Category: mental health

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Things Family and Friends Have Said To Me (Or About Me) That Suggest They Think I Might Be Crazy (Or Dumb)

“Mom, if we keep driving around like this forever and we get lost and can’t get home, I wouldn’t eat you even if I was starving. I don’t want to get Mad Mom disease.”

“I think you should stop looking at me. But if you must keep looking at me, do it from over there. On the other side of the door.”

“Oh, thanks for answering the phone! I was worried you’d never pick it up again after our conversation the other night about brain harvesting and emus. Have you slept yet?”

To my husband (a year and a half after we were married): “Are you sure you don’t want to look at other marriage options?”

“Can you tell me what colors you mix together to make orange? You can pick from red, yellow and blue.”

“You know when someone tells you ‘You’re so crazy!’ but they’re kidding? This is not one of those times! I need my shirt back. And the fire extinguisher.”

“I did tell you, but you were mumbling something about erasers so you might not have heard me.”

“That is so….pretty the way you organized the thumbtacks into 20 different containers by color shade and size.”

“But did you ever ask yourself why most people /don’t/ carry a raw potato in their purse with them everyday?”

“Do you always keep your phonebook in the fridge?”

“Rubber bands are not really evil. The devil is evil. Rubber bands are useful tools for people to keep papers bound together. Do you see the difference?”

“Is it ok if the green beans are touching your fruit salad or would like you like me to built a mini-fort with the mashed potatoes to protect them?”

“No, I don’t go up and talk to whoever is there even if I think they look interesting. Normal people don’t do that. They just go there to do their laundry.”

“Please stop singing. And if you don’t wash the paint off your hands before we leave I’m going to make you wear my ski gloves to dinner.”

“When I look at you, I feel a little bit better about myself. And I feel so much smarter.”

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Good Times

Know what’s fun? Going to the doctor and having them scold you for getting off medication 3 and a half years ago. Then having them refuse to give you any now because, dude, you are crazy. How do you know what you need if you are crazy?

Instead she ordered a blood panel, which is fine since I wanted one anyway. It could be hormonal, this crazy I have. No kidding.

So, how about that. I finally got enough courage to go ask for some meds and I was told no. But I can call a psychiatrist that is covered under my plan and wait for three weeks for a consult. And then maybe I’ll get some. Awesome.

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Mutterings

There are times when I find that even thinking about thinking about what I’m feeling is enough to induce a sleep-like coma for an additional three hours of the morning. I could easily get out of bed, as I did for years, around 6am every morning when my brain snaps to attention and begins its daily factoring, searching and planning regimen. I could. I could if I wasn’t so scared of the empty feeling that engulfs me within seconds. A solid core of emptiness with layers of what ifs and insecurities wrapped tightly around and around like the inside of a golf ball.

This week I will go to the doctor and ask for medication. Despite all the bravado and planning ahead in the case of this emergency, I feel like a failure. I’ve managed well for a few years now with meditation, vitamins and supplements. I’ve made it my mantra to be fearless and do the hard thing first as a way of keeping my emotional-self healthy. I’ve made decisions with machete perfection as to what situations I’m willing to walk in to regarding work, family and my social calendar. And now, it seems, that even with all my careful planning and attention to detail, I’ve not taken two steps back but more like a mile. This from the same mind and mouth that recommends to anyone that if medication is needed then grab it with both hands and don’t look back. I’m a hypocrite.

My practical self tells me I will do well to take care of this soon. My reasonable self knows that the thing to do is to call right this minute so that all the time I spend with my kids this week will be as great as it can be. My intellectual self tells me I have not failed and that everyone’s life comes in waves of highs and lows, in seasons of sunny and dark. My clinically depressed self tells me that I am alone, ugly, unlovable, inconsequential, worthless, unworthy of being in the same room with my kids who might get some of my poison on them and that in not secluding my person in a dank, dark place to merely exist until I die I somehow endanger them. By just being alive I endanger them. That the best gift I could ever give them is to disappear from their lives. That voice worked once before and I struggle to keep it at bay.

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Brassiere

‘Mother’ she said, ‘you do realize that that….flesh-colored thing you are wearing is doing nothing that most females require their bras to do…?’ And yes, I did. But there is only so much time to be vain in one day and if it’s my brassiere that sags a little and barely covers and completely fails at protecting the world from my nipples, then so be it. At least I have matching socks on. Oh. No? Well, I’m wearing pants.

But then she took me to the store, leading me by the hand through aisles of underwear and lingerie, which I almost didn’t recognize, so long it’s been since my eyes laid on them, and wondered who the people are who manage to wear plum and ecru flimsy, dressy things while I can barely seem to find my shoes.

She stopped short in front of a wall filled, nay, teeming with breast restrictors of all types. I immediately felt overwhelmed. We left and she had to live with her disappointment.

A few days later, my husband said, ‘Oh, dear. That really is the saddest bra I’ve ever seen. Is it doing anything at all for you besides making your breasts look like sagging, deflated balloons? Why don’t you wear a different one?’ I looked in the mirror and realized that truly, 2 years is a long time for a bra. It had lived a good life. I thanked it and deposited it into the nearest rubbish bin. However, by some strange life predicament, it was the only bra that I had. So, now I had none.

Later that day, my husband and I went to the store and looked at all those bras together. I took fifteen or so into the dressing room and I’m happy to say that when we walked out, I had a total of 4 breast restriction devices in a bag. Never has a woman been so blessed. I was rich with brassieres! I felt a heady sensation and looked at every person we passed with a slight air of superiority because, really, not one of them was walking home with one pink, one off-white, one rose with white polka dots and a darling amount of white trim around the edges and one dangerous and racy dark red number with a steamy black overlay made of black mesh.

‘Really?’ my daughter exclaims after I tell her the good news. ‘Well, why don’t you look any different?’ she asks, examining my mid section. ‘I can still totally see your nipples.’ ‘Oh.’ I replied. ‘I’m not actually wearing one today.’ ‘You mean, you’re totally braless?’ ‘Um, yes. But I combed my hair!’ Her eyes told the story of an old woman that had sailed the sea of a thousand storms and seen vast disappointment. She sighed and said, ‘Well, if saggy boobs are what you want, then who am I to try and change you?’

The next morning, truly repentant, I wore one and have been every day ever since. I still don’t do my makeup every day or shave my legs on a regular basis. But at least the world is saved from my nipples. I only have so much time per day to be vain.

Leah 1
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Keepin' It Real

I can’t even tell you how emotional I’ve been for the past week or so. It’s taken over a week to get over Christmas and Christmas was great! There is something about being with large groups of people that puts me just slightly over the edge to a place that is weird and unhealthy. I do great up until about 20 people in the room and then I’m toast. Unless I’m working. I know. It makes no sense. But if I’m shooting photos of a large group, no problem. But if I’m in a large group and anyone wants to talk to me or relate to me as a person, then holy crap I have a hard time and have to spend the next 7 days recuperating as if I was just in a battle field or went through a hurricane or something. Which I didn’t. It’s dumb. Or, it could be something else.

For the past few years I’ve told people that are close to me and love me that if I have more than 2 bad days in a row a month, I would seriously look at it. Especially if it went on for a few months. A few bad days a month I expect and can handle. Five days or a week or more: no. I’m not prepared to lose that much time out of every 30 days of my life and the past two months I’ve been a mess for at least a week each. And so I’m looking at this carefully but with much speculation. Because getting back on medication is not something I want to do. But if it’s something I need to do, I’ll do it in a heartbeat. Playing around with my mental health is something I will never do. More than anything, I want and need to be a mentally strong mother for my kids. And I’m guessing Joe would like it if I could make it through a month without falling apart. Just a guess.

My birthday is in a few days. I don’t think that turning 36 has anything to do with this, but you just never know. Maybe I’m crying all day for a week because I’m so damn old.

For a glimpse of what I look like lately, you can go here. (via Mimi Smartypants)

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HuffPost Column

My next piece at The Huffington Post is up: Teaching Fearlessness to My Daughter

A few weeks ago, I took my sixteen-year-old daughter to what some might think was an inappropriate event. I know her father did, as he repeatedly reminded her the day before we went, and actually on the phone a few hours before, that she was beautiful and healthy and in no way in need of what this event had to offer.

Clearly, he didn’t understand why I was taking her.

Thin, a documentary by Lauren Greenfield, is a stark, honest and riveting look at eating disorders. The effect they have on the human brain, twisting body image into something toxic, is so pervasive that you almost can’t believe it. But then you do believe it, because it’s true.

I was lucky enough to go to see the documentary a few weeks ago with Alex. We had many a lively conversation in the next few days. I’m so thankful we were invited to the screening. The book is quite lovely, too.

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Rhoda

My sister and her daughter came for the weekend. My niece and my daughter have the same birthday two years apart. We try to get together every year. I’m wondering what year it will be when their 2-year age difference won’t be noticed by them. Over 20? Although this year was much easier than last year. 14 and 16 are closer than 12 and 14.

This is the best visit Rhoda and I have ever had in many ways. Almost the entire time was spent catering to the girls because that is the point of the get-together, but the little amount of time we did find to catch up, we spent disagreeing on almost everything. We don’t agree on religion or politics and when you are raised a Mormon in a small Utah town, religion and politics are pretty much what you have. And country music.

The thing that was so wonderful was that it didn’t matter. Rhoda and I have been through the wringer together. She was all I had when I was growing up. She tried to protect me from everything bad and failed, since that is an impossible task. That made her feel guilty and try harder to keep me safe. Her entire life became co-dependant on mine. I was a mess. She fixed me up. We kept each other busy for years.

When I finally got well in 2002, our relationship kind of crumbled. She needed me to be sick and I wasn’t. And moreover, I refused to go back to that place where she felt comfortable. And even though she was happy for me to be well, she felt angry and alone after spending her entire life around my needs and then having me move out of that space and leave her there.

We went through some major growing pains together over the past few years. There were quite a few months that went by when we didn’t make any attempt to contact each other. I was learning how to stand on my own two feet and she was trying to figure out how to be happy I was well and also figure out what she was going to do with the rest of her life now that I didn’t need her in the same way. We figured out how to be sisters in a healthy relationship and it only took us about 4 years.

So even though she supports Bush (which is so wrong) and believes that jumping through hoops will please God and give you special entry into heaven (don’t even get me started), it’s ok that we don’t agree. And she has figured out how to have a life that doesn’t include fixing mine. And I overlook the fact that she loves Toby Keith. And even though I drink alcohol and coffee, shop on Sundays and believe that people who love people that happen to be the same sex as them should have the same rights as I do, she’s glad to be my sister.

Pretty great.

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I'm This Charming

One of the benefits of becoming integrated is that most of the odd things that you used to do, routinely and/or compulsively, fade or become minimized. For example, if you were compelled to eat exactly 18 french fries with every meal (I really did know someone that did) then post-integration you may be able to eat a few meals sans fries or at least be able to change the ‘must ingest’ number to 8 or 23. You normalize on many fronts, possibly some you never thought possible.

One compulsion I’ve had ever since I can remember being alive is drawing with my fingers. I draw the shapes of everything. And when I say everything, I really mean it. When I’m watching TV, I’m also drawing the shape of the TV, the shapes on the screen, the shapes of the entertainment center, the shape of the wall, the plants, the window – everything. When I’m walking, it’s the sidewalk, the houses and whatever else I’m looking at. The only time it’s not happening is when I’m writing, painting or shooting photos, but some might argue that I’m still doing it even then, just in other ways. Also, when I drive a car, most of the time I’m not, but if I’m stuck in traffic or on an easy stretch of road, that is where my mind immediately goes.

The other morning, while being the passenger, I wondered if this was a problem. If it was anything I should worry about or try to change. Why didn’t it go away when I was integrated? Does it matter that almost all day, every day I’m drawing lines and shapes with my fingers? I spent the rest of the drive trying not to. I wondered what it would take to sufficiently trick my mind into just looking at what was in front of me, without drawing it. And I found I could not.

The drawings can become quite complicated. Most lines and edges have a left and right side that must be drawn. Large areas of color must be filled in. In my mind, my fingers can become very small drawing utensils or very large and wide swathes of color. There is an example of the double sided line in this very simple drawing.

11:11 is a theme that seems to run through my mind even when my eyes are closed. I tend to draw that one over and over and over when there is nothing else to draw.

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Every Day

I keep waking up in the morning and I keep having a day. And then I keep going to sleep at night. And then? The next morning I do it again. In this way I hope to eventually get to the morning when I want to wake up and I actually enjoy the day I’m having. But, by going the through motions, I know I’ll get there.

Friends, acquaintances, internet pals and complete strangers have written me lovely and kind notes. THANK YOU SO MUCH for your kindness. I keep thinking I’ll go back in my email and start replying to all of you but then I get stuck because I have no idea what to say except thanks for your caring nature. Please accept this virtual thanks from me to you.

For the past month, while on bed rest, I have been working on my book. I’m just about ready to hand it over to my agent. I’m thankful to have had the time to work on it because I don’t think I could have done it without being forced to. After I finished getting it up on Lulu last year, I swore I would never edit it again. For one thing, it is terribly hard to edit your own work. It’s hard to have perspective because to you, the writer, everything you’ve written is important. Add to that the fact that this book is actually my life. It has been so bizarre to have editors and my agent send me editing notes in emails about ‘the characters’ and ‘the story line.’ The format of the book being what it is has the potential to be confusing to some readers, so there has been careful attention spent on making sure that the transitions are smoother and easier to understand.

But the hardest part for me has been that my strengths in writing do not fall in the creating fictional dialog and characters categories. I’m strongest in retelling events that I have been a part of. And my book is basically just a retelling of my life. 9/10th of it was written by the personalities themselves and now that I’m integrated, those individual voices are gone. To have an editor tell me that ‘this scene isn’t working and needs more dialog between character A and character C’ or ‘let’s have a scene where you learn this information earlier through this particular therapist’ just makes no sense to me. I can’t go back and create dialog that didn’t happen. I can’t make up a therapist and then have events happen that didn’t happen. Maybe if this was a purely fictional book, I could. But I doubt it. I’ve never been that good at fictional writing. Even when I was publishing columns, they were slices of my life that actually happened.

This editing journey, if nothing else, has helped me understand my strengths in writing, which I’m thankful for. Also, I’ve learned how to be strong and assert myself when I’m not comfortable with changes being asked for and made. The end result is a final version of the book that I’m happy with and will have no problem speaking to people about.

And now that the bulk of that is done and I’m no longer required to be on bed rest, it’s time for two things: The gym and a new job. My first time going back to the gym was yesterday. All I did was walk the treadmill for 30 minutes at 4.5 MPH but from the way my body is screaming, you’d think I’d ran a marathon. It’s amazing how fast your body deteriorates.

It feels good to be active again. Another thing to be thankful for.

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And Still, I Gestate

Joe and I went to the baby’s first ultrasound yesterday. Because I’ve been on bed rest (and going insane) the bleeding had subsided by Wednesday evening, which meant we could have the ultrasound on Thursday afternoon.

Everyone was very nice. I tend to read too much into things so I think they were treating me with the uber-nice set of bedside manner skills. And I jump from there to the conclusion that they think I’m going to lose this baby so they treat me with more smiles, arm squeezes and shoulder pats. Either that, or I really am just so incredibly charming and don’t know it.

Here is Exhibit A:

uterus

Here are the two scenarios they gave me.

1) My uterus is reabsorbing the fetus. I will continue to bleed until I manifest a full miscarriage in the next two weeks. No amount of bed rest, Wikka, prayer or hocus-pocus will do anything to stop it from happening.

or

2) I really DID have the flu for 3 weeks, took the first home pregnancy test the very same day that the egg implanted and by some stroke of luck my hCG was high enough to show positive along with the next five tests. This would put me at only 5 weeks pregnant, which could account for not being able to see anything in the gestational sack. Which, as you can see by the blue arrow in the above illustration of my uterus, is mostly empty save for a few ribbons of something near the bottom. Which would be wrong for 8 weeks.

So, either we lose the baby over the next 2 weeks or we go back for an ultrasound in 3 to see if anything has changed in there. You can guess which one we are hoping for.

Thank you so much for all your comments, emails, letters and packages of encouragement. Your support means so much to us. If I don’t answer you, it’s just because I don’t know what to say right at the moment. My mental health seems to be a bit teetering on the edge and I’m really concentrating on keeping it together. Thanks for understanding.

Much love,
lpc

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Dissociative Disorders

In rewriting parts of my book, I had the chance to get a little deeper into the frustration of how dissociative disorders are classed and diagnosed. Here is an excerpt:

During my stay at a mental hospital in 1999, not only did a doctor diagnose me accurately with DDNOS, but I didn’t make myself forget the diagnosis, which had happened a few years previous. This is after being misdiagnosed any number of times with any number of ailments, some of which were correct for specific personalities but never the entire picture. Diagnosing someone with DID or DDNOS can be particularly difficult if the therapist only sees one or two of the personalities during their visits together. I was lucky to meet some very competent doctors during that first mental hospital stay.

The full definition of DDNOS can be found in the dictionary:
DDNOS is a diagnostic category ascribed to patients with dissociative symptoms that do not meet the full criteria for a specific dissociative disorder.

Because there are only a handful of specified dissociative disorders, there are any number of people falling through the cracks without a diagnosis. Add to that the fact that many states and doctors don’t acknowledge DID as a ‘real’ illness, and you can see why there are so many people not getting the help they need. After all, if your doctor doesn’t believe in the illness you have, how can they help you heal?

This is a serious problem and needs to change. We need better words and clearer diagnosis. It was nice to see that I’m not the only one frustrated with this current diagnosing system and the words that are used. This letter to the editor from Kenneth A. Nakdimen, MD says pretty much the same thing.

If you read my book and would feel comfortable giving me specific feedback, please let me know. I’m getting plenty of feedback from editors about what they think should be ‘streamlined’ but I’d like to know how those of you that have read it feel.