what do I recover?

With drug addiction, you hear that you can recover and reclaim your former self, the person you were before you started using. With other psychiatric illnesses, getting rid of symptoms means you’re more or less back to “yourself.” But what if you simply don’t have a solid self to return to — if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can’t conceive of “normal” or “healthy” because pain and loneliness are all you remember?

~Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha & The Borderline

This. A million times this. I spent the first year of therapy trying to discover “who I am”, and never felt like I came up with an answer that felt right. The depression, the suicidality, the anxiety, the overall instability… that is my normal.

Tags: bpd, mental health, normalcy, quote

some traditions are meant to be broken.

Every year around the beginning of December, my husband puts Christmas lights up outside. It’s a fun little tradition, and I like coming home at night to see the lights all aglow. Before all that happens, I do my annual Black Friday shopping (yes, I’m one of those people). I guess in order to call something a tradition, it has to happen at least twice. Sort of like all those “first annual” events – they’re not really annual until the second one happens.

This year I accidentally started a new tradition for December: spending time as a patient in the psychiatric ward. Last year, I stayed for three days because I was suicidal and feeling unsafe. This year, I stayed for six days (including Christmas Eve and Christmas) because I was suicidal and had overdosed on benzodiazapenes. It’s no secret that I am mentally disordered, but I don’t think people expect me to be the type who ends up hospitalized. To be honest, I don’t know what that type looks like. I didn’t want people to know while I was in, but now that I’m out, I feel like it needs to be spoken about.

I wasn’t dragged out of my house in a straitjacket or hauled off unconscious via ambulance; I walked under my own power into the emergency room with my psychologist. I remember very, very little of what happened that day, but I think I told the receptionist at the ER that I was there because I “took too many little pills” or something like that. Just like any other ER visit, they triage you and then do what they have to in order to make sure you are medically safe. Then it’s off to the behavioral health unit of the ER, which is basically a collection of four private rooms (not padded cells) that contain a bed and a table. And then… you wait. And wait. And wait and wait and wait. For insurance pre-certifications, for bed availability, for the psychiatrist.

I got up to the psych ward pretty late in the day. Now, let me tell you about this particular psych ward. There aren’t people maniacally running around, or people wandering the halls in straitjackets. There’s nobody rocking back and forth in a catatonic state in the corner. For the most part, if you walked into the ward and looked around, you wouldn’t know that we were in there for mental reasons. Mental illness doesn’t make you stand out from the crowd, and those of who have mental issues don’t usually act “crazy”. Oh, sure, you have the delusional people who spout off about their distorted perception of reality… like the guy who believed that the doctors were refusing to discharge him because they were prejudiced against him, and that every staff member was an embodiment of one of the seven deadly sins. Or the elderly woman who developed a certain.. uh.. affection for one of the younger guy patients. I won’t go into details, but let’s just say he left more traumatized than when he arrived.

There are community phones (no phones in the rooms) and limited visiting times, and any personal possessions coming into the ward have to be checked by the staff and deemed safe. The days are structured by the hour, which was comforting for me because that’s just how I am. There are daily group sessions and individual meetings with various nurses, social workers, and psychiatrists.  The staff work towards discharge from the time you set foot in the unit. Bottom line is safety both in and out of the hospital.

I’ve been home for a week now, and things are… okay. It’s a day by day process of recovery. There will be bad days; there will be not-so-bad days. There will be days that are “normal”; there will be days that I don’t want to get out of bed. There will be days that I am comfortable around other people; there will be days that the thought of being near people makes me want to cry. Maybe, eventually, there might even be good days.

Maybe this will be the year tradition is broken.

Tags: depression, mental health, psych ward, suicide, tradition

don’t get rid of the cat

You know what bugs me about obsessive-compulsive disorder? The pop cultural usage of the term to describe a person’s finicky preferences. Only using purple plates because you like purple and not yellow doesn’t mean you have OCD. It means you like purple over yellow. Now, if you only use purple plates because you believe that eating off of yellow plates means your mother will die, that’s a different story.

I have OCD, although it’s on the mild-moderate end of the spectrum. I don’t often admit that to people because of the assumption of what that means. I am not a checker (usually) or hand-washer. I don’t have many outward compulsions. In my world, there are good numbers and bad numbers. Good colors and bad colors. Everything must be organized and then organized again, because if things aren’t in the correct order, then something bad will happen. Different foods must not touch on my plate, because otherwise the food will be contaminated. After putting toothpaste on my toothbrush, I can only stick the toothbrush under running water for a split second. If I leave it under too long, then the toothpaste will foam too much and that will negate the whole purpose of brushing my teeth. I have to take my shower in a specific order (shampoo, rinse, conditioner, body wash, rinse conditioner, rinse body wash, run fingers through hair 4 times) or else I won’t be clean. And yes, if I screw up, I start over.

People are always finding my compulsions to be fascinating and interesting, but to me – compulsions suck. It’s my brain’s way of saying, “The only way to make the anxiety stop is to do this” or “Unless you do this, something bad will happen.” Even though I know that this line of thinking is irrational, I can’t help but compulse. As the level of my anxiety increases, so does the number of compulsions.

To the mice, I say: *pffbbt*

Self-harm is one of those compulsions, and a dangerous one at that. One of the most common, if not the most common, coping mechanisms is to find something positive to replace the negative compulsion. It’s not just about stopping the behavior. Let’s say you have a house that’s overrun by mice (anxiety). You find a way to get rid of the mice: mousetraps (self-harm or other negative compulsion). But if you get rid of the mousetraps, the mice come back. You could put the traps back out, but it’s time consuming to have to constantly check and replace them, and it’s not exactly aesthetically pleasing to have mousetraps all over your house. Or you find something that will help keep the mice away before they become a problem: a cat (positive behavior). Cats aren’t perfect, and every now and again you might be faced with a mouse or two. That doesn’t mean the cat failed; it just means that maybe the mouse proved to be a bigger challenge for the cat.

I have no problem finding my cats. Where I trip and fall is when I begin to assume that the mice will come back regardless of how many cats I have and how cunning they are. I give up on the cats and stop nurturing them, or sometimes I’ll just avoid getting the cat in the first place because really… what’s the point? The mousetraps worked just fine. They might be more inconvenient, but at least I know they worked. And I’ll admit that I have a hard time with the idea of “fixing” my OCD. My compulsions typically don’t affect anyone else, and the obsessional thoughts are kept to myself. I don’t understand why I can’t or shouldn’t continue to do these little things that make me feel safe, especially when they aren’t a big deal.

But I do understand the importance of finding one’s cat, whether it’s journaling, composing music, drawing, doing puzzles… whatever. Don’t get rid of the cat before it’s even had a chance to tackle the mice, and remember that not all cats are mousers. I have a lot to learn before I can box up the mousetraps and maybe even throw them away. Judging by the spike of anxiety brought on by thinking of throwing away metaphorical mousetraps, I’d say it’s going to be a while.

What’s your cat, and are you taking care of it?

Tags: anxiety, cat, compulsion, mental health, mice, OCD, self-harm

shibas are clearly misunderstood.

We just got back from a five day camping trip. There were lots of dogs at the campground, and plenty of dog loving people. As we were walking Dakota, there were several comments along the lines of “Aww, look at the puppy!” and “He’s so cute!”. One person correctly identified him as a Shiba, but for the most part people thought he was a husky puppy or a small fox. In the six years that we’ve had Dakota, I thought I’d heard all the animals he could be mistaken for. I was wrong.

“He looks like a rabbit!” (spoken by a 8-ish year old girl)

I are not bunny.

Tags: dog, humor, rabbit, shiba