Tag Archives: Mental health

Apr18

What Not To Say

Posted on by
Standard
What Not To Say

You know what I hate being asked?

“Why is your anxiety so bad today?”, or “What’s causing your anxiety?”, or “Why is today so hard?”

If I knew the answers to any of those questions I’d probably be a lot better off than having to tell someone, “I’m sorry, my anxiety is really bad today.” or “I’m not doing very well today.” It’s the downside of being so self-aware. I understand that when my anxiety is particularly bad or my mood is swinging particularly low, it means I’m probably being difficult in my relationships. Because my mental health is not anyone’s fault, I don’t like to punish people when I’m having a bad day. So I say “I’m sorry” when I realize that’s happening, and then I get the questions. Suddenly I feel like, not only am I being disruptive in my relationships, but I need to know and be able to put into words the reasons why I feel the way I do, why I act the way I do. I suppose I’m fortunate for the times people ask the questions. At least that tends to mean they believe me. It’s even harder to apologize to someone for something I can’t control and have them think I shouldn’t be using my mental health issues as an “excuse”.

You know what I hate to hear?

“You should take fish oil.” or, “You should make sure you’re getting some exercise everyday.” or, “You should cut back on your (insert person’s pet toxin of choice).”

I might smile and nod while you tell me these things. I might offer that I exercise as often as I’m able, that I take the recommended supplements. I might outline the many ways in which my eating habits are above and beyond the average. I might even understand that you’re trying to help me because you care. I might remember to appreciate that.

But what I feel is responsible. I feel as though if I could just exercise more, find the winning supplement combination, be just a little more exacting with my diet… if I could just do the One Right Thing than all of this would go away. I’d be cured; no more anxiety, no more mania or depression. Just me and the perfect blend of fish oil, exercise, and whole grains.

I feel the blame you are assigning with your words. I feel the fault of my mental illness being laid at my feet; I am helpless to prevent myself from shouldering the load. If I only I could do more, try more, research more. If only I worked harder, I could be well.

I know that these are not the things you mean for me to feel. I know that you mean well. When I am at my best I am able to trust your intentions. And so…

You know what I like to hear instead?

“I’m sorry, is there anything I can do?”

Nine times out of ten the answer will be no. No, there is nothing you can do that will take away this anxiety. There is nothing you can do that is going to convince me in this moment that all is right with the world. There is nothing you can do to restore peace to a very troubled soul.

Except…

Except for the one thing that you just did, which is to tell me, through your question, that you acknowledge that I am being truthful about my state of mind and heart, and that you are willing to support me in the moment of my distress; that you do not assign blame but you are willing to share the burden. I won’t need anything from you, except to know that you are there when it is hard as readily as you are there when it is easy.

Related articles
Nov28

Mama’s Crazy

Posted on by
Standard
Mama’s Crazy

I want to be the mom that encourages her kids to flavor cereal with honey, that has kids who’ve been raised to prefer books over television, that has a cupboard full of herbs and tinctures and the know-how to use them. I don’t want to be a crazy mom.

I sometimes feel very confident that I’m going to be just the kind of mom I want to be. I thought of this as I ate a bowl of cereal flavored with honey this morning and, again, as I prepared a homeopathic remedy for my infant daughter’s gas. Our house is filled with wholesome foods and we believe in sitting down together for a home cooked dinner at night. We started reading to Mabel weeks ago and she loves storytime. My cupboard is full of tinctures and herbs and I’m coming along in the know-how department.

Sometimes, though, maybe even more of the time, I am convinced I’m not going to escape bringing my own brand of crazy into motherhood.

I feel guilty for every moment that she’s awake and not being somehow entertained or interacted with. I worry that we don’t go outside enough and feel guilty for the lack of motivation to do so. I feel personal responsibility when she fusses too much to allow someone other than me to hold or comfort her. I feel horrible and question my decision to stay at home with her when I realize just how hard of a time I’m having being one-on-one with her so much of the time. I feel terrible when my husband has to work half days during the week so that he can provide me with some relief, and worse still when I find myself resenting his ability to come and go as he pleases. I second guess my decision to go back to work one day a week, convinced I’m going to do some sort of irreparable damage. I’m already worrying about what will happen when my daughter finds this blog and finds out all about me. I tell myself all the time that I should be much better at all of this.

Although I have yet to fully accept the diagnosis as accurate, I worry that I’m going to bring the highs and lows of bipolar living into motherhood. There are some days where all I can manage to do is the bare minimum; rock the baby, feed the baby, change the baby. Yesterday I watched five episodes of my favorite guilty pleasure TV show and kept the baby alive, but didn’t bother trying to tackle the mess in my house, to answer the phone, or to seek out an adventure for Mabel and I. Today’s a little better but some days are a little worse. No one can tell for sure what tomorrow will bring. I worry that my old method of coping with whatever is broken in my brain – alternating hibernating cycles, where I hide on the couch and do the bare minimum, with productive cycles, where I get everything done – isn’t going to work now that I’m a mom. Sure, Mabel is mostly content to snuggle on the couch all day now but that won’t last much longer. I worry that, without the coping mechanism that I perfected over the years, I might lose control of my moods. I worry that Mabel will have memories of a mom who is depressed and lethargic for a few days every now and again and that those memories will tarnish any of the good stuff. I worry there won’t be enough good stuff.

There’s so much to worry about, so much of the time. I understand that much of this is normal new mom stuff. I accept that some of it is the hormonal veil of postpartum blues. Yet I also acknowledge that some of it could very well be real and deserves my attention sooner rather than later.

Still, even after a day of low emotion where I can barely muster enough voice to greet my husband when he gets home, Mabel’s toothless, soundless giggle can pierce the fog and I find myself grinning in response. There’s just no joy like kissing her sweet smelling, milky mouth when she finishes nursing; there’s no contentment like the weight of her head pressed to my shoulder and against my neck as she snuggles to sleep.

I’m afraid of our future, but I keep trying to remain in our present. The truth is, I can’t guarantee what kind of mom I’m going to always be and what kind of memories Mabel is going to have. I remind myself of simple truths: to take each day one at a time; that taking time to take care of me will help me to be a better mom; that if I do what I can to make the best of the good times, maybe Mabel will forgive me a few bad times.

Related articles
Dec29

Suicide

Posted on by
Standard

I wrote this blog post on December 23 but thought it best not to post it until after the holiday had come and gone.  

19 years ago today I tried to kill myself. It was the only time I would do so, unless you count a decade of drug and alcohol abuse. It wouldn’t be the last time I would want to, but it was the last time I was brave enough to try. I was 14.

I took a bottle of aspirin. People laugh when I tell them that now. It is funny, I suppose, thinking a bottle of aspirin would be able to kill someone, but this was an era before information on how to kill yourself was readily available on the internet.

Most of that age is a blur, save a few reserved memories that are very clear. I don’t know the span of days or months from which these memories are pulled. A month, a year, who knows? I don’t remember much but this…

I remember my mother picking me up at school, crying, wanting to know if the confession my father had just made was true. It was. I remember her letting him come home after a few days. I remember doing dishes and him sitting at the kitchen table. I remember being upset and feeling awkward.

I remember being left in charge of my younger brother, who had just turned two, when my mother went to the hospital to give birth to my youngest sister. My older brother stayed shut away in his room. I remember scanning the cupboard that held various family medications, but don’t remember what I was thinking, how my mind got to that place. I remember kissing my younger brother goodnight when I put him to bed, thinking I would never see him again and that I would miss him very much. It was a tough goodbye.

I came downstairs and lined up the contents of the aspirin bottle, one by one, around the perimeter of the lamp stand. I sat in the rocking chair with a glass of water and took them, all, one by one. I went to bed thinking I would never wake up again. I fell asleep. Surreal.

I woke up.  And how.  A startling, sit up straight while vomiting wake up. I remember thinking that this is what it felt like to die and that I suddenly didn’t want to. My father had come home from the hospital sometime during the night, I guess, but I passed his room and went downstairs to wake up my brother. I don’t remember what I said to him but I know he told me drink milk. I tried, while he went upstairs to get dad. It didn’t go well.

Dad came downstairs and stared at me for a long time, scowling. He said, “That was stupid”, and “I guess I’d better bring you to the hospital, or your mother is going to be pissed.” I’m sure he said other things, but I don’t remember them. He was disgusted with me, disgusted by me.

He brought me to the hospital. I was certain I would die, I couldn’t believe how painful it was to be that sick. I remember being struck by the change in my father’s nature when we reached the door to the emergency room, he was so protective suddenly, arm around my shoulders, consoling. I thought he’d had a change of heart, I remember feeling encouraged. I was a fool.

Fading in and out again, not sure what happened next. Memories come in flashes, a doctor(?) leans in and says ‘why would you do this, you are so beautiful’. I’m sure I’d been told I was beautiful before, isn’t everyone? But it had never meant more than it did in that moment, covered in vomit and charcoal.

Aunt Kathe and a fluffy white, stuffed something-or-other… I won’t let it go. Mom’s there, she seems mad … I have to stay, I have to talk to a psychiatrist … I’d better not tell him anything about what happened at home. I talk to the psychiatrist, I say nothing… He thinks I should stay. Mom’s back, wants to know what I said to the psychiatrist… I said nothing. They’re signing me out and taking me home. I want to stay at the hospital… I don’t say anything.

We told the rest of the family I’d had a stomach problem but was just fine now. I remember talking to Aunt Kathe when she came to visit. I don’t remember what we talked about but I think it made Mom mad. The minister from the church we attended came to see me. I can’t remember what it was he said to me exactly but I remember something about how “grownups make mistakes”.

I remember being called into the living room, and told to close the door. It was our impromptu conference room. I remember the lecture. What I did was inconsiderate and stupid. Did I realize the ramifications of causing my mom to sign out of the hospital early to come and see me in another one? She would never get back those precious first days with her newborn daughter, those were gone forever. How could I do this to them? How could I be so selfish? I needed to apologize. To both of them.

I was numb. I apologized. It was not to be mentioned again. For the sake of the family, do not mention it again.

I say all of that to say this: not everything is a product of disease. Some of the experiences in my life made me who I am today.  While bipolar is a disease that I can’t fully control, wounding of this nature, and the scars left behind, are a different matter; they can be overcome. Healing can be achieved. If the truth is told.

Sometimes it’s good to remember that the root of some things lie outside of myself, which means the answers do to.

Dec22

Hey! Your girlfriend is annoying.

Posted on by
Standard

I hate relationship me.
Uncomfortable, awkward.
needy, whining brat.
Where does she come from?
Does she go back there?
Because I gotta tell you,
I’m in love with this man,
but his girlfriend is driving me nuts.

My therapist says…oh yes, I have one now, I highly recommend it. Anyway, my therapist says that I’m projecting the instability of the rest of my life onto my relationship which is, left to itself, actually quite lovely. Isn’t that fantastic? My entire life turned upside down in one powerful week (or so it very much feels), with the exception of my relationship with my boyfriend and so, to cope with this, I begin attacking my relationship.

See why I have a therapist?

Oh but there’s more. She says it’s actually very common. I forgot to ask her why. I should have asked her that so I could have shared that important piece of information as well. Oh well, point is, it doesn’t make me crazy, it makes me “common”.

Hm. That’s unusual. Well, but it’s not unusual, so says lady therapist. She thinks I’m actually more normal than I think I am. She says it like this though: “Seana, you’re much more normal than you give yourself credit for. You’re just more colorful than some of the rest of us.” Mmhmm. Colorful equals crazy like healthy equals fat. I’m so onto you lady.

The therapist lady, whom I like quite well but have just proven to be a liar, tells me that bipolar people are actually some of the most creative and intelligent people around; capable of thinking several lines of thought at once, of thinking outside the box. I ask her if I should put it on my resume. I can’t really tell if she’s amused.

What else? Oh yes, lady therapist says that, because of my history of abuse, the fact that my relationship is actually a very good one doesn’t work in it’s favor. That is to say, Jason being trustworthy and in love with me, subconsciously causes me to put a wall up between us, to keep a bit of distance. I compare him to other people in my life (read childhood) who were supposed to love me and be trustworthy and who, inevitably, one by one, turned out to be very hurtful people indeed.

I keep accusing him of waiting for the other shoe to drop when, in fact, it is me. Oh, he’s such a lucky fella. I should teach him the moves to the crazy dance. We can do it together. (Shhh… my therapist says I should stop calling myself crazy. She wouldn’t care if it wasn’t true, I betcha).

So then. I’m not crazy, I’m normal. Which is almost reassuring except that it’s not. It’s not, because that means you’re all a bit like this, too. Which means there’s no escape. Which means, we’re all just a little bit crazy and we’re all just a little bit stuck this way.

Come on, I’ll teach you the crazy dance. We can do it together.

I tell Jason all of this, of course. I wouldn’t be telling you if I hadn’t told him. Anyway, I tell him all of this and, during the course of that conversation, we talk about bipolar disorder in general and the mood swings and what we think that looks like on me, and am I manic or normal right now because it’s actually hard to tell. During this he says, and oh yes I quote, “I just like hanging out with you, no matter what you’re like that day. I come over, gauge your mood and go from there. Doesn’t matter to me, I just want to be with you.”

I gotta tell you all, from back here behind  wall and from underneath the protection of all my sabotaging artillery, I am so in love with this guy.

Seriously though, his girlfriend is on my last nerve. Can someone shut her up?

Dec13

Diagnosis

Posted on by
Standard

I’m staring at a blank screen and thinking, I’m supposed to be sharing how I feel. And then I realize, I don’t have any idea how I feel. I don’t know anything about myself. I suddenly have no idea who I am, which parts of me are real, or what will remain of me. It’s sort of an astonishing feeling. I have known myself better than anything these last years, I have become excruciatingly self-aware. It’s become my art.

I have been sick.

I think to myself, I have always had these moments, a few oddities here and there. I’ve always been idiosyncratic, it’s part of my charm. So I can be a little moody, a little difficult; life can feel just so hard at times. Grin and bear it, everyone’s having a rough time of it.

I have no idea what to believe anymore. I keep trying to wrap my head around a concept of ‘normal’ that I no longer understand. If this is not really me than who am I? Who am I about to become? Will I like her more or less than I like me now? Will I feel normal? Who’s idea of normal?

I made myself an appointment with a therapist a few weeks ago. I was so tired all of the time and no one could figure out what was wrong with me. I felt guilty about being so tired all of the time, and it was making me sad. I thought talking with someone would help me soothe all those silly fears that I was going crazy.

I started to feel better just a few days before my appointment on Friday. My optimism seemed to be returning, and most of my energy. A little tired in the late afternoon but coffee helped. I was relieved,  time always does the trick, and a bit chagrined, I shouldn’t have made that silly appointment with the therapist.

I decided to keep the appointment anyway. Things had seemed pretty intense during the last couple of months and I’d been pretty scared a couple of times. I’d started to wonder if I had ADHD or some sort of developing OCD. I’ve been so all over the place lately that I’d started to actually worry if that diagnosis 6 or 7 years ago was more accurate than I’d given it credit for. So, I went.

Diagnosis: bipolar. Again. Shit.

And so here I sit, questioning everything. Everything. How many of my past mistakes can be traced back to this diagnosis? How many of my strange fears and anxieties could suddenly make more sense if this is true? How many of those long days of heaviness and nights of insomnia might I be spared in the future?

But what if she’s wrong? What if they both were? I don’t want to claim something that’s not true, to believe something is sick if it’s not. I think, I won’t keep any of the appointments I set up and I’ll pretend, again, that this didn’t happen and work a little harder to keep it all together. I don’t want to try only to lose hope.

My therapist said that medication will help me to not be sick, to help me feel more normal. I guess that means I’ll recognize whatever it is as normal when I get there. I just wonder which one of my ideas of normal it will be.

Do I really want to take medicine? Is that really necessary?

I argue myself back into disbelief and insist I’m going to stay there. There’s just too much unknown, too much risk to even begin to think about mental health. Things have been fine, things are going to be fine, everything is just fine.

But I can’t help but wonder, to be just the smallest bit curious…what if? What if it is possible that I could do more than just ‘get by’? What if I stopped dreading how many years are ahead of me and began to embrace the life of my future? What if the medication did help instead of hurt? What if the side effects are bearable, or even temporary, and turn out to be worth it?

What if I accept that I don’t want to live like this anymore?

There’s always hope.