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Has any of you been too anxious to speak up?
I have. So many times in my life! In the past, when I have spoken up for myself, I have been treated like I am overreacting. This has made me anxious to speak up the next time.
People had called me crazy, critical, over-reactor, and ridiculous. They have told me to "calm down," and relax, making it look like my fault instead of acknowledging the injustice done to me. This is a tactic of power. It undermines the protests and does a great job of shutting me up. Exactly what that person wants. To ward off more resistance.
35 years at Southwestern Bell/ AT&T, and struggling to make ends meet.
40 years as a union rep and labor foreman for a large highway construction company and his entire pension could be affected by whether there is a contract from the current negotiations.
33 years at Chrysler and faced with the decision to move or take a questionable buyout. Spending years saving in order to “retire early”, and then finding himself with nothing to do.
These are the stories I’ve recently heard from people who DO have a positive work ethic. Men and women who have shown loyalty to their employers for decades only to find themselves lost at the end of their careers. When my mother retired at 62 my father-in-law warned her, “Watch out, the first year is hard.”
It's bad enough to be a trauma survivor with symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, sometimes people hurt us further when we reach out for help--this is called "secondary wounding".
Early in my relationship with my ex-husband, Will, I felt afraid in his presence. I've often wondered why I stayed with him in these early days. My boyfriends before him generally treated me well - very well. I'd known no one like Will before. He seemed exciting and different. I think my curiosity got the best of me; by the time I'd figured him out, we were entrenched in the cycle of abuse.
I think this episode I'm sharing today illustrates what was going on in my head during our earliest abusive interactions. As you will read in the story, Will and I firmly attached ourselves together very quickly. This story happens before he asked me to be his girl.
Addiction, as the saying goes, is a feelings disease. Whenever I used to find myself feeling a certain way, say depressed, angry, upset, etc., I would find a way to use some kind of chemical to alter my emotion. In the end, it didn’t matter how uncomfortable I felt. I knew that all I had to do was to get high, and voila, that would do the trick. Addiction, a feelings disease, begins in part by being uncomfortable with what you're feeling.
As I wrote, some people believe that if you don't have a mental illness, you can't understand someone with a mental illness. I'm not sure this is true.
I have been writing about mental illness for almost a decade now and part of the reason was to try and help people understand bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. And I have succeeded in some regards. I get emails from people quite frequently that tell me how much more they understand about the disease now that they have read my writings. I am tremendously gratified by this.
But, of course, I reach a tiny percentage of people and the issue of mental illness stigma still affects us all. And some people, no matter how hard we try to explain ourselves to them, never seem to understand mental illness.
Which begs the question: can a person without a mental illness ever really understand what we’re going through?
Living with a mental illness often involves certain things--particularly if you're not stable: More time in bed, closed blinds, not enough food in your fridge or too much "bad" food in your cupboard. Isolating yourself. Creating a negative environment. When you're recovering from mental illness, creating a positive environment can help you recover.
For someone who speaks so candidly about his experiences with mental illness, it may come as a surprise to find out that I used to go to extremely great lengths to ensure that no one ever found out about my mental health struggles. In fact, it has only been a few months since I started being open regarding my battles with psychosis, major depression, addiction and suicide attempts.
I use the word “doctor” quite liberally and often use it interchangeably with “psychiatrist.” The reason is quite simple – psychiatrists are, in fact doctors, they are just specialists. Yes, that’s right, your psychiatrist has all the rights and privileges that any other doctor has and could probably remove your spleen, if the occasion called for it.
Nevertheless, there are some crucial differences between “doctors” in general and “psychiatrists” in particular. And sometimes you need a psychiatrist and sometime any old doctor will do. So how do you know if you need a psychiatrist?
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...