My Truth With Mental Illness

I have a mental illness.

I rarely say that out loud. When you say “I have a mental illness” there are many societal stereotypes that surrounds those words.

We portray people with mental illness as unstable, dangerous, need to be locked away. They see people with mental illnesses as those that shoot up places and/or kill people. Then we also downplay those that have mental illness as “just has the blues, need more vitamins, should relax more and take more time for yourself.

I’m reluctant to tell people I have bipolar II disorder. In the back of my mind I wonder how they will react to me once they know. Will they be afraid of me? Will they dismiss me? Will they amplify the inadequacies that already haunt me?

There are so many things that those around me and everyone in general should understand about people with mental illnesses. I have decided to write about.  These are things that I feel can affect those with mental illness the most.

·         Mental illness affects people in many different ways.

If there were three people and they all suffered from schizophrenia, neither of them would experience the illness the same way. The same can be said for any other mental or physical illness. Of course there are similarities and staples of the illness that allow health care professionals to diagnose patients but no two people have the same experiences with a particular mental illness.

·         Having a mental illness is not just a state of mind.

There are days when my depression takes over. I can’t get out of bed, I can’t shower, I don’t want to meet up with anyone. I barely want to eat. It does not help when I try to confide in someone and they tell me to cheer up and everyone gets the blues. If they tried just a little to understand that I have no control over my depression and that includes the ability to just snap out of it. I have a blessed life, three beautiful children, a loving husband and I get to do what I love to do everyday…write. What could I be depressed about?

I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER MY DEPRESSION. My depression, my anxiety disorder and my bipolar II hypomania is not based on my income, how close I am with my family and rather or not I am doing my dream job. It comes and goes when it pleases and the only thing I can do is try to survive. My medication prescribed to me by a doctor helps me to survive and have a better quality of life.

·         Dismissing someone’s mental illness is detrimental to them.

When I was finally diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, I was terrified. What does that mean for me and my family? I spoke with my husband and doctors and decided that the best course of treatment for me was medication and therapy. With that being said…it rubs me the wrong way when I get people telling me that I should not take my medication and should focus on home remedies. Telling us to just drink herbal teas, take more vitamins, get more Vitamin C or read this self help book does not help. It only makes us feel more inadequate, insecure and dismissed. Trust me; we have tried everything under the sun to feel better. When someone you love is given a treatment plan it is best to let that plan play out. The worst thing you can do is tell someone to stop taking their medication.

Now, here is what you can do to help someone you love that has a mental illness.

·         Attend some doctor’s appointments.

·         Give all the support you have.

·         Show compassion.

·         Do your research and better understand their particular mental illness.

·         Do your part to educate others and erase the stigma.

Photobombing

I see those quotes that say things like,

When I see my child smile my bad day goes away.

I feel guilty. My children sometimes only add to my bad day. Some days they give me more anxiety than happiness. I see that quote and I know deep down they can’t take my pain away when I go through bipolar depression. And for the past week I had been feeling just that. Depressed.

My depression has been deep lately and there are many things contributing to those feelings. I’ve had medical issues to deal with, I have weight to lose, I hadn’t been sleeping, and I just can’t seem to get it together.

On Friday nothing was getting any better but I had to suck it up and get ready to go to a Condors’ hockey game. My youngest daughter and her group of karate kids were going to go out on the ice at half time and show off their skills. I really didn’t want to go. On that day my bad mood had not gone away, but my daughter was beyond excited and she would be highly disappointed if her mom wasn’t there to see her. So despite my negative attitude, we all loaded into the car and drove to Rabobank Arena.

When we arrived, the crowds of people only made me feel worse. My social anxiety was catching up to me and I could feel tightness in my chest. Eventually I could see my family getting caught up in the excitement of the loud music and cheering from the rest of the crowd.

Throughout the game, there was a woman sitting in front of me with her family. Her son was also doing Karate. She was there as I was, to watch her child perform. It seems however, not only was she there to watch her child perform but she was also there to try and get on the Jumbotron.

Every time the camera spun around there she was standing in her seat waving her arms doing everything she could to get noticed. Ultimately her attempts failed but that didn’t stop her from trying. At one point I noticed that she was trying to take a selfie with her child. I glanced down to see that clearly my youngest daughter and I were in the photo. I remember thinking; I am obviously in her photo. Can she see me and my child are literally in her photo.

I tried to look away and pretend I didn’t see her taking the picture. But I glanced down again and realized that she was fixing the photo but she didn’t crop us out. Everyone knows how to fucking crop. I sat there trying to decide if I was going to say anything or not.

Did she really just put a fucking filter on this picture?

Deep inside I was little uncomfortable that I would be shared in her life and probably on several social media sites for strangers to see. I decided to calm myself down and not think about it. I just continued to watch the game.

Suddenly I heard her laughing and then she turned in my direction.

“Hi, I was taking some photos and look.”

She pointed her phone so I could see she had zoomed into the photo. It was so close I could make out my daughter’s face.

“Look, she smiled in every picture.”

She showed me several photos and in the back of every one of her pictures was my daughter smiling. My little girl also noticed they were taking pictures and had no trouble photo bombing them.

She was smiling and in a few of them she made funny faces

And you know what… I laughed harder than I had laughed in a week. It was the funniest thing. I hadn’t seen anything so funny in a long long time. It was as if my daughter was saying; if you get a put me in your photo that I’m not a make some faces. I hadn’t laughed this deeply in a long time and it felt so good. Actually, I felt a lot better. Because my depression with bipolar disorder is not something that I can always control, the feeling didn’t last throughout the weekend but for the rest of that night my little girl did some that I didn’t think she could ever do. She brought me out of that sour mood and we laughed about her sweet little smile and funny faces for the rest of the evening.

Indifference

They say the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Indifference means there is a lack of concern or sympathy. You have no stake in the game. When you are indifferent to something or the plight of someone situation you neither love it nor hate it. In other words “There are no fucks given.”

I cannot speak for everyone, but when I love…I love hard and deeply. I hate or strongly dislike…nouns (people places and things) with the same depth of emotion. With love and with hate there is a burning passion that consumes you. This is why they say there’s a thin line between love and hate. If you hate someone it truly means deep down inside you care? Maybe not about the person or the object but if you didn’t care you wouldn’t feel so deeply.

I write about indifference because I have a secret to share.

I HAVE WAY TOO MANY FUCKS TO GIVE AND IT DRIVES ME CRAZY!

I am someone who has trouble being indifferent.. This is no exaggeration. I care deeply all the time. Whether it’s love, hate, compassion or empathy to the plight of another I have learned that I do not have the capacity to be indifferent.

I am one of those sensitive people that cry at the drop of a hat and can hate with a fiery passion that can only be compared to the depths of hell. There is never any in between with me. I either love it or hate it.

Since I was very young I’ve always seen this as a curse. It was a miserable, stressful, life consuming curse.  Most people tell me that to care so deeply about so much is not a curse but a testament to my big heart. I agree. I do have a big generous heart. That doesn’t bother me. What keeps me up at night is the constant obsessing about things and feeling like I am always on an emotional rollercoaster.

My bipolar disorder takes me on a crazy ride to begin with. I never feel in control of my emotions and when I am hating or loving something my mind does not know how not to take it to an extreme. I am always on the far end of both sides of the spectrum when it comes to my feelings.

I hate it so much. (See…there I go with the hate again.)

It causes me to stress over everything. The worse part is when I am extremely sympathetic and empathetic to those that in our society are undeserving of such emotions.. Like, I could never be on a jury. I want to be on one so bad but I know that I could never be impartial.

I watch a lot of Investigative Discovery shows and I am amazed at my reaction to the things I see. When I watch these trials I notice that I always have reasonable doubt. I know you are thinking “what does that have to do with anything?” Well, it means that no matter the evidence I can always empathize with the defendant and therefore I would find it hard to find almost anyone guilty. My heart always finds the good in everyone even the worse criminals.

Having the opportunity to me to just feel MEH about anything would be a vacation from myself. I want to just be and not give a damn.

Indifference is a luxury in my world.

Sometimes I beg the universe to just give me peace and help me to not care about every little

thing I hear and see. Imagine me kneeling next to my bed with my hands pressed together in prayer and I say.

“Dear God, bless my husband and my three daughters. Bless my dad, my cats and despite how much they do not deserve it…you can bless the rest of my family too. Oh and God…can you help me not to give a fuck about life? Amen.”

Fallen Angel

I have been judged.

Not by God himself but by society and closer in my own world…my family.  

I have been judged

I have been found unworthy by Christians and denying myself salvation unless I repent my
salacious ways. 

In he eyes of some of my family I am a fallen angel. I have falling from grace and need to be redeemed. 

In 2 Peter 2:4, it is said, "For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment ..."

A Fallen Angel. What does that term mean to you? For most people, almost no matter what religion or those that do not have a particular religion or do not believe in God, a fallen angel is an angel who sinned and was cast out of heaven.

I grew up feeling like an outcast. I ran with the persona for years that I was a good little girl. I was the obedient excellent kid because that is what everyone expected of me. I tried my best not to get into any trouble. I was dutiful, I was a superb student, I read my bible, I came home at curfew. I was everything they needed me to be.

The problem was, I was nothing like the person I pretended to be. Well, I was a good student and I did try my best to be a good person, but the secrets that I kept to myself I knew would give others a different opinion of me. I was afraid of what my family would think if they knew the real me.

Eventually I knew that I would disappoint them. I would prove to be nothing like they believed me to be and I dreaded the moment when that would come to pass.

When I came out as bisexual, I was called wicked by some members of my family. I had some family that supported me and t
hat made it a little easier. I knew though my family did not truly accept homosexuality and it was a sin. My sister confirmed it for me when I proclaimed to my circle that I was bisexual. My older sister, on a public forum, told me that I was wicked, damned, going to hell and that I was taking my children with me. I was heart-broken. I brushed it off in front of everyone else but deep inside I was deeply hurt.

I tried to rationalize it. I told myself, “I understand. She wants to “save” me. Her religious beliefs tell her that she needs to help me or else I will go to hell. She cares about me and she loves me.”

Then it got worse. Some of the family that seemed to support me started using that I was bisexual against me when they were upset with me. They would say things like I was perverted, nasty and disgusting.

I would have second thoughts, feeling like I should never have pierced the façade that surrounded me. Maybe if I just took my secrets to the grave then none of this would have happened. My family would have never known. Yes, no one would have known but I would have continued with my miserable existence. I would never have lifted the burden that was holding me down.

So in the eyes of my family I am no longer the good and perfect child. I am the wicked and the damned. I am the fallen angel. Deep down I knew I was destined to fall. A person can only hide behind a mask for so long. 

Bipolar Disorder and Dante's Inferno

                                   “Abandon all hope you who enter here.” ~Dante Alighieri

I have always been fascinated with reading, watching and studying religion, mythology and ancient history. Lately I have been drawn to Dante Alighieri’s poem The Divine Comedy and in particular the first part Inferno.

If you’ve never read the poem please let me give you a little background.

In the 14^th century not long before he died, Dante Alighieri wrote an epic three part allegorical poem titled The Divine Comedy.  In Dante’s time you either wrote dramas or comedies. If you wrote them in Latin they were for the upper class. Those written in Italian were written for the lower class. Dante chose to write his poem in Italian so all those that could read would understand. The three parts were called Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paridisio (Paradise or Heaven).  The poem tells of the human spiritual journey through hopelessness in order to find the grace of God.

I was most intrigued by Inferno. I was fascinated by the 9 levels of hell that Dante described. Each level covers a wide range of sins and the worse your sin the lower you are in hell. Dante categorized his personal opinion of the rank of sins based on how he perceived them in his life. Each sin is punished based on the influence it had on others causing them to sin as well. For example, Psychics and Fortune tellers were destined to walk naked with their heads turned backwards representing their backwards thinking and how they mislead people in their lives.

What spoke to me most about the poem was the thought that in order to find peace sometimes you have to hit rock bottom or lose all hope. This sounds strange but to lose all hope and to hit the lowest point in your life can lead you to finally search for or journey toward a better life. It is said that it takes hitting rock bottom before a person can truly see their plight and decide to change things.

Dante’s Inferno to me shows that losing all hope and starting the journey to betterment can be dangerous and not all will succeed or survive. That is why it was at his own peril that he chose to journey to hell. Like many others in mythology, when a living soul travels to hell you run the risk of never returning. However it was the only way. His journey through hell showed him that things in his life could be worse.

I suffer from Bipolar disorder. For most of my life I had no clue that I had this disorder. It took me hitting a very low point before I chose to start my journey to a better tomorrow. I felt hopeless and unsure of my future. My disorder was pushing those that I love away and I had no tools of improving.

It was hell getting a therapist and uncovering all my deepest and darkest secrets. I had to talk about my childhood and things I never wanted to tell anyone. It ripped me apart uncovering each level of hell I had endured.

Yet it was the only way to maneuver my way through the Inferno that was my life.

Though I do not interpret sins the same way that Dante did, I understand what he must have been feeling or going through when he wrote the poem.  

Abandon all hope you who enter here…the only way to begin the journey.

Drowning and Depression: How I Learned to Swim

 I never learned to swim.

When I was younger no one taught me how to swim and as I grew older the water was like an enemy to me.  The fear of drowning was real and I put that fear on the top of my list. It consumed my life.  I was afraid to let my children get near the water. There were stories of so many children drowning and if they were to fall into the water…who would save them?

Not me.

I never learned to swim.

I read somewhere that when you are drowning underwater a lack of oxygen to the brain can cause a sensation of darkness closing in from all sides. A person drowning is unable to shout, call for help or seek attention.

That was enough to leave me terrified.

Then I realized…I had been drowning for years.

I had been drowning in my own self pity, sorrow, dejection and fear. For years I suffered from depression in silence unable to shout, call for help or seek attention.

Do you want to know what it’s like to be depressed?

It’s just like drowning.

No, it does not mean you are sad sometimes or have the “blues”.

No.

When you are depressed it consumes you. It interferes with everyday life and brings with it feelings of doom and hopelessness.

Everyone has ups and downs and may feel lost on some occasions but when you are stuck in that downswing and can’t get out of it for days, weeks months and, in my case, years then you are probably suffering from clinical depression.

Depression is as dangerous as drowning and keeping your head above water is the hardest thing when you feel like no one around you can save you.  When no one ever taught how to survive the madness.

For most of my life I suffered from depression. I felt like I was drowning every day as I walked, ate, went to school, talked to friends and interacted with my family.

A few years ago I was diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder.  After living with the disorder I realized that for me, depression was much worse than hypomania. Yes, I can make some bad decisions when I’m hypo-manic or when I let myself reach manic stage.

My triggers?

With me, depression can be triggered by anything that made me stand out or seem different. It was mainly when keeping up the façade that I was a normal, happy healthy human being when I felt like any other than that.

My depression increased when I started to question my sexuality. I knew that I liked boys but on some level I knew that I like girls as well. It frightened me because I prided myself on being the model child. How could I be the model child when I was clearly going to hell? I kept my secret from everyone. When you are keeping a secret it like that life begins to feel lonely.

Those were the times in my life when I felt like I didn’t want to be on this earth any longer. Sometimes the pain would get so bad that in order to get rid to it I would take a razor blade and make small slices on my legs. There was so much hopelessness and pain that I constantly thought that my family would be better off without me.

My boyfriend (now my husband) didn’t understand what it meant to be depressed. He’s an ambitious man and seeing someone laying around all day or not accomplishing anything is tantamount to blasphemy.

“Why are you in pajamas all day? When I leave you’re in pajamas and when I come home you’re in pajamas,” he would complain.

How do you explain to someone that the thought of looking for an outfit and then putting on that outfit seems like torture? Everything seems like it is a life or death situation and those simple task like combing your hair, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, putting on regular clothes( and not pajamas) seemed like running three marathons in a row.

Through therapy I learned that just like no one taught me how to swim, no one taught me how to cope with bipolar disorder and my depression. There were things going on inside of me and I lacked the tools to work with them.

The only way to deal with something is to learn what it is about, what triggers it and the best ways to cope. For me, I try hard to focus on the positive. I take medications prescribed to me and I do yoga whenever I get a chance. I learned new ways to deal and interact with people and I learned to how to explain some of the issues that consume me.  It can be so lonely sometimes down there in the way bottom. The hole of depression can go very deep and the only way to climb out is with love and support from family and in some cases the proper medications.

Last summer, I did something I thought I would never do.

I learned how to swim.

It wasn’t pretty and I was learning at the same rate as my three year old but I went to the deep end and I swam. I lifted my face up to the sky with my body floating on top and I did the backstroke all the way from one end of the pool to the other.

I learned that nothing is impossible for me and I do not let depression run my life anymore. When depression comes around (as it always will) I don’t try to keep my head above water. I swim like my life depends on it.

Sometimes…it does.

Happy Holidays…Or Not

The holidays can bring out the best in people. More people are willing to give back to the needy, help their fellow man and become closer with their families.

For you it doesn’t feel the same. You see everyone smiling and happy. They are baking cookies and singing Christmas carols. While they are enjoying the holiday season you are struggling to just get out of bed and join the world in their holiday obsession.  You feel out of step and not in tune with others around you and that can be a lonely feeling.

I am here to tell you that you are not out of step with the world. You are 1 of millions of people all over the world that are suffering from Depression, Anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and Bipolar disorder.  There are things that you can do that can make your holidays happier.

These tips will take an effort to pull off and may be easier said than done but can help when you are feeling lonely, guilty and depressed.

1.     

      Do not try to please others.

·         When you are feeling sad and low do not try and force yourself to be happy just because you want to please those around you or to make them feel more comfortable. Be honest with those around you and let them know you are having a hard time.

2.      Stay away from large crowds…if you need to.

·         If get invited to a party and you know deep down you will not have a good time or it has the capacity to make you feel worse, don’t go. Plan something at your place or somewhere you feel comfortable. You will feel less alone and may have a good time.

3.      Do not do more than you can do.

·         Set reasonable expectations with dinners, gifts and events you plan. When you set your expectations too high and you are unable to fulfill them…you set yourself up for guilt and could deepen your depression. When the holidays come less is more.

4.      Do find time for yourself.

·         Make sure you find some time to be alone. Everyone needs a moment to breathe and when you suffer from a mental illness you probably need more time than most. I know that I do and I find time by sneaking off to the bathroom or hiding in a closet if I need too. Sometimes I make an excuse that I need to get something from the store and sit in the parking lot a few extra minutes. Do what you have to do to find that 10 minutes of alone time.

5.      Do cry when you need too.

·         Sometimes things can become so overwhelming that you feel the need to cry. Cry! Crying can be a way to refresh yourself. Don’t feel guilty and don’t feel like you have to hold it in.

6.      Give Back.

·         Giving back to others has a way to make you feel good even when you think that nothing else can. It relieves some of the guilt you may have for not being happy during the happiest time of the year. Volunteer at a shelter. Coordinate a collection of items you can donate.  Giving back to your community or others in need can help and those people who aren’t able to help themselves.