Blogs
Recovery from an eating disorder offers many gifts.
Health. Restored relationships with family and friends. New life. Freedom.
And it's true. Eating disorder recovery does mean all of these things, and more.
But that's not the gift I'm talking about.
This gift is much more subtle and may seem to be a curse at first.
There is a type of denial of mental illness that goes beyond mere psychological denial – this is called anosognosia and it is the clinical term for the lack of insight required to understand you have a mental illness. Anosognosia is a neurological disorder thought to be caused by abnormalities in the frontal lobes (Impaired Awareness of Illness (Anosognosia): A Major Problem for Individuals with Bipolar Disorder).
Christie Stewart
In my previous blog, I shared lots of tips on what not to say and do when talking to loved one about self injury for the first time. In this video, I expand on the subject and offer advice about things you should do, as well as some tips on how reach out and offer self-injury help and support in a healthy way.
Here's the funny thing about the PTSD experience: Uncomfortable emotions become so familiar you don't even notice that you have them!
For example, in my own recovery, it wasn't until the anxiety disappeared that I realized I'd been living in such a state of high anxiety. Why is that??
I can think of a handful of things that have caused me trauma in my life, but being diagnosed with a chronic mental illness, bipolar disorder, is at the top of the charts. Those of us who live with a mental illness understand trauma on a deep level. We experienced trauma before our diagnosis, once finding out, and when working to become well again.
I feel ornery today. Woe to anyone who crosses me. You've been warned!
During my marriage, I would have put on my boxing gloves on a day like today. I would check my s%*t-list, which always consisted of only my husband's crap, and remind myself of what he got away with that deserved retaliation. I'd figuratively position myself smack dab in the center of the door frame and wait for him to come home. POW! Sucker punch. And boy, would it feel good to see that look on his face. I always got the first verbal hit on these kinds of days.
The anger inside of me today is the same. Bubbling, festering, the color of sick yellow pus. It needs out, and baby, cleaning this darn house for release just isn't going to cut it. Honestly, I want to write my ex a scathing email. Stir things up, let him know how I feel. Problem is, I don't really feel anything when it comes to him anymore. My ex hasn't been on my list for months because my list doesn't exist anymore. This anxious, angry feeling is mine alone. In the absence of abuse, what in the heck am I supposed to do with all this frustration?
This weeks vlog gives insight into the role that self-esteem plays in depression and how becoming aware of your depressive symptoms can help you build your self-esteem for life.
Big Pharma contributes to mental health stigma in its attempts to sell psychiatric drugs. Big Pharma's message is that people with depression need anti-depressives like diabetics need insulin and talk about chemical imbalance in the brain. They appear to be taking the blame away from person, but they are not. We eat this up and agree and repeat it thinking we are being politically correct. We think this helps people with mental illness feel less stigmatized. But it helps Big Pharma sell its message, and sell their medications.
When I sat down to write Invisible Driving in 1990 there was no way for me to know that this simple act of literary recklessness would hurl me down a path of mental health advocacy ultimately culminating, 22 years later, in the conclusion of this sentence.
Such is life in the land of Whackadoomious. Prior to writing the universe’s first bipolar memoir, I had labored valiantly to keep my mental illness under cover, hidden from the pitchfork-wielding town folk who welcome the mentally ill with the same enthusiasm they shower on seven-year locusts. Going public as a bipolar bear gave me what I call “confession Tourette’s” – I went from “lips are sealed” to bipolar blabbermouth.
Essentially, I wanted to educate the public as much as possible and, I dared, even defied, any of them to look down on me. I had a surly honking attitude back then. In time, I actually came to a point where I condescended to square shooters because – without mental illness as a teacher – their life experience was, quite frankly, inadequate in comparison to mine.
During my trauma, there was a moment so overwhelmingly horrific and painful that I literally willed myself to die. I became intensely still and allowed all energy to flow out of my body. Very soon, I felt myself leave my body and move toward a tunnel in the ceiling that was ringed with white light.
Obviously, I wasn’t successful in my death quest. But in that moment what did I experience?
Where do we go from here? Most of the family thinks just to let her hit bottom and then if she reaches out to help any we can. Some want to just keep paying her bills and just let her sit in the house with no responsibilities. Never been on medication and impossible to get to her when she refuses to talk to ANYONE.
Help.
On the day we agreed to videochat to make things less awkward IRL she woke up with a migraine so we rescheduled to the day after, I made sure to assure her that it was okay and to take her time. Later that day, in the late evening we had a nice chat but suddenly she stopped replying, even though nothing had happened. The day after I texted her good morning and said I hope she was feeling a little better. she wouldn't open my texts.
A couple days after I sent her a longer text saying that even though I had only known her for a short time I care a lot for her and would like to know how she are doing, telling her I'm there for her, assuring her I'm not going anywhere even though things might not be very easy. She wouldn't open it.
A week later I sent a text saying not to feel bad about not answering and that I will be there when she is able to answer again. It's been two weeks since this and she still hasn't opened my texts. She hasn't been active at all.
I don't know what else I can do. I assumed she might have fallen into a depression. I have tried to just not think about it anymore, and I haven't that much but when I do it sort of kills me inside...