven’t done it yet. 

 

I made a section below the list with each day, asking the same questions:

Daily gratitude?

Synopsis of the day?

How did you work toward your goals?

 

In this way I created little classes for myself and I started to modulate the inputs to my brain. I began putting in better stuff. Instead of focusing on all the bad in the world and on the news, I began to learn constantly and feed myself with motivation, inspiration, and the seeking of a better, healthier soul. 

 

Things like meditation and watching TEDx talks, stretching, chores, taking meds, and attending to Activities of Daily Living, those are a good place to start. Add more as to your interests and skill sets. I watch a lot of educational videos and have started reading again, I can’t believe I had forgotten how much I loved to read. 

 

It’s not perfect. I had a panic attack yesterday that left me non-verbal and in tears. I spent most of today in bed. But I still managed to knock out my daily habits, and that’s more than I can ever say I did when in that sort of state before. I would have done something harmful to myself. And I didn’t.

 

Astonishingly the suicidal thinking has abated to a level I’ve have no memory of ever being this low. It still comes, in the rough times, in the critical times, in the times when it is a worn groove that requires conscious effort to jump out of. But not having it be constant, drumming, persistent, always in the back of my mind? I feel lighter. It’s easier to exist. My mind is friendlier to be with, and ultimately that’s the goal, because your mind is the one and only companion you’ll have for every moment of your life. It’s a lot better when it doesn’t want you to die.

Death Penalty

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I am me. 

At the core of my goo.

I am the spark,

the electricity,

the action

the character that shows 

by what I do

and I am not satisfied with me.

I have long wanted to kill myself.

I managed to mostly get over that;

I continue on and talk to my head,

not as a rival or a hated adversary,

but as a lonely and rejected friend.

It is one that I’ve abused, 

for so long

that I almost don’t know how

to not.

So I decide that I will show action. 

I will do the things I need to do.

I will take care of myself.

Because the truth is that I will be 

alone with this self for the 

rest of my existence and a 

contented sort of banter is a 

much better way to 

handle my suicidal thoughts 

than a bottle of pills.

So now when a 

perfectly justified

self criticism 

comes up, and 

that part of me 

slithers,

oily, 

out of my gut 

and whispers 

that I should die, 

I can confidently say back 

“I don’t think they 

currently suggest 

the death penalty 

for stains.”

Hey look a Coronavirus blog

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It’s really stupid, what got me writing again. It’s a psuedo-scientific journal of my rat colony’s behavior over time. But it made the keys clack. It reminded me how it felt to put sentences out in the world. So I thought I’d say a few things about coronavirus and mental health.

Right now we’re in a world crisis and I am calm. I am hopeful. I am ashamed for being calm and hopeful. But I am compassionate with myself because I know that this calm, this energy that I’ve received, is from having played out so many worse situations in my head, day by day, minute by minute.

With coronavirus, people who are mentally ill lose major coping outlets in quarantine. They’re flat out closed, inaccessible, or inadvisable. They may lose access to therapy. Anyone goes a little loopy when cooped up for a long time, but when you’ve already got a disorder that hates you and your life and your joy working against you, it can be hell. Check on your friends. Really check on them, press harder. If they just say they’re okay, ask again, gently. Pressure builds without a vent and social contact allows us to release a lot of emotions. We suffer without each other.

I have anxiety and depression, so not only do I imagine the worst case scenarios, I kinda want them. When a semi comes up close to my car and I can feel the draft of it and the space between the wheels would fit my car just right if only I yanked the wheel and then…I imagine everything that would happen next. All the horror. All the trauma. All the unnecessary guilt. The urge goes away.

It’s a weird place to be, to be a vulnerable person in a pandemic, be deeply suicidal on a regular basis, and somehow still care about getting it. I thought I might’ve had it because I had a connection to a positive case, but my symptoms could have had to do with my ear infection going rogue or something. I want to die without clogging up a hospital bed for 15 days. I don’t want to be more of a waste on the system than I already am. .

I see a disturbing number of people flat out not caring, or being racist, or denying what’s going on. But here’s the thing: people you know will die. People you care about will die. And lots of people that you apparently don’t give a damn about will die too, because of your reckless callousness and total disregard of the common good of society. There’s a line that gets used a lot that I’m gonna try to remember right: “I don’t know how to convince you to care about people.”

That’s it. That’s the end of it. That’s absolutely all of it. Do you care about others enough to make a sacrifice for a little while, hide out in your house and do as much nothing as possible. Please catch up on your home projects. Watch those educational YouTube videos, maybe learn sign language or something. Make art. No such thing as good art or bad art, you aren’t competing, you’re playing as a human person, put emotion into it. Read. Nap. Do absolutely nothing at all and appreciate the deep relaxation. But remember that what you’re doing is caring. Caring about the weaker and more vulnerable, reassuring that those lives have value.

They tell me that humans live to 80. If this goes on for 6 months or the 18 that was projected, it’s still a blip in your existence. This will be the past soon. And you’ll be able to look back on it and think of all the craziness and be totally detached. But not everyone will have that luxury. A lot of people will die. A lot of people will have permanent lung damage. We are paying for poor decisions in blood and the bodies will keep on stacking up as this progresses.

Don’t be a disease vector. Act like you already have it and need to protect everyone else from getting it from you and you’ll be about on the right track. And please, please, please, just stay home.

Squelch

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It hits with a sudden shame,
the realizations of all the people
who have given me relief,
cash in times of need,
a bed when I was homeless,
when I have failed to offer them
even the slightest regard in return
and failed to keep my promises.
My cheeks flush
and names begin to pound in my head,
debts that I owe,
time of my life that
I must offer back,
amends that must be made.
My heart rate goes up
and I feel top heavy.
I stagger to the bedroom
and consider,
this is a road well traveled.
I can go into the shame pit.
Just moments ago
I was so excited
about the possibility
of getting into a new apartment,
starting new ventures,
even pleased as punch
at the simple hot dog I was eating.
I was satisfied in life.
A rare feeling.
I was due to self sabotage.
And so now I contemplate
the nature of the psychic drama,
petting the cat
and accepting that
recovery can mean sitting back
and feeling the feelings
in a controlled way
and asking the questions
that really matter
like “does this thought
help me or hurt me?”
or “does following this path
of self pity lead me towards
where I want to go in life?”
My head’s still buzzing
but my thoughts
aren’t controlling me anymore.
I can choose to slog
my way out of the marshes
but I have to pick a direction
and go!
Then I recall
that my
worst flaw
is that
I for sure
lack action.
We shall see
if I can go
but did you hear
a boot squelch?

Deaths of Despair

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In response to this article: https://time.com/5606411/millennials-deaths-of-despair/

 

Go ahead
and tax
the alcohol,
like that
wasn’t part
of the plan
anyways.
Make the
prescription drugs
harder to
get for
pain patients.
Ramp up
so called
abuse monitoring.
It all
suits the goal.
Think about
making it
“affordable”
to get
health care
as if
any one
of us
had the
unique opportunity
to decide
whether we
could afford
our illnesses
or afford
our fates
or afford
ever having
been plopped
on this
damn planet
in the
first place.

If this
is your
solution to
deaths of despair,
you are
showing your hand.
You don’t
understand the
depth of despair.
And you’re
likely one
dealing it.

Dangerous People

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Today I went to the Community Mental Health, ready to raise hell(unfortunately she wouldn’t let me record the conversation though and I really believe it should have been), as I had been advised to, and got some differing responses than I did last night at the psychiatric urgent care. They claimed to have never told them that they wouldn’t authorize services, only that I needed to go to an emergency room no matter what. If that was the case, I can’t imagine why personnel from Pine Rest, who are in a private and unconnected system from both CMH and Pivot, would have brought up and mentioned that I had been authorized to go to Pivot once and not showed up. He shouldn’t have known that and would have had to have been told something of the sort for that message to get relayed in any way.

I asked the woman I was working with today to imagine what it was like to already feel like you should die, that you aren’t worth treatment, and hearing that you’re being punitively prevented from seeking it out because you’re bad at treatment. The kind of treatment that you need to get better at the things in life that prevent you from being good at treatment.

She said today that if I had called back last night they would have told me the same thing, just go to an emergency room. And that if anything like that happens again(which she called “basically an ‘f you.’”) to call the CMH directly and get clarification.

Last night, no part of me wanted to call and talk to the on call person who had apparently made that decision about me.

I’ll admit that I’m a vulnerable person. I’m fairly easily manipulated. Easily lied to. Every person on this whole process also has their own motivations and interests in covering their own asses and the ass of the organizations they work for. I don’t know who to trust. I don’t know if I should contact the Pine Rest people and find out the name of the CMH on call person from that night. I don’t know where to go from here.

I do know that I’m in a safe(r) place now. The mental health system is fucked and it’s taken me 10 years in it to learn how to see where the problems are, to advocate for myself. For instance, at my intake today, I was asked to sign a blank belongings inventory, before they had even completed the work of looking through my belongings and listing what would be kept on the sheet. I didn’t do it and it wouldn’t have affected me negatively to sign in advance because I have played the hospital game so many times that I don’t even buy pants with strings in them anymore, but let me tell you, when you are a vulnerable individual, all it takes is just one staff member finding something they like in your stored belongings and “forgetting” to put it on your inventory. A pre-signed empty inventory could be a disaster for someone with, say, a sentimental knife or jewelry. I also had the right to be there while they inventoried my belongings and they didn’t inform me of that or ask.

 

I guess what I’m saying is that I’ve learned enough now to know that I’m giving up an enormous amount of power and dignity when I make this decision of hospitalization. Every time. Every time is a chance to be re-traumatized or experience something cruel or outlandish and it seems like nearly every experience I’ve had in the mental health system has involved that.

 

I think a lot of it really feels like gaslighting.

Go to the Emergency Room.

Get stripped of all your belongings. Yes, even your phone. You got people worried about you? Well, they get to leave messages to your locker. You’re a danger to yourself and dangerous people don’t get phones.

Get stripped of your clothes. Sometimes even your underwear. Sometimes they’ll have you do a naked squat to show you aren’t smuggling anything. You’re a danger to yourself and dangerous people don’t get clothes.

Depending on where you are, you’ll be watched non-stop either through the window, a camera, or a security person in the room. If you’re lucky, you might be allowed a family member or friend as a sitter. You will have to be monitored everywhere you go. Sometimes this means bed alarms. This always means someone else in the bathroom with you. You’re a danger to yourself and dangerous people don’t get privacy.

You’ll get to re-explain everything that’s wrong with you at a bare minimum of six times. This means what’s happening in your life, medical background and health management you currently are in, meds, feeeeeeeeeelings and “What brings you in today?” You have to hash out your pain, your struggles, your limitations and weaknesses, again and again and again. Get reminded of how much crap you feel like, again and again and again. To strangers. Anytime they ask. You’re a danger to yourself and dangerous people don’t get personal boundaries.

You’re in gown. In a too small bed. You can see the blood spatter on the blah floral curtain. And the doctors and nurses and phlebotomists and social workers all come in and stand towering over you and imply “I’m sorry that you’re feeling this depressed, but it’s wrong to feel that bad and people aren’t supposed to be like that and we can fix you, we can make you better.”

Ending that sentence was the precise moment that I realized I’m in an abusive relationship with the mental health care system.

Maybe more accurately it makes me realize I think I have a process addiction to mental health care but it just makes me feel so good(when it’s not hurting me).

I’m anti-psychotic right now.

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I had a really good day hanging out with a friend and running errands in preparation for a planned on trip to the psychiatric urgent care. Once there, they wouldn’t help me. Apparently the CMH wouldn’t authorize treatment because in the past I had been authorized for Pivot and not shown up. I wracked my brain for when this might have happened and the only time I can figure is right after my car accident, when I wanted to go in because I could feel a spiral coming on and figured I could do a 2 for 1 on my Emergency Room time. The ER let me go with the instructions that Robert Brown Crisis(not Pivot but its sister) would call when a bed opened up. I missed a call from a number that was listed as Unknown, and they didn’t leave a message, leaving me no way to respond. They absolutely dropped the ball and now I come along months later and say to somebody that my suicidal thoughts are getting unmanageable and they say “Sorry, you miss appointments, you don’t deserve treatment.”

Can you imagine what that feels like?

When your depression already tells you that you are a drain on government resources and are better of dying? That it’s almost your civic duty to get off the damn disability payroll by offing yourself?

How many times do you offer someone treatment when they reach out? *

One time?

Three?

A dozen?

I’ve been hospitalized 21 times so far.

I’ve had CBT, DBT, ECT, REBT, IOP, month long rehab, gestalt therapy, and I’m working on family therapy and EMDR as well as digging into trauma. I could probably think of a couple more if I really tried. I’m a heavily therapized individual.

I remember one time in IOP(Intensive Outpatient, basically sobriety night classes) that he had been to rehab 27 times before it stuck. At that point I was a lot earlier in my career of crazy, and I thought to myself “how could you not give up?”

I know now.

You don’t have a choice.

You keep on marching, slogging, because a little taste of hope is all you need to get hooked.

I thought it would be convenient to die tonight.

My zines are printed and could be available at the funeral.

My friend had all the paperwork about how I was feeling and witnessed the whole thing.

It would’ve been a great headline for that brand spanking new psychiatric urgent care. Might help make some changes in the system.

I was ready to be a martyr for the mental health movement.

But you’re supposed to live for spite, you’re not supposed to die for it. Don’t punish yourself.

I jerked myself out of those thought loops. I thought to myself “You know better. You can choose to stop indulging in this.” And it was indulgent, it was mopey down the to core, I could practically feel my chin inside my chest.

I reminded myself of the good things in my life. Of the good things that I believe I may still have coming. Then I realized and complimented myself on having rerouted my Inner Critic/pity party so effectively. I’d also like to think that my activism will mean more if I’m alive.

Later that night I realized that maybe the reason I was having a good day for today despite enormous setbacks in a few arenas and a shoddy one other days despite them being relatively innocuous is that I didn’t take the antibiotics I was supposed to for my tooth. I’ve had full blown psychotic reactions from antibiotics before, but usually only the very strong single dose ones, and this was just a standard course of penicillin. Then I realized, slowly, shakily, with more of a sense of fear and power than I have ever felt before, I could account for at least three of my hospitalizations being very close to rounds of antibiotics. I have a variable now. Something to test. I can maybe get records from the offices of places that I’ve stayed, and from my primary care physician.

Also, my healthcare provider called and asked if I wanted to be a part of the Spectrum All of Us research program, and as a person who is transgender and on a lot of medications, I believe I’m scientifically valuable so I’m excited to have that appointment coming up. I’m going to share my hypothesis.

 

 

 

ECC84699-4E60-427A-8B86-78AFC0B584FA*Every time. Any time. It’s so scary to reach out and so much of the mental health system is like “oh, you have a problem?” WHAP! and when you are consistently punished for reaching out, you stop doing it. Remember that you’re dealing with people who are tender.