Blogs
Before telling you how I became a big fat liar, I'd like to remind all victims of abuse that, to your abuser, it doesn't really matter what you say if s/he's in the mood to abuse. In the later years of my marriage, I chose to only tell the truth and there was no difference in the amount of abuse I underwent.
However, having always considered myself an honest person (before realizing how many lies I actually told my husband), my lying had decimated my integrity. I wanted my integrity back.
The process of diagnosis and discovering that you are living with adult ADHD can be trying and difficult. Living well with it is an even bigger challenge. Our guest, Kelly Babcock, a.k.a. Taylor McKinlay, and author of the blog, Tao of Taylor, lives with adult ADHD and does the best he can to make the most of his diagnosis.
Tops in the NY Times this week are reactions to last week's story about Deshawn James Chappell, a man with schizophrenia accused of killing one of his caregivers in Massachusetts. There are those (like our family this week, with Ben back in the hospital after six years of success) who experience first-hand how a cutback in services (to save a penny in the budget) can result in a much-more-costly hospital stay, and the necessity to repeat recovery steps that had worked before. This doesn't even address the human cost. Still, how much worse when the outcome is a horrifying tragedy like the one in reported in the Times; one that many agree could, and should, have been prevented by proper care.
Among the points made in the reactions:
From a letter signed by John Olham, President of the American Psychiatric Association :
"only a very small percentage of people who live with schizophrenia ever become violent, and then it is usually when the treatment system fails them and they discontinue their medications. "
Marilyn and Edwin Andrews of Massachusetts wrote:
"When politicians try to balance serious budget problems on the most vulnerable among us, we all pay the consequences. The mentally ill may not have the influence of the wealthy or the cachet of popular programs, but they most certainly need comprehensive, decent care. "
Solutions? Better care, managed well, can prevent so much relapse.
Depersonalization is a way of experiencing the self. It's a form of dissociation that manifests in a variety of ways that all boil down to a sense of detachment or separateness from one's self. And though depersonalization is a chronic part of living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, it isn't something only those of us with DID experience. For most people, episodes of depersonalization are transient, infrequent, and typically occur during periods of high stress.
Psychiatric treatment is a relationship between you, your mental illness, your drugs, and your doctor(s). That relationship is what matters most when it comes to ensuring medications treat actual mental health issues.
Taking the meds out of clinical practice and studying them in a lab is not only difficult but results in mixed outcomes. The kind we see reflected in the studies which the press pick up on.
Just this week I've read that the drugs don't work, that it's all a big fraud, and that the next Big Pharma pill will cure everything.
Psychiatry, like democracy, is the worst form of treatment except for all the others that have been tried
Eating disorders and loneliness. It is not something we speak or write about often. It is painful to think about being lonely. But I believe people with eating disorders are often very lonely. It is the nature of these illnesses. But it doesn't have to be this way. I would like to shine some light into these dark corners of loneliness, and perhaps help other people with eating disorders feel less alone.
Mental illness messes with the family dynamic, and the mentally ill child can become the odd man out. Recently, Bob came home after spending a week at his father's house. There were no ticker-tape parades or confetti. We usually try to keep his returns low-key because of his problems with transitions, but last night felt different, because I'm not sure any of us were too excited about his homecoming.
I recently wrote about the myth that you can be "too smart" to have bipolar disorder. I wrote about the prejudicial and false thought that if we were "smart enough" we wouldn't have bipolar. This, of course, isn't remotely true.
A couple of people requested more about bipolar disorder and intelligence.
But I'm sorry to say, the truth is, people with bipolar disorder are actually cognitively impaired compared to the average individual.
Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines wrecking as "to reduce to a ruinous state by or as if by violence".
The crime of Wrecking in the former Soviet Union is defined as deliberately giving wrong commands for the purpose of disrupting the normal operations of the state. When I heard the term on the radio today, I was struck by the similarity between wrecking and how an abuser seeks to disrupt his/her victim's "normal operations" and how disrupting normal operations evolves into reducing victims "to a ruinous state by or as if by violence".
When I first heard of Anthony Weiner seeking professional “help” I was ready to blow a cork. I am so done with hearing about politicians, celebrities, and professional athletes seeking treatment for what may very well be an excuse for bad behavior.
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...