The Battle (Part 1)

The journey of a mother and her son through diagnosis and into treatment is a tamultious one. The passion for proper treatment, for actual care of ones health. The turbulent path of finding the right professionals and then the ups and downs of medications, their combinations, and side effects.

The love of a mother for her son is a special one. When he feels hurt I feel his pain multiplied deep within my soul.

Many of the medications used to treat Bi-Polar and Depression take time to seep into the system. Putting something into your body so foreign and dangerous that it can change how you think and behave is a scary proposition, certainly not one to be taken lightly. Making the decision to have my son treated in that way has created a deafening barrage of conflicting thoughts complicating my daily life. Looking in from the outside I see his pain, frustration and struggles so clearly. I see the wild look in his eyes come so quickly when something triggers him, dispersing as quickly as it appeared. His struggles are his norm so he cannot see them each time they appear, they all blend together.

I am more cautious with his medication journey than I was with mine. I am thankful to know exactly how I felt with each medication and although we all feel differently, hindsight is 20/20 and I am using those glasses. One medication at a time. I will not name medications publicly, as I am not an expert and don’t want to sway anyone. I will however, answer every e-mail with honesty. He started one a few weeks ago and is not yet up to the levels needed to make a difference. The waiting is so difficult but he has a great therapist who is helping him tremendously. He is frustrated by not “feeling” the medicine kicking in and I understand that feeling well. In the meantime, we take it day by day. I get up and make him his breakfast and lunch. I am in touch with each of his teachers  and administration at the high school to ensure that we are all supporting him.

Privacy is extremely important for a student who is looking to attend an institute of higher learning. 

I cannot stress enough the importance and value of not placing my son on any school “programs” or any other term the school uses to gain additional funding and places any notes or codes onto his transcripts. I want absolutely nothing to stand in his way of success. My job is to keep the doors open and minimize damage at all costs. I have been very firm and calculated with what I share about my sons health and how they will handle it. What they put on his transcripts and in his recommendations can change his future for worse or better and like a momma lion, I protect his future with my life. I communicate enough to allow for compassion on the part of educators but no more. I communicate that he is under the care of medical professionals and may experience lapses in memory and concentration. He may need their patience and compassion but nothing less and nothing more. They push to know what is wrong and I have only gone so far as to say that he is experiencing a temporary episode of severe depression.

Depression is a word that people understand even if they don’t understand it. Bi-Polar is a word that instantly turns you into an unstable crazy person. 

All is right in the world when others feel that they can help by having compassion for a young man experiencing a temporary bout of depression. Bi-Polar requires a team and a special counselor and a special program and on and on and on. Bi-Polar is a permanent state of instability in the eyes of many.

My son has the advantage of learning about his strengths and weaknesses at a young age. Armed with that knowledge he has the ability to become stronger than most. 

He has more of an opportunity to succeed now than he did a month ago. Getting out on the other side is the battle. Winning one battle at a time with knowledge and positivity is what will win this war.

 

Work Stress Work Stress Work

I’m in a fishbowl. Routine has been disrupted, stress is piling up, the pressure I’m placing on myself is too immense.

I wanted to die yesterday. I literally wanted to die. My brain was shutting down and I couldn’t speak right, I was dizzy, and clumsy, and disassociating.
Why am I telling you this? I don’t know, maybe someone else has felt this way and will send some love & light my way.

I finally asked for help to lighten the pressure and the load of preparing a home for the realtor to come take pictures on Thursday and subsequent open houses. I’m sitting here writing as a break from all the work. I’m drowning and being selfish by even recognizing that fact. Other people are busy too and nobody has time to help within the next 3 days and that’s ok too. It’s my job to do and burdening others just adds to my anxiety and guilt.

My husband is drowning in work & traveling the next 2 days, my son is dealing with a new diagnosis and a life forever changing. I have his public school demanding a meeting with me to get an explaination for my sons absences (4) so they can “provide him support”. Where were they when they significantly contributed to the cause of this breakdown? Oh, wait, causing the breakdown doesn’t pay but putting a label on him and providing support after the fact does pay.

We both have appts with doctors. He has work on top of school and doctors. He finds recognition and a sense of accomplishment at work.
I have a list that is 3 columns and fills an entire sheet of paper with everything that is supposed to be done by thursday.
This friggin Thursday!

Each time I feel this way, I think “OMG, why do I feel this way again. That’s when I remind myself that I have felt this way before and am still here. This too shall pass and the sun will rise and set with or without my efforts today or tomorrow. So, for now, I rest 😉

I Gave It To My Son

I find it easier to handle my own diagnosis than that of my child. I haven’t written much lately because I have been caring for my son. It’s been a few months since my husband and I began to notice changes in our sons behavior; lack of academic performance, girlfriend after girlfriend, problems with teachers. He stopped making himself breakfast & lunch.
He is an advance placement student so he has the capability to do well and for some reason he couldn’t wrap his head around simple things anymore. He kept saying that he couldn’t remember anything, he was tired, “there is something wrong.”

I feel helpless. I am losing my son and watching his future slip away. He felt the same fear and uncertainty.

A couple weeks ago he finally broke down. It was an epic betrayal of his true self. I know that for some teenagers, anger outbursts can be standard behavior or expected, but those behaviors aren’t my sons baseline. It isn’t in his core personality.
He snapped! He threw his phone, punched a wall, and began an epic meltdown. His body was rigid with the anger that he was holding back. He ran into a bathroom and began sobbing.
I sat there, for an entire minute, in absolute shock. Although not so little (17) my little boy was in so much pain. It was a pain I had felt all too often in my life. I knew right then that this was something bigger than he. I ran in and knelt before him and as I saw his pain and his shaking from anger I felt as though he was so out of control that he may not be able to hold back physically if I leaned in. That was a chance I was more than willing to take as I quickly wrapped both my arms around him. It took a good 5 minutes before he could speak and then the panic attacks began. I consider myself an expert in those!
Eventually, I got him back to his bed and he began to open up.
Reckless behavior, emotional release when he buys something. Yikes!
“We are here for you son. No judgement, just love and support. Walls and phones dont matter, you matter!”
My husband demanded that I seek treatment for him immediately! He told me that he saw in him what he had seen in me; “that look in his eyes,” he said. “Our son is in trouble and needs help.” Luckily, I had an appt with my prescriber the next morning. She affirmed that he should be taken to a hospital to start the process of getting him help.
Unfortunately, they dont do anything but tell you that there is a 4 month wait for an eval and send you on your way.

I made several phone calls to my own providers and he has been seen by each of them this past week. The perks of being a loyal patient, I suppose. I should have a rewards card or something.

Official Diagnosis: bi-polar 2 (for now because he is so young) and a major depressive episode.

He wept…

“Are these pills going to be forever?” Yes, son. You know what else is forever? Multivitamins. 🙂

I Believe

I believe that all survivors of sexual assault should stand together, no matter their differing beliefs.

I believe that all survivors of terror of any kind should stick together, support one another, no matter their differing beliefs.

I believe that we can all offer up something positive to this world, no matter our circumstances; even if its just a smile or opening a door.

I believe in having a positive purpose in every blog post I write. I dont find anything beneficial to myself or others in complaining and bringing others down.

I believe that just as I am inspired by the strength and resilience of others, I can inspire; even if its just myself sometimes. 🙂

I believe that if you surround yourself with those you admire, you will take on those traits and become a better you.

I believe in not bringing others down by making negative, hurtful comments.

I believe that we all should embrace each other as the unique and different people we are.

I believe you shouldnt judge a book by its cover; I am white yet my ancestors came from the Congo straight into slavery and tragedy.

I believe that some people enjoy being happy and some people enjoy being sad.

I believe that it’s inhumane to not be able to provide mental health care at the first signs of onset.

I believe its wrong for a restraining order to provide a false sense of hope & security when it is only used in prosecution after it is violated.

I believe that love is the answer to the deepest of questions and compassion is the communicator.

YouAreAmazing@mypurposefulmind.com

Love With A Side Of Klonopin

I really REALLY love my husband. He’s my biggest fan! #anxiety #PTSDchat pic.twitter.com/HysbDWs3Bv

— my purposeful mind (@chunkingminds) March 20, 2016

Reflecting on my weekend, I feel like it lasted two weeks. The days just fly by and yesterday was a snow day for the family which meant it lasted longer. I love having the family around but I really appreciate my week days alone too. I was incredibly overwhelmed on Saturday which made it hard to get moving, but just when I thought I would give in to sadness and lay around and feel crappy all day, my mother and brother in law called and would be at my house in an hour. WHAT?! Ok, time for a shower and OMG the house…I have construction tools and baseboards and rocks all over! OY! I was literally having a serious meltdown. Panic attack, oh hello, there you are again. It’s been what, like a few days at least since I was fearful enough to see you. I don’t like you and I want you to know that if I never saw you again I would celebrate. Just sayin’

My husband grabbed my Klonopin and handed it to me with water. “Relax. I got the house, you get the shower 😉 ” How did I get so darn lucky? I mean, have you read 5 Ways To Help Your Wife With PTSD? He really lives it out and thinks about it enough to always be a step ahead of me. He really really thinks about my well-being and my journey and what may come next and how to help me experience new things without fear. I can’t do it, so I don’t know how he does. He has a superpower, for sure.

He went to the grocery store and handled dinners, while I got lost somewhere in my head. Not sure where but, by the end of it all, I managed to pull myself together enough to accomplish one of the many tasks I have on my growing list. I sat down and put some rocks on a wall. I built an entertainment center about a year ago and a weekend job turned into a year long job but so be it. Slowly but surely.

I still have sanding and painting to do, but I haven’t quite wrangled up my manic romance yet, but once she kicks in, you will see a finished product. I managed to get the column on the right (next to the rocks) trimmed out all pretty last week though. YAY!

The hubby is home this morning to make sure that I get in the shower and don’t give in to the reaper. He knows how hard the slightest change in my routine is for me. He sees it so clearly and has such compassion. I credit him with so much; without him I wouldn’t be here.

 

Overwhelmed And Climbing

Yesterday I smacked myself in the face with a 2×4…no, really! I am desperately in a serious hurry to whip my house into shape within the next week. Realtors are calling to look at our house and my husband is going through the process of rounding up a list for the mortgage broker. North Carolina by summer is the plan. Warmer weather and no more snowblowers! It all looks like one big huge Mt. Everest to me.

My anxiety is at MAX. Panic has set back in and I can’t seem to ‘work’ when others are around because of it. Nightmares have come to help panic out, and I am struggling with meals again. Just when everything is so perfect, it all crashes down on my head. In this case, in my face. Half my face is swollen, I look ridiculous! On top of that I am working with one finger down. I accidentally cut into half of my right index finger and I can’t even type with the thing. On the positive side, I’m learning a new typing style.

Being a one-woman machine is so hard. I can’t maneuver everything on my own but I have to. I am putting up crown moulding, baseboards, trimming out doors, mudding & taping, sanding and painting. I pretty much do it all…when I can.

That’s the thing about bipolar, we are rockstars when the mania juice kicks in! People are like, “omg, she can do it all”… yeah, for a hot second until the reaper pays a visit. The reaper follows panic and mania around like an ambulance chaser.

I call my writing days, my days off. Usually I hit one room at a time and make my chunking list. Sometimes though, even making a list is a battle. That’s when i take my day off and write. I listen to my husband talk with his family and others on the phone. I wish I could do that, but the phone is overwhelming to me most days. I will say something wrong and then the end of the world comes down like a torrential rain. The world has ended many times. 😉

This too shall pass.

Perpetual Rape

Perpetual rape. The stigma perpetuated by our young ladies.

Standing in the middle of my kitchen, surrounding the island, were 4 teenagers chatting away about local gossip. As I approached I heard an unsettling joke coming from one of the girls. Mind you, this young lady is a junior in high school with a 4.73 gpa, great parents and a comfortable lifestyle. A young woman at their school had claimed that she was raped a few years ago and ever since then she has been the subject of doubt and ridicule. The joke was unsavory and it hurt my heart to hear such degradation of a victim/survivor.

Nevertheless I took this as an opportunity to help these young ladies see that they are perpetuating a culture of shaming the survivor and degrading women. We are supposed to support one another!

When asked, it all came down to how the survivor “handled” the situation and she “put herself in a bad place in the first place” and that she was “probably lying”. Coming from two young ladies, my jaw hit the floor, my face became red as I became triggered. Inserting myself into the conversation, I really wanted to understand how they would handle a sensitive discussion on the topic. Survivor mommy took over and the conversation went something like this:

Q. (Me) >Your best friend comes to you and says that she was raped by a boy. What do you do?

A. “Uhh clearly she has to go to the police, go to a hospital and get a rape kit!”
My response- Really? If she knows how the last girl who came forward was treated by you, and others, do you think she will make the decision to tell you and get help? (Deep thought ensues)

Q. (Me) >You are raped by your boyfriend. You may have been in a position but you changed your mind, got scared, expressed your discomfort and said you didnt want to and he overpowered you. What do you do?

A.- “I don’t know”

So many things to think about, right?! Now think about being ridiculed, joked about, and degraded after you came forward. Your own friends abandon you.
Doesnt sound like the support women are supposed to have for one another, does it? Would you want your mother treated that way? Your sister? Your best friend? Yourself?

Truly amazing how just a little conversation from a parent can start a discussion between young men and young women that will live & resonate with them. Ironically, the young men were far more protective and supportive of the female survivor than the females.

Females are alienating each other at every level and age group. We are acting like crabs in a bucket. Have you ever seen crabs in a bucket? None of them ever get out because they are too busy pulling each other down and stepping on their heads! Let’s keep the conversations going and make sure our young ladies are in them. 🙂

PTSD Night Terror!

The horror! The blood curdling horror and screams that awaken the house and my poor husband. It’s sad what PTSD can do to a person. I thought the terror had subsided. I have been on Prazosin for a bit and its used to treat night terrors for those of us with severe PTSD. Every once in a while, though, they break through. It’s like they have been bottled up and come through hard and slow. You can’t break free of them. Sometimes that is what makes functioning even more difficult the next day.

I don’t normally share a day-to-day, but last night is so raw and so painful that i want to share it in hopes of gaining some feedback from others. If you don’t want to comment please e-mail me at YouAreAmazing@mypurposefulmind.com

I could be more descriptive but I fear that it would be more hurtful than useful. I began screaming and screaming so loud. It’s funny how when you have an actual night terror, your screams come out and your words are loud. People argue between a nightmare and a night terror but I’ve had plenty of nightmares and I can tell you that a night terror is something that doesn’t compare.

My husband is headed out of town for work and needed to be up extra early this morning. He shook me awake and I had once again wet the bed like a child and felt so much fear that I was scared to even get some medication (it was downstairs). It’s a feeling of sheer terror as though the evil person from whatever dimension has followed you into the real world and is just waiting for you to move. I was frozen in fear and shaking and my chest felt like I had just run for miles. They are relentless sometimes and take every last drop of your energy. I couldn’t fall back to sleep because my mind was still in dimension X and I didn’t want to go back there. I began sobbing like a child and at this point I am completely humiliated. I don’t know how my husband could be any more loving and accepting, he’s super human!

 

 

Thanks To Those Who Inspire

Proverbs says that pride goeth before the fall. In my case, it’s definitely true and I admit it openly. I have to talk about Afflictive Emotions; Anger, Pride, Jealousy, Attachment, and Ignorance. My ignorant mind is attached to them in the most unhealthy ways sometimes.

My above the line is my mindful intentions, peaceful place of getting through the day. My below the line is my ignorant mind place where PTSD rears its ugly head. I do a really great job of staying above the line…generally. If I could stay above the line I wouldn’t be defensive about my life and I wouldn’t have pride on as my shield.

When my pride takes a hit I assess the potential damage to all of my attachments (afflictive emotions) and then all of my brains compassionate reasoning flies straight out of the top of my head like an erupting volcano. The lava of anger freely flows out consuming everything in its path. When anger is on a rampage all rational thought dives deep into the safety of some warm hidden corner of my mind. My anger is further fueled by fear which is my kryptonite. All of these steps happen within about 5 seconds just before a full shutdown sequence initiates > disassociation.

IGNORANCE! The reason each of these emotions begin, sequence, and end in the shutdown of my clear thought and reasoning is ignorance and lack of strength in my  mindfulness. Not the, lack of knowledge type ignorance, It is the ignorance as seeing myself as being separate from others, from nature, from the world around me. ALONE!

If there is one thing I have learned from the blogging community and twitter, it’s that I am not alone. I may be alone in my head, and look around and nobody is here in my worst times, but I now feel this army with me. This army that is trying crush a Berlin wall of stigma and help people understand that we aren’t garbage and don’t deserve to be called names and excluded. The true ignorance, the lack of education kind of ignorance, lies within many outsiders. What keeps me above the line is knowing how strong we are in surviving our struggles that are invisible to others. The outsiders don’t know and, in my opinion, are few in comparison to what I have seen since I began writing.

It’s blogs like youngandtwenty ,  blackspotsite , Take A Ride On My Mood Swing (hilarious!), Seeds 4 Life , and many more that lift my spirits on some days and help me understand that I am not alone in my thoughts on other days.

It’s Twitter peeps like @PTSD_chat and their wednesday night #PTSDchat , @bipolarinbiz , @LauriDMeizler , @HealthyPlace and many more who keep me engaged in working toward being #100%unashamed 🙂

Thank you to all who put themselves out there in their writing. If you are thankful to have touched just one person in your writing…you have! Much love and respect to you all. NAMASTE

Mental Health Disability Haters

Mental health disability is a complicated topic. According to NAMI Currently almost nine million individuals receive SSDI, and as of 2013, 35.2% of recipients qualify for disability based on a mental health condition. Much like Lady Gaga’s latest song, you really can’t fully understand how it feels until it happens to you. I’ve heard it and still hear it from time to time, the rantings from the outsiders:

• “Seriously, get off your ass, you’re fine.”
• “Get over it.”
• “Why are you so weak?
• “We all have anxiety, it doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end.”

I’ve heard it all before and now it just falls on deaf ears. At first though, I felt shame. I was being judged and being judged can hurt.

Fear is judgments secret weapon, like a scorpions stinger. 

Truth be told, I was an outsider once. One of those judgmental people who thought she was so strong and didn’t understand how people could be so weak. I was fine and after what I have been through..well, if I can do it then anybody can do it. It wasn’t until I had a serious “break” that all of the pain and tragedy and trauma came gushing out. I was a house of cards all along.

It was then that I realized how incredibly strong those weak people are!

It takes more strength to be vulnerable than I ever could have imagined. I couldn’t keep going and I didn’t understand why. If I didn’t understand, then how could I expect anyone else to understand? It takes enormous strength to begin the journey.

It’s hard for people to see me as being someone who has survived multiple sexual assaults, PTSD, bipolar, and on and on.
I still hide it well. I “present well” my therapist tells me. The key for me is only coming out of the house when I can hide it. Why? SHAME, duh! I’m ashamed of being seen as someone who isn’t who she used to be. I’m ashamed of being judged by the outsiders who think how I used to think.

Once you have reached your limit as a survivor and come out on the other side, you see the world differently. Things that are daily life for others trigger you. It’s different. Let’s face it, if workplace culture is killing people who don’t have disabilities what will it trigger for those of us who do?

I would have never been able to get my bipolar stabilized and begin the process of trying to manage my comorbidities without being able to fully focus on myself and my journey. Being able to be on SSDI and focus on my health makes me a better person for society and my family. Truth be told, I started paying Social Security before I was even of legal age to work. So for all the haters out there, I hope that someday you can have the opportunity to truly focus on yourself and forego the ego that controls your judgement. Perception isn’t always reality!