Blogs
Is it really true that it is better to be late than to never arrive? In my experience with ADHD and tardiness, I'd have to disagree. I say it's better to never arrive and claim some horrible calamity had befallen you than to arrive late. They're more likely to forgive you.
My name is Holly Gray. I live in the Pacific Northwest United States with my 11-year-old son and a cat named Alex P. Keaton. My life has been a search for identity and a series of 180 degree turns that baffled and frightened me. I have been in and out of therapy since I was 14 and up until five years ago, found very few answers in the therapeutic process. I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder in early 2005. I wrestled with the diagnosis for several years before finally coming to terms with it. In doing so, I learned and unlearned a great deal about dissociation and DID.
There is a sad and self-fulfilling myth out there that you can't completely recover from an eating disorder. We have to fight this pessimism!
Recently, I've received a few messages from people beginning bipolar medication treatment and going through the terrors of medication auditions and, um, the displeasure of the side-effects of bipolar medication. In this video, I try to set expectations with regards to how long it takes medications for bipolar disorder to work, and how long side-effects will last.
Your friends like him and your family already sees him as, well, family. But the problem is that you feel lukewarm about him. You often beat yourself up about not liking him more because he’s just an all-around nice guy, and what’s not to like about him? Unfortunately love works in funny ways and this particular decent guy isn’t tugging at your heart strings.
Breaking up with anyone is tough, but it’s even harder when that person is a nice person. After all, nobody wants to look like the bad guy. Last week I wrote about The Mistake of Settling in a Relationship and examined a few reasons why people settle and some signs you may be settling. So if you know you are in fact settling, now what? You can either stick it out in hopes that somehow this person will magically transform into the man/woman of your dreams, or you can do something about it.
I complain a lot about the lack of common ground out there about eating disorders. There are theories posited in conversation and in the press and even in refereed professional journals giving definitive, yet unfounded theories on the causes of eating disorders. So, why the lack of common ground?
I don't think it is deliberate, or a hidden agenda, or anyone's greed or carelessness. I think it is JUST COMPLICATED.
It never ceases to amaze me how such a simple thing as a timer or alarm can snatch me away from the very jaws of feeling like a failure in ADHD. It also amazes me how often I forget to use that simple device and end up as Failure's lunch.
I mentioned what remission means for a mental illness in a clinical setting: reduction in specific, empirical symptoms by a given amount. In other words, you are given a depression “score” and remission means reducing that score by a given number.
But does that number mean anything at all to the patient in question? If you achieved it, are you "better"? If you suffer from mental illness, what does remission really mean?
Gotta dance? A quick video of my "tap room" and thoughts on "wanting vs. needing" to be active and how I am getting my groove back after dancing started losing the FUN.
As a seriously ill person, I can honestly say that I have given up. Many times. I have lain on my floor praying that someone would kill me. I have taken too many pills hoping that I would die. And yes, I have even cut into myself hoping that I would bleed out.
We give up. After years of trying. Years of bipolar medication. Years of side-effects. Years of therapy. Years of doctors. Years of hospitals. We give up. We’re done.
But what happens if in one of these moments your doctor gives up too?
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...