Our journey through life

"Mommy, I need alone time"

2012-01-30T10:00:00.001-06:00

Our oldest is 5 years old. Her birthday is not until November but she is already planning out all the things she will get to do when she is 6. She is smart, attentive and very loving. At the same time she is someone that hates to be wrong and will give up easily if she feels she might be failing at something. And like any child she has her moments when life just overwhelms her.

We were visiting L's grandparents when Kaitlyn went to the bathroom with the words "Mommy, I need alone time". To others, in this case her great-grandparents, it was a surprise. But how did we get to this point?

Kaitlyn is at the age where she refuses to take a nap even when she is tired. She actually hasn't napped regularly in a long time. When she first stopped taking naps we still had her do some 'quiet time' in her room for 30 min or so. She didn't have to sleep but had to at play in her room just to get a break and to relax for a bit.

At times when L is not doing well it can get very overwhelming for anyone. Let alone a child that is trying to figure out what is going on and at some level is probably wondering what she did wrong. We encourage her to talk to us, explain to her in ways she can understand that her daddy is sick and that it is not her fault but there are still times when it gets to be too much. Or times when she had a busy day and she is starting to get upset.

We all need times when we need to reset. To be by ourselves and calm down. So about 6 months ago, maybe even longer, I started working with Kaitlyn on realizing when she hit her limit and that it is okay to have alone time. Before we started working on this she would get so worked up and upset that it took a while to calm her down. We are now at a point when more times than not she is able to remove herself and to let us know that she needs that time to herself. Sometimes she will go to her room, other times she will sit in the kitchen or even in the bathtub. She will just sit there or lay down. Relax, calm down and regroup. It has become such a normal part of life for us that I don't think twice about it.

National Compliment Day

2012-01-24T14:01:00.000-06:00

Happy National Compliment Day! In our every day lives we tend to get so wrapped up in the small little things going wrong that we forget to remember the things that are going right for us. When is the last time you received a compliment? When is the last time you GAVE a compliment?

In honor of today's occasion I want to challenge you to go out and compliment 5 people. This could be a friend, family member or for extra bonus points a random stranger. I would love to hear from you how it went!

There are times when we are 'normal'

2012-01-20T20:21:00.000-06:00

One thing I struggle with at times when it comes to blogging is the fact that there are many times when we are just 'normal', average, like Joe next door. During those times, what am I supposed to blog about? Would anyone like to read posts dealing with our 'normal' life?

And then I realized something. It is still part of our journey. I always talk about how people shouldn't let their illness be the only defining thing about them. I tell L that he is more than his illness on days where he feels like things ARE all about his illness. Yet I was doing the exact thing I was doing the exact same thing here on my blog.

I am more than what is going on when there are posts that relate to L's illness. There are so many funny stories of our oldest that I could have blogged about. Like over the past few days where she is convinced that she is a fairy. A real life fairy that gets her wings at night and can fly around. She by herself would be worthy of blog entries with the things she comes up with.

So in the future there will hopefully be some more blog posts about family stuff, every day funny stuff and just our crazy life.

I have noticed a pattern

2012-01-16T20:02:00.000-06:00

I had been toying with the idea of starting to blog again. When I was looking at my blog I noticed a pattern: Around late November/early December I tend to stop blogging only to get started again come January time frame. And that is where we are right now.

I have no idea who (if anyone) is still reading this. It is just the time of year for me to pick myself, L and our family back up from these last few months and get going again.

My absence always coincides with the time of year that L is not doing well. I get so consumed by taking care of the kids, L and trying to somehow not forget to take care of myself that blogging (and tweeting) takes a back seat. But for now I am back. Until November is my guess. And then I will most likely disappear again.

Pee-a-boo!

2011-10-24T14:19:00.001-05:00

It has been a long time since I have blogged. I have lacked the motivation and just have been extremely busy between family and work. I do however keep the facebook page up to date and would love to see you there if you're not there yet!

What would you like to see on the facebook page to make it a more active community?

L's first real experience of discrimination

2011-08-30T10:00:00.003-05:00

Saturday morning L woke up with his foot hurting. He was having problems walking and slept most of the day to escape the pain. By 6pm he finally decided to go to the ER to get his foot checked since he was still in a lot of pain and barely limping along. I was working that evening so I grabbed my latop, the kids and drove him to the hospital. In order to not have to be inside the ER with three kids and to be able to work I just dropped him off at the ER entrance, parked and went back to work (side note: LOVE that I am able to work wherever I am as long as I have internet access).

I had prepared myself for a lengthy wait since it was a Saturday and they tend to be very busy but less than an hour later he called me to come pick him up. I could tell that he was furious and was wondering what happened.

As normal when asked if on any meds and health history, his bipolar and PTSD was mentioned. And that is when he said things went bad. Instead of asking more questions about his hurting foot he was asked when he last saw his mental health professional, if he was taking his meds, asked how he got to the ER ('Did you walk yourself here?), and made to walk up and down the hall way for the nurse. He never saw a doctor and was sent home without anyone taking a real look at his foot and with a prescription for noninflammatories which he refused to get filled since he is convinced they are just placebos anyway.

How can the medical profession handle a patient that way? Even if he WAS making it up for some reason, did they not have the duty to check to make SURE it really was nothing? At least bandage his foot up if it is a sprain? Treat him without accusing him of lying?

Luckily his foot is getting better so it appears to have been nothing serious. His mood took a huge hit though. Any healthy person hates not being taken seriously. For L it opened a whole different can of worms. Anger at being treated that way. Anger at being mentally ill. Fear of not getting better. All now followed by another bout of depression when he had just started getting out of a depressive phase.

I cannot always be with him when he goes to the ER, but I know that at least for the near future he will insist on it to have someone there to 'put in a good word for him' when he might not be able to articulate his own needs too well. That means I would have to find someone to cover for me at work, take three kids to the ER with us or hope his grandparents can help out. And that is if he is willing to go back.

This morning I called the patient advocate and I do have to say that I was VERY pleased with her reply. She took mine and L's concerns seriously and promised to not just look at his records from that night but also speak to the staff involved as well as the director of the ER. Now I am waiting for her to follow up with me. If nothing else, maybe L's experience will lead to the ER looking at its procedures when it comes to dealing with mentally ill patients coming in to receive care.

A life time supply

2011-08-25T10:00:00.008-05:00

I was reading my emails and saw that I got another Plinky email. I had used one of their questions a few months ago as a blog prompt. The question that caught my eye this time?

The answer was easy: PATIENCE. One of my biggest issues especially in stressful times is staying patient. And actually, I just dealt with it yet again this morning. Kayleigh wanted a drink. So she got a drink. But after a few sips she decided that that is not what she wanted. She saw a nice shiny can that her daddy had left out and kept insisting that she HAD to have it. Over and over. Even after I removed it. Luckily for both of us her sister decided they wanted to play upstairs so we both got removed from the situation. For a bit.

She just came back downstairs and woke up her brother 'because brother not tired'. Apparently this will be one of 'those' days around here. So where is my life time supply of patience???

iCarly - iLostMyMind

2011-08-17T08:20:00.001-05:00

The kids were all asleep (including the littlest) and L went to see some of his buddies for a few hours. I finally had some time to sit down and finally watch the 'iLostMyMind' episode of iCarly. I first heard about it last week from Chrisa from The Mindstorm: Raising a Mentally Ill Child. Apparently I was behind the times because in talking to L i found out that he had seen the previews for it weeks ago and had been wondering why I was so quiet about it.

After watching the previews I was appalled by what I saw but decided to reserve my full judgement until I had a chance to watch the full episode. I dvr'ed it and finally watched it Tuesday night. I had tried watching it on Sunday but after the first few minutes turned it off. Before going on let me give you a very quick overview of the premises of this episode: Sam has disappeared. Carly and Freddie have not been able to get a hold of her for three days and they are getting worried. Thanks to a 'pearphone' app they locate her and find out that she is at 'Troubled Waters Mental Institution'. Upon arriving there they find out that she checked herself in because she thought she was 'insane' for having kissed Freddie in the previous episode. Her friends decide to 'break her out' as she cannot check herself out without a parent's signature which she cannot get as her mother is 'in Tijuana getting laser hair removal'.

I had been warned that it was a troubling episode but reality was worse than I had anticipated. While watching the show I took a whole page of notes. But where to start? There was just so much wrong with this episode. From the posters on the wall saying things like 'Only bite food' or even 'Friends don't kill friends', to the dirt on and holes in the wall, to the huge age gap in the patients portrayed on the show, to the actual portrayal of patients (woman walking around with steering wheel, patient starting at wall, guy cracking up over static on tv and then running of screaming when told that there was nothing on TV).

This show has done nothing to improve the idea people have of mental health institutions. What I am worried about most though is the viewers of this show. As season opener it had a reported 5.5million viewers. Most falling in the kid or tween category. What did they learn from this episode?

1. It's a dirty place (there was dirt and grime everywhere and trash cans were overflowing)
2. Violence against patients will have no repercussions (Spencer kicks patient without any apparent reaction from staff)
3. There are more security guards than nurses, no doctors anywhere to be seen
4. There is a 'panic button' that will start a loud alarm and close down the ward
5. Patients might threaten guards who will back down and comply with patients requests

Not to forget that Sam was able to check herself in for simply being confused about her feelings for Freddie. This episode was all over the place (and I know I am too). I will try to write another blog post on this when I have had a chance to put some more distance between watching it and writing about it.

If you have watched it, what were your impressions?

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~ Dealing with Triggers

2011-08-15T10:00:00.001-05:00

Today's guest blogger is Allison, a writer for psychologydegree.net

Having a survivor for a partner can remind us of the beauty of the human experience; that regardless of the adversity of their experiences, they have thrived, living as beautiful and complex people, with a strength we can only dream of possessing. Still, anyone who’s ever loved a survivor knows that strength does come with coping mechanisms, and that there are scars that we can’t rub away, no matter how hard we may scrub. The good news is that it doesn’t take a psychology degree to understand how to avoid accidentally triggering a loved one. It’s important to know how to handle those scars, how to prevent the darker thoughts from being given power. Read on to learn how just a little bit of thought can make a difference in your partner’s pain.

*Triggers
A trigger is a psychiatric term that is used to describe an occurrence that will cause a “mentally unwell” period. These things can range from words spoken, to a particular kind of touch; even an odor or a taste can be triggering. They can be as common as the smell of a specific brand of soap, as rare a sight as a street sign in the town where they grew up.

*Are Inappropriate Jokes Triggering?
Joking about sexual assault, rape, or molestation can instantly bring repressed memories to the surface. "Jokes" about sexual abuse aren't jokes; telling one doesn't make you funny, it makes you cruel (whether or not you know you’re in the company of a survivor). The amount of mental effort that goes into keeping those thoughts at bay can easily be countered with an errant comment. The survivor is spending a significant amount of time in their mind trying to keep those thoughts from overwhelming them. So you didn't "rape" someone at Halo last night. Maybe you owned them, maybe you kicked butt, but to compare the impact of rape to the right combinations of left and right arrows is to depreciate the pain of your loved ones on what was likely one of the worst days of their life. Change your vocabulary.

*Avoiding Triggers - For Loved Ones And Survivors
Pay attention. Do you notice the way your girlfriend shudders when you touch her knee? If you see your husband pull away at a scene in a movie? If your partner is not ready to explain why they feel the way they do, don’t press them. Institute a "Red Light" statement. If they feel threatened by a situation, or if they feel a trigger around them, they can say "Red Light," and you change the environment, no questions asked.

*Flashbacks
A flashback is when an individual relives that moment of their life. For all intents and purposes, their mind is currently at the age that the trauma occurred. A 40 year old reliving a flashback of sexual assault as an 8 year old is essentially back at that point in time. Everything they are seeing and experiencing is as though they were there again, having it done to them again.

*Flashback - Helping A Loved One
It can be frightening or confusing to witness someone have a flashback. Do not try and pin the person down, grip them hard, or errantly touch them. Even an innocent hand on the shoulder can make things worse. Focus on getting their mind in the now. Talk to them calmly, take their wrist and wrap their fingers around an ice cube in their palm. The sharp cold serves as an anchor point to reality, where they need to be. Remind them what year it is, how old they are, any accomplishments they may have made as an adult, that they are in a safe place. Continue talking to them and be patient.

*Flashback - Helping Oneself
Many individuals will have precursors to an unwell period or a flashback. It is no different than the sniffles indicating a cold is starting. Common symptoms are a slowing of the thought processes and feeling different or off compared to how one normally feels. The two most effective ways to counter this are ice in your palm or loud music. Both serve as a stark, sharp reminder of what is happening right now, not what happened in the past. If neither is available, put yourself in a position that forces your mind to be in this time frame. A good example is a recent newspaper (for the date) or watching the current president on television.

*Letting A Loved One Into The Mind
A common thought for a sexual abuse survivor is to bring their partner or others into their mind so they can “understand what I go through”. In and of itself, this is not a bad idea. It will give them a better perspective on what the survivor is going through and what caused it.

The loved one of the survivor should realize that they are currently participating in one of the most vulnerable parts of that person’s life. It takes a lot for most sexual abuse victims to bring another person into that world of theirs. If they need to stop, don’t pressure them to speak. If they need a break, give it to them. Don’t be upset if they can’t share everything with you. Coping with that trauma in a healthy way is a far, far bigger issue than simple trust.

*Reasonable Results

Any problems involving the mind are going to be complicated. Everyone handles trauma differently, making a universal treatment impossible. The only thing that matters is getting those unwell periods under control so the survivor can attempt to enjoy the rest of their life.

I am back. I think

2011-08-12T19:48:00.000-05:00

I am hoping to get back into blogging with this post. It has been too long. I already have a guestblogger lined up for Monday that I am excited to share with you. The reason I had temporarily stopped was that there was simply too much going on at home. L had convinced himself that in order to work on some things going on in his mind he had to move out. Since he didn't really talk to me about the why and what we were (once again) talking about a divorce. He stayed with friends for almost 4 weeks before moving back in after we sat down and talked. What the future holds, who knows. But we are picking up the pieces and are trying out best to make things work.

I know there are people that might (and do) not agree with my choice to let him move back in but I think that for us, at this point it was and is the right decision.

Taking a break from blogging

2011-07-06T11:05:00.000-05:00

A lot is going on here at home at the moment. A week and a half ago L decided he had to move out in order to 'make [himself] happy'. It came as a surprise to me yet at the same time it didn't. He had threatened it so many times in the past year that part of me has in a way prepared itself for it. Or maybe it has not really hit yet. Lots of new things in my future for me and the kids and I need to concentrate on that for now. I will still be posting on my facebook page for Our Journey Through Life and I will still be tweeting as GermanInAlabama. Not sure how long this hiatus will last and there might be a blog post popping up every now and then.

Hope to see you on facebook and twitter!

Inspiration

2011-06-30T10:00:00.001-05:00

I love quotes, poems and songs and tend to find one or more for various situations in life. One of my favorite poems is one that I first heard 10 years ago in my American Literature class when I was living in Minnesota as an exchange student. It is 'Hope is the thing with feathers' by Emily Dickinson.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

It was actually the poem I chose to write my term paper on. It still is somewhere around here. One of the things that fascinated me then about her is the fact that starting in her mid 20s she started withdrawing more and more from the outside world until she rarely left the house.

From the Emily Dickinson Museum: Among Dickinson scholars, disagreement exists concerning whether hers was a deliberate choice as an artist to isolate herself so she could focus on her work or whether such unusual behavior as her startled flight from the doorbell, an increasing inability to see or visit friends, and speaking with select visitors from behind a darkened door rather than face to face, had a medical origin, such as an anxiety condition. In any event, the poet and her family accommodated her unusual ways, which left strong marks on her poetry, including her desire not to publicly publish her poems during her lifetime.

But before I go on analyzing the whole poem and her life story, let me ask you this:

What is your favorite inspirational quote, poem or song?

I am tired

2011-06-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

The past two months have had a lot of ups and downs without much respite. It's not that he has been doing that bad the whole time. There has just been a lot of unpredictability which after a while just drains all the energy out of you. We are still dealing with his sleep schedule being upside down which means that I am taking care of everything by myself for now. Between the kids, work and L I am ready for a vacation.

We are fortunate to have L's family here who have the two girls once a week for a sleepover and lately also have asked to pick up the kids for a play day on a second day of the week. Without that I would have run myself in the ground at this point. But I do get that break from time to time.

I still have a massage gift card that I had gotten for Christmas and have yet to use. So, this week when the girls are at their great-grandparents I WILL make use of it. I just need your help to hold me to it.

ER care for Mental Health Problems

2011-06-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Last week psychcentral.com posted an article asking the question 'Can You Take Someone to the ER for Mental Health Help?'. To me the answer is obvious: Yes, you can. So the first time we needed to make that decision it was an easy one. I should qualify that by saying that to ME the answer was easy. Convincing L of the same was more difficult.

Like most guys I know (from own experience and through stories shared by friends) he hates going the the doctor/ER anyway. Add in that this is not a physical problem and you have an added layer of resistance. The first trip, however, did nothing to alleviate those feelings in him and made even me more resistant to going. Why? Because none of the times that we have gone have been a good experience.

Part of the problem is that most hospitals, from our experience, only have an on-call psychiatrist during the night/weekend who will have to be called and then drive in to the hospital. The wait time is spend in more agony for L having to answer questions, being left alone for long times, looked at with pity by the nurses and doctors that are there. Since they are so poorly equipped to deal with these types of situations L generally tends to want to leave early instead of waiting for the help he needs at that time.

The one hospital we have been at that was equipped with a mental health ER section was not any better. We had gone because L was feeling extremely suicidal and knew he needed help. Since in the past we had bad experiences with wait time etc we made the longer drive to this other hospital. Once there, I was not able to go with L until his grandparents had come to pick up the girls (this was before Mr K was born). Their mental health section consisted of 4 small rooms within a secure area. He was literally in lock down in his room with just a bed, door open, and video monitored as well. I understand that it was to 'keep him safe' but being treated that way did in no way help him. And even though this was specifically for mental health related patients the wait to see anyone was still almost an hour.

After all these experiences we are both wary of going since all that tends to happen is waiting around for what seems like an eternity to then be told that all beds at the local inpatient treatment centers are full anyway, should he decide to go that route.

What it boils down for us is that we avoid the ER if at all possible. We are fortunate to have other options during the day thanks to the VA. The clinic L goes to has been wonderful at getting emergency appointments for L when he needed them, the same day even if necessary. I know many others do not have that option.

What has your experience been?

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~ On anxiety

2011-06-27T10:00:00.000-05:00

Natalie Jeanne Champagne has published poetry in various anthologies and regularly contributes to mental health and addiction publications. At the age of twenty-six, after many years struggling with a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder at the age of twelve and various addiction later in life, she walked the road less travelled and somehow found her way home. You can find out more about Natalie, contact information and resources on her website, www.thethirdsunrise.com. She currently lives in British Columbia, Canada. The Third Sunrise is her first novel.

I cannot remember a time when I did not suffer with anxiety. When I was in elementary school I would tell my mother I could not go to school.

“Natty, of course you can go to school. You’ll meet lots of nice friends at school!”

She would hand me my brown bagged lunch and usher me to the school bus waiting outside my driveway. My heart would race as I slowly walked on the bus; I felt the other kids staring at me. My legs would shake and I wondered if I might fall. My face would flush and my hands would sweat.

At the age of ten I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t talk to people without experiencing these symptoms so I tried not to speak. I listened to the other kids laugh at recess and watched from the hill in the playground. I picked up dandelions and counted the tiny flowers; pulling each one out slowly and watching it fall to the ground.

My feelings had no name then; anxiety was not something usually attached to a child. It was a set of symptoms I could not escape. They followed me throughout life and I grew accustomed to them because anxiety was all I had ever known.

Five years later, in middle school, nothing had changed. I was still terrified but determined to fit in. I enrolled in figure skating and hockey, soccer and tap dancing all in the hopes that I could calm down and learn how to breath. I just wanted to be like the other kids; laughing and learning how to put lipstick on, smiling with ease and with the ability to make eye contact. I thought that if I wore the right clothes I might feel better; perhaps if my mother took me shopping I would be fine. But I wasn’t.

I struggled through the years with a slew of problems: bipolar disorder, eating disorders and later in life, addiction. It’s a curious thing: the early diagnosis of bipolar disorder instigated the anxiety, the eating disorders allowed me to step away from the anxiety and focus on my body and the addiction made it possible for me to finally talk to people. Under the influence of drugs and alcohol I was no longer afraid. I had friends for as long as I could keep myself floating and carefree.

At the age of 21 I had been an addict for 5 years and as I slowly pulled away from the counterculture, the lifestyle, of addiction my anxiety returned with a vengeance. Sobriety was terrifying because I realized I had nothing to treat the anxiety. I was sober but still sick. I was frightened by my feelings. The little girl playing with flowers, her heart beating madly, came back to haunt me. You cannot escape yourself for long.

I made an appointment with my psychiatrist, my mental illness was controlled with medication at this point, and explained to her that I could not make it to my college classes because I was afraid to walk into the class. I wasn’t sure if I should sit in the back of the class close to the window or right beside the door. I needed an escape plan. When I tried to get on a bus to make it to classes I would have anxiety attacks and so I walked over an hour in the rain or snow to get there−walking felt safer than being on a bus. The anxiety became debilitating and I took all the online classes I could.

My Psychiatrist looked at me, her pen tapping on the desk, the binder full of notes about me sitting in front of her:

“Have you ever taken Valium?”

I told her I might have, I couldn’t really remember, I had taken 100’s of different pills since I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 12.

I walked out of her office with a prescription for valium and promptly went to the pharmacist. I took one when I got home; I waited for something amazing to happen. I waited for the ability to breathe because my anxiety was always so bad that I struggled to breathe properly. It might be nice to be able to breathe. Forty-five minutes later my heart had slowed down. I felt normal, maybe, I wasn’t sure what normal felt like.

For the next year I took the pills just as the bottle told me to: three times a day and with water. As the months went on I noticed they weren’t working as they once did. I was up all night thinking about how I had to go to work the next day although I had kept the same job for three years. I wasn’t sure I could talk to people like I had just a month before.

I decided to go off the valium. I did a lot of research and found out that weaning off benzodiazepines (this includes valium and a whole bunch of other pills like klonopin) is not easy. It is, in fact, dangerous. The user can have seizures and become very sick. But I was determined. I did not want to rely on this drug to get me through the day−I took enough pills as it was. I told my Psychiatrist that I wanted to go off the medication and she warned me it would be tough. I would experience side effects which were worse than the anxiety I had struggled with my entire life.

A year later I have weaned myself down to half of what I took. Getting of valium has been more difficult then obtaining sobriety. My anxiety came back full force and I experienced horrible physical symptoms: sweating, shaking, and the inability to walk in a straight line, migraines and dysphoria. Suffice it to say, I wish I had never gone on this medication and urge people to do research before they take it. Benzodiazepines are generally used for less than three weeks because the body and mind become tolerant quickly.

While weaning off the valium I learned different coping mechanisms: I realized how important exercise and a healthy diet is. When my anxiety starts to flare up I go for a run. It works better then valium ever did and for this I am grateful. I teach myself things that come naturally to most people: maintaining eye contact, talking to people and reaching out to them.

Having an anxiety disorder is not a life sentence and does not always need to be medicated. It’s an ongoing battle which has become easier as the months and, with any luck, years pass. I cross my fingers that sometime soon I will be free of it. But for now it isn’t so bad: im learning and practising new coping mechanisms and I have learned how to live in the world without fear.

Book Review: Living With Someone Who's Living With Bipolar Disorder

2011-06-23T10:00:00.001-05:00

For almost a year, maybe even longer, I had been wanting to buy Living With Someone Who's Living With Bipolar Disorder. For one reason or another I never did. Usually because I tend to not want to spend money on myself and instead rather use it for everyone else who might need it.

The other day I received a gift card at work and used it to buy the book. The funny thing is that I had just had a conversation with some #mhsm friends about how I struggle with self care and doing nice things for myself minutes before receiving the gift card. Otherwise I might not even have used it for something for myself.

But back to the book. It had been a trying day that day and I needed to hear from someone that I was not alone and I needed ideas on how to better things and how to better understand L. As someone who does not have this illness it is extremely difficult to understand why he acts the way he does at times. Especially when he doesn't understand it himself. So all of this came together with perfect timing.

I started reading at about 10pm, long after the kids went to bed. Within the first few pages I was crying. There was someone who understood. Someone who might have an attempt at answers. I read until I HAD to put the book down to go to bed since I had to get up early the next day to go to work.

I found a lot of helpful information in that book. Some that I knew, other that I had no idea about. It helped me know that however strange L might be acting at times, however inexplicable his thought process might be to me at times, we are not the only ones dealing with this.

The book is a good mix of history of bipolar disorder, what treatments exist and how they work, what different types of medications there are and ways on how to tackle different situations brought on by the illness. What I liked the most were the personal stories throughout the whole book that matched the topics addressed in each chapter (money, high sex drive, med compliance etc).

The first thing I did the next morning was pass on the book title to L's grandparents in the hope that they will find it as helpful as I do. I also asked L to read it in the hope that he will get a better understanding of himself and of my side of this equation. I originally bought the ebook version of the book but will go and buy the actual book in the next few days to have it on hand for myself (and to reread it with a marker in hand this time).

Living next to each other

2011-06-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

For the past week or so now L's days and nights have been mixed up. It started, as it usually does, with him going for 24+ hours without sleep. When he finally crashed it was sometime during the day and he woke up late that evening. This is something we deal with frequently. Some times it only lasts a day or two. Other times it lasts for a couple weeks.

It is difficult for all of us to deal with. He tends to wake up right around the time that Little K goes to bed. That means that he misses out on so much that goes on in our lives during those time periods. I will try to wake him up and within seconds of him trying to get up he is back fast asleep with no recollection later that I even tried to wake him up. Not to mention that if he gets up before he has gotten enough sleep, we will all pay for it with a bad time. Finding the balance between his sleep needs, family, peace and quiet can be extremely difficult to find.

Another thing that usually comes along with this is him waking me up frequently during the night for various reasons. He has gotten much better about that over the past few episodes we have had dealing with this. One grumpy sleep deprived person per family is more than enough.

We are still trying to find ways to spend quality time together. Luckily with school being out we can keep the girls up a bit longer than we usually would to get some time in with the girls as well.

L was invited to be part of a study

2011-06-21T10:00:00.000-05:00

Late last week we received a letter from the VA (for those that don't know, L was in the Navy for 5 years), saying that he was invited to be part of a research study related to schizophrenia and bipolar illness. The title of the study is "The Genetics of Functional Disability in Schizophrenia and Bipolar Illness". At this point that is all we know but we should find out more next week.

When we got the letter I wasn't sure if L would be interested in participating though we had talked in the past about his interest in participating in something like this. But that was years ago. So now that he actually had the opportunity I was wondering if he was still interested.

We finally had a chance to talk about it and he wants to do it. I will keep you all in the loop on what is going on. In my opinion this is a great opportunity for L and others. We will see what will become of this.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~ Hallie's story

2011-06-20T10:00:00.000-05:00

Today's guestblogger is Hallie who normally blogs over at 'A Year of Thanksgiving'. Follow her along as she shares her story.

POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING!

I have struggled long and hard with posting this. I did not know if I truly wanted people to know the depth of my depression and the desperate measures to which I turned. I feared that people would judge me and that they would think I was merely trying to seek attention. I feared that people would see my story as something to be ashamed of, rather than something to be shared. But after a lot of thought and a lot of deliberation I have decided that it is worth it to me to post this. It is worth it to me to make my story known. It may not be a happy story and I know there are many who would judge me harshly for having done the things I've done and experienced the things I've experienced…but it is my story, like it or not, and it is something I feel compelled to share. If even one person reads my story and realizes that they are not alone and that they are not the only ones who face the kind of depression, pain, and unhappiness that I faced…then it will have been worth it. If I can help to save even one person from the agony I went through, I will be satisfied that my story was not told in vain.

So I will do this in the style of most of my blogs. I have been working on a blogging series I call, “A Year of Thanksgiving.” It is basically a way for me to give thanks to God for the good things in my life and the things that I have been blessed with. Today, I will follow that mold. As I write my story, I will do it with a thankful heart.

For my entry today, I am simply thankful to be alive.

For those of you who don't know it, the things that I face in my life are not always as simple as the normal ups and downs. Don't get me wrong, They ARE normal ups and downs. But I do not see the world that most people do. Everything I do, everything I say, and everything I see is through a filter of depression. Not to say that I am a pessimistic person. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I am simply saying that I see the world through a filter that is not always sunshine and puppies and, as a result, I often do not deal with life’s normal ups and especially downs in a healthy way.

I am a self-injurer. To be more specific, I am a cutter, a head banger, and a biter.

I had always scoffed at people who self-injured and I had always looked at their scars with disgust. Why couldn't they just deal with their problems like everyone else? Did they think it was cool to carve up their arms and legs? Were they just seeking attention? Didn’t they realize how embarrassing it was to those of us who had to see their scars? You see I, like many people, was laboring under the delusion that self-injury was a choice. I was laboring under the delusion that people who self-injure always know exactly what they are doing and make conscious decisions to do it.

Self-injury isn't something I've done for a very long time, or at least cutting isn’t. I’ve been biting and head banging for as long as I can remember, even when I was just a little kid. There were times that there was just so much anger and hurt locked up inside, that I had to do something to get rid of it. I knew it wasn't right, I knew it wasn't good...but I never knew what to call it before the cutting started. But I digress, cutting is not something that I do to be "emo" or "cool." In fact, I'd like to say that cutting is one of the most shameful things that I have ever experienced or done in my entire life. The guilt attached to it and the self-loathing that comes after it is staggering. I would equate it to knowingly taking a child’s favorite toy away from them and then ripping it to pieces while they watched, simply because you want to hurt the child. It is vile, disgusting, and repugnant. Why then, you ask, do I do it?

Remember what I was saying about delusions before? About how I was laboring under the delusion that people CHOOSE to self injure and that they have a choice in the matter? For some, that might be true. For some, self-injury may be an attempt to look cool or to fit in or maybe to stand out. But having gone through it and experienced what it is like to cause yourself harm, I can tell you that I never chose to pick up the scissors. I never chose to draw my own blood. I never chose to bite myself until I bled or bang my head against a wall until I bruised. Because self-injury, to me, is not a choice. Self-inury, to me, represents a total loss of rational thought, a total loss of control. When I self-injure, it is my brain’s way of taking the pain, and the unhappiness, and the stress, and the hurt that I feel on the inside and giving me something tangible I can see, feel, and touch to match, express, and release those feelings on the outside. It is my brain’s way of coping. I can almost describe the sensation as something inside of me snapping. I am aware of what I am doing and some part of me even knows I shouldn’t do it, but at that point, there is no thought, there is no control. There is only pain and the need to release it.

But how did I go from scoffing at self-injurers to becoming one?

It all started way back in September 2009. I had just started my junior year of college and I was engaged to be married to the man I thought I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I was happy, happier than I had ever been in my life, and I couldn’t wait to be finished with school and to start my life with the man I loved. I was blinded by love, so much so that I never saw the heartbreak coming.

September 21, 2009 is a day I will never forget, so long as I live. I hadn’t heard from my fiancé in nearly three days and I was freaking out. He was at home on leave from the Air Force at the time and I couldn’t see any reason why he hadn’t called me. I was worried, sick with fear that something had happened to him, and after those three days I couldn’t take it anymore. I made the two-hour drive home from college and tracked him down. When I finally found him, he told me that he no longer wished to marry me and that he had never loved me and never wanted to really be with me. I was devastated. Twice more, after that initial time, did he break my heart. The final time, in February of 2010, he emailed me to tell me that he was breaking up with me. I was devastated.

I spent the next six months in mourning and in pain. I still couldn't move past it. I longed for him every single day and had to exercise rigid self-discipline to keep myself from contacting him. I missed him and my heart ached for him. I worried myself sick about him being in the middle east (he was deployed) and I cried the day I found out he had made it home safely.

In August of 2010, I moved back to college to start my fourth and final year and, for the first time, I was living off-campus and completely on my own without a roommate. That was great...for about the first 2 days. And then I started to get lonely. Desperately lonely. I sank into a deep seated depression and I spent the vast majority of my time sitting alone in my recliner, crying my eyes out, and facebook stalking my ex, wishing I had the courage to contact him. I think that was also the first time I seriously considered suicide…and that was when I knew something had to change. So a week after I moved into my apartment, I walked into the Student Counseling Center.

That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. If I had been even slightly less depressed than I was, I don't think would have gone through with it, but I was in a dark place and I knew I needed help and soon. I walked into the counseling center, filled out some paperwork, and walked out with an intake appointment scheduled for the following week. When the day came for that appointment, I had to get a trusted friend to make me go. I was terrified. But I went and I have yet to regret that decision.

I was soon assigned to a graduate clinical psychology student and there started my weekly therapy sessions. Therapy was odd for me because I wasn't used to just opening up to someone, at least not about things that actually mattered, but it was strangely comforting to know I could be completely honest and candid with my therapist and not have to worry that he was going to judge me. The next several months passed quickly. There were lots of ups and downs and I went through some hellacious drama with an impromptu live-in boyfriend, but overall I was getting better. And, most importantly to me, I finally had a diagnosis for my inability to “get over” my relationship with my ex-fiancé: Adjustment Disorder. I read everything I could about AD and learned that it was, in fact, a mental illness. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM), Adjustment Disorder is a psychological response to an identifiable stressor or group of stressors that cause(s) significant emotional or behavioral symptoms that occur within three months of the stressor. It was such a relief to me to have a name for what was wrong. It was such a relief to know that it wasn’t my fault and that I couldn’t control it.

When Christmas break rolled around, I was no longer pining after my ex. I felt good about my place in life and there was talk of ending therapy once we got back from break. During break, I met a guy online whom I had an instant connection with and he became…not exactly my boyfriend, but he was more than a friend and I felt happy again, happier than I had in more than a year. I thought my life was back on track. I thought everything was going to be okay.

I had no idea just how wrong I was.

When the new semester started, I went through some really huge changes again. I was student teaching at a local high school at the time and I was completely overwhelmed with everything I was being expected to do and everything going on in my personal life. I was dealing with sorta-boyfriend issues, ex-boyfriend issues, I had just found out that my ex-fiance was expecting a baby with a girl he had only known for a couple of months, I was not getting along with my parents very well, I felt ostracized from most of my friends, and I was just overall not okay. I was spiraling downward into a new depression that I wasn't sure I could crawl my way out of. Everything just kept building and building inside of me. I wasn’t eating, I was barely sleeping, I couldn’t concentrate, and I was completely overwhelmed. I knew I was getting dangerously close to a very, very dark place, but I didn't know how to get help. I didn't know how to tell anybody what it was that was bothering me so badly. I tried. I tried to tell my counselor, I tried to tell my real life friends, I tried to tell my message board friends…but I simply had no words for the desperation and the pain I was feeling inside. I put on a very happy face. My students had no idea that I was suffering. My friends, family, and professors had no idea how bad off I really was. But deep down, I knew something was terribly wrong.

The week of February 14th is the week that everything spiraled out of control. On that Monday night, I had had a fight with my sorta-boyfriend and was also fighting with my ex-boyfriend. As a result, I was less focused and prepared in my classroom on Tuesday. My host teacher did not handle that situation with grace. She ripped me apart and humiliated me in front of a class of 15 students and left me standing in front of the class, sobbing. It was absolutely devastating to me and I spiraled even lower than I already was. On Wednesday, I went to see my counselor. The changes with student teaching and all the drama in my life had prompted my counselor to continue seeing me, despite the thought around Christmas break that I might be close to graduating therapy. During that session, where I told him how down I was and how little hope I had, he asked me, "Do you want to hurt yourself?" Without even thinking, I replied, "Not really...not today anyway." I was shocked by my own response. Surely I didn't mean that. Surely I wasn't seriously considering hurting myself to get away from the pain. That was something emo teenagers did...not people like me. Not 22-year-old college students. Not people in their very last semester of college. It wasn't something a professional teacher would ever consider. I shook it off as a weak moment and told myself that I could not, would not, sink that low. If only I had known then and gotten the help I needed.

On Thursday, I had a wonderful day. I was observed by my supervisor for the first time and he had NOTHING but good things to say about me. I also went shopping with a friend and had a fabulous time. I was feeling better about myself and my life and I had a little hope for the first time in days. And then...I snapped.

When I got home that evening, I sat down to do my lessons for the next day and I was so overwhelmed. My heart was racing, my hands were shaking, I couldn't breathe, and I felt like I was suffocating. During that, I just happened to look over at my bedside table and found a pair of scissors lying there. Without even thinking, without even considering the implications of what I was doing, I picked them up, bent over my wrist, and started to cut.

The relief was unimaginable. For the first time in almost two months, I could truly feel. For the first time in two months, I could take a deep breath. I could feel the sting on my wrist and the blood on my fingers. It was glorious. It was wonderful. I felt so…alive. I’m pretty sure I actually smiled. But then, as the high wore off and the endorphins started to fade…I realized what I had done. Then the guilt started.

The next day was one of the longest days of my life. I made the arrangements for myself to take a day off and I went to the counseling center at 8 AM right when they opened the next morning. I had an appointment with my therapist at 10. When I went to my therapist the morning after I cut myself, I was...not in a good place. I was scared. I was vulnerable. I was hurting, both inside and out. I was terrified of what it all meant and I had no idea how I was going to deal with it. The guilt was threatening to engulf me and if there was ever a moment I wanted to die, it was then, because I didn’t want to face the rest of my life, knowing what I was now capable of. I didn’t want to face what I had done.

My therapist’s efforts that morning were life saving. He stabilized my mood and my thoughts enough that I was able to go to the people who later got me the help I needed. I have to commend him for that. It was the first time he had ever dealt with a client in crisis and even though I had to end up going over his head to get more help, he was instrumental in saving me that day. Without him, I would not have had the strength to go see the person who truly saved me.

After I left the counseling center, I went to see my student teaching supervisor. I had tried to call him the night before, but I couldn’t get ahold of him and I knew he needed to know what was going on. My therapist had helped me enough that I felt I could walk across campus without throwing myself in front of a car, but I knew I still needed help and I sought the only other person in the world I felt I could trust, Dr. K.

Dr. K. saved my life that day. If it hadn't been for his efforts and his refusal to back down until he was absolutely certain that I was going to be okay, I do not know what would have happened to me. When I came to him that day and told him the story of what had happened, he took care of me. He listened to me, he let me cry, he fed me, he watched over me, and he put all of his energy into finding the solution that would make me safe and would get me the help that I so desperately needed. I owe him a debt of gratitude that I will NEVER be able to repay.

After I left Dr. K., I went in to see Dr. G in the counseling center, the licensed psychologist who did my intake appointment in August. We put an action plan in place to keep me safe over the weekend and I was scheduled for two therapy appointments a week for a while. I eventually told my parents what happened and some time later I told the sorta-boyfriend.

I went a week and a half and I was feeling better. Things weren’t great, but they were getting there And then the sorta-boyfriend struck. He made me feel like crap for what I had done. He made me feel like scum, like dirt...like a total selfish idiot. And I cut myself again because I felt I deserved it. Because the pain I was feeling on the inside needed to match something on the outside. If he was going to accuse me of all these things and make me feel this way, then I felt I needed to deserve it. This time was different though. I didn't tell anyone, save my therapist. I was too ashamed.

After that second instance of cutting and after I had gotten rid of sorta-boyfriend, I asked my therapist if my diagnosis had changed. And I learned that, again, my depression had a name: Major Depressive Disorder. I learned everything I could about it and it fascinated me. I learned that MDD was, again, a very real mental illness and I learned that it was not something I could control. I learned that people with MDD were very prone to self-injury and suicidal ideation. I learned that I was not alone and that MDD and the other classes of mood disorders were some of the most common mental illnesses in the world. But most importantly of all….I learned how to deal with it.

That was in March 2011 and it is now June. Sometimes I find myself falling back into depression without even knowing why it’s happening. It seems sometimes like the silliest things will send me spiraling back down. I fight against when it happens and I usually win. Three times I haven’t. Three times I have ended up with self-inflicted wounds on my skin, which eventually fade into scars. They are scars that I will carry for the rest of my life and, when asked about them, I may or may not tell the story. I’m not sure. But there are a few things I am sure about and here they are.

I will never give up and I will continue to fight my personal battles. I am not perfect. I slip up from time to time and even though I fight against it, sometimes the depression wins. But I will never give up hope that my brightest days are ahead. I will never forget that I have friends and family who love me and who are only a message or a phone call away. I will always remember that I am never alone and even when the world seems to be against me I don’t have to face the darkness by myself. And, most important of all, I will remember my faith and remember the God who loves me and the Savior who died for me and I will be thankful that I am alive.

There have been days that I have wondered why God burdened me with this illness and why it is mine to bear. But I know he would never give me a cross without the strength to hold it up. And even when my strength falters I know he will send me someone to help me as he has done throughout this whole ordeal and throughout my life. When I couldn’t bear the pain of my heartbreak, he sent me my therapist. When I couldn’t stand the feeling of being overwhelmed, he sent me my supervisor, Dr. K. When I couldn’t see a way out of the darkness, he showed me the way through the kindness of a friend. So I am thankful, so very, very thankful, to God the father for all he has blessed me with and for giving me a new chance at life and a new chance at happiness. I know life will be never be perfect and that the depression will always be a factor, but I also know that I am not alone and that is worth everything to me.

Thank you, friends, for reading my story. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to let me share it with you. I hope that it has touched you in some way and that you now have a better understanding of me and also MDD and AD. And please, dear friends, if you ever feel the pain of hopelessness and if you ever feel like your life is no longer worth living…please, reach out to your friends and your family. Seek help. You are not alone, my friends, and this is not the end of your story, just as it is not the end of mine.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 6:23

Happy Father's Day! An open letter

2011-06-19T07:53:00.000-05:00

Dear L,

Thank you for being in our lives. I know that you might not always feel that way but we DO love and appreciate you. Miss K loves her daddy-daughter dates, going to the movies, playing put put golf, going to dinner with just you. She enjoys those hours with you a lot (and I enjoy the time off it gives me for a little while). Little K lights up when she sees you and loves to give you hugs and kisses. And while Mr K might be little still, I know he has fun with his daddy-son talks and gets a smile on his face when he sees you.

It isn't always easy to deal with the chaos of three kids at times but just know that you are loved by all of us.

Happy Father's Day,
From all of us to you!

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog ~ Why Suicide is Never A Good Idea

2011-06-13T10:00:00.004-05:00

After a long hiatus today the first of hopefully many more guestbloggers. Today's entry was written by Chelle who blogs over at Life On The Domestic Front

When I was around age 10, we lived in upstate New York in a little subdivision right outside of Syracuse. It was a great neighborhood. There was a lot of snow in the winter (duh) and right across the street, behind the houses, was a boat dock that froze about a foot thick with ice from the incredible cold. Every winter, we would go down to the boat dock, shovel the snow off of the ice, and skate. How cool is that, being able to skate every single day, just because you feel like it, not having to go to a rink and pay for the privilege?

At the top of our street, I think it was the house on the corner, there was a family of four - a mom, a dad, daughter, and son. Nothing unusual, typical family, no one would ever have guessed there was anything out of the ordinary. The biggest problem with depression and mental illness is that there are so many people who either don't know their neighbor has it because the neighbor hasn't shared because they're ashamed or they feel it would take too much energy to suck anyone into their misery. I would guess, back in the '70's, it was because she was ashamed. Or maybe the rest of the neighbors knew and didn't want the kids to know, which makes sense because a lot of people still believe that the kids should be sheltered from the knowledge of mental illness from the fear that they will "catch" it just by hearing about it. They might have known and just not known what to do to help or were afraid to get involved. It could have been so many things, but if just one person had seen what was going on and asked her what she was thinking, would she still be alive?

I don't remember a lot of the particulars, but what I do remember is that one day this mom went into her garage, closed the door, started up the car, and killed herself. I don't know who found her - my mother might remember but I haven't wanted to ask her the question. I'm sure she remembers more of the details than I do. Or maybe she doesn't. But what goes through my mind when I think about this is that it might have been her children that found her. And when I think this thought, I wonder just how depressed you would have to be to take the risk that your children would find you like that. Because isn't this really the ultimate act of selfishness? The kids will have to live with your decision for the rest of their lives. They're more likely to try to kill themselves or actually do it because they have a parent who committed suicide. They are always going to have to live with the knowledge that "Mom killed herself" and wonder if maybe it was something they did that made her do it.

More likely, the mother was living with the demon of depression or bipolar disorder or some other mental illness and it just got to be too much for her to stand. She probably believed that her children would be better off without her. She was completely flawed in her thinking, but that's what mental illness does to a person. It makes them believe things that aren't true. Because in no way were her children better off without her. I can't begin to imagine what that woman's suicide did to her children and I wouldn't want to know. I don't know what happened to the family. I don't think my parents knew them well and it was just that thing that happened in the neighborhood. I'm pretty sure we moved fairly soon after that, but I still think about that family and the people who were left behind and wonder exactly what drove her to do something so final when she had a husband and two children who needed her.

I tell this story because, when I was nineteen, I decided the world would be a better place without me. I was in the very beginnings of my own mental illness at that time. The main symptom was a deep, sucking depression that made me miserable to be around. I romanticized the notion that my death would make people realize how they should have been nicer to me and how sad they would be that I was gone. I didn't really have a good idea of what my dying actually entailed, how it would be irreversible (this is the problem with teenage suicide - they have no idea that they can't take it back) and how it would affect my parents or my friends. My boyfriend had just broken up with me and, although that was really a good thing because we clearly weren't compatible for a long term, lifetime commitment, I didn't think it was a good thing at the time. That wasn't the reason I made my decision, but it might have been a contributing factor. I also had the incredible delusion that if I killed myself, he would see that he wanted me back and we would get back together. See how mental illness skews your thinking? But the major problem was this fucking depression. Why couldn't anyone see how much I was hurting? It's truly amazing how good you get at hiding how bad you are feeling from the people who love you when you suffer from depression. But I think my boyfriend saw through me and was simply sick of being around someone who was so miserable and needy all the time.

I had toyed with how I would do it for a long time and the best way seemed to me to be to just take some pills and go to sleep. I didn't have the advantage (or in this case, disadvantage) of the internet to see exactly what taking a bunch of over the counter sleeping pills would actually do to me physically, so I just figured I could buy a couple of bottles of Sominex, wash those down with water, and I would go to sleep. The emptiness, sadness, blackness, insomnia, depression would all magically go away and I would drift off into a (hopefully) better place. I didn't (and still don't) understand people who kill themselves in violent ways like putting a gun in their mouths or cutting their wrists or jumping off a building, because those things are going to hurt whether you "succeed" or not. Why on earth would you want any more pain than you are already feeling psychically? The thing that shocks me now, so many years later, is how much I didn't understand that if I had "succeeded" in my attempt, there was no coming back from it. That would be the end. I wouldn't be around to see the effects of what I had done. It wasn't something romantic...it was scary, black, stupid, and selfish.

On the day of my suicide attempt, I went to the pool with a male friend of my ex-boyfriend's. He thought it would help me to get out, so we spent a very pleasant afternoon sunning ourselves and talking (as I recall) and I gave no indication that I planned to go home and down the two bottles of pills that I had stashed in my nightstand. I actually made plans with him to go to the movies (in retrospect, I realize this was to insure that my attempt would fail and someone would find me, but at the time it just seemed like the thing to do). My brother and father were in Michigan visiting friends, so I knew I wouldn't have to deal with them. My brother was in the throes of his teenage rebellion (which more likely was oppositional defiance disorder, judging from the intensity of his hatred of being told what to do) and I was literally tired to death of him tearing our family apart. My mother was recovering from recent major surgery on the couch when I came in from my afternoon outing and I actually remember (I'm sure she does too) asking her if she wanted anything for dinner. When she said no, I went upstairs, uncapped the bottles (no childproofing in 1983), and proceeded to down the entire contents with a large glass of water. I then laid down on my bed and waited to go to sleep. Easy, right?

Of course I realize now that it was simply a desperate cry for someone, anyone, to realize how depressed I was. I was screaming for help. Yes, that's very obvious now. But back in 1983, they just did not understand the workings of mental illness the way they do now and my parents had no experience in recognizing what was clearly my total withdrawal from the world. My mother says now that she kind of wondered if something might be wrong, but every time she would come to check on me, I was reading a book in my room. Nothing wrong there, right? I was the good student, the good girl, the one who didn't cause them problems or heartburn on a daily basis. She was probably relieved that I wasn't giving them trouble and my brother sucked up so much of their energy and caused them so much heartache that I must have been a quiet relief, even though I was silently suffering and they had no idea.

Not "succeeding" at suicide is embarrassing, because when it doesn't work, you feel like you've failed at even the most stupid, easy act. The ending to my story is that I didn't go to sleep. My friend showed up to take me to the movies, I told him what I had done, and he implored me to make myself throw up the pills. When I tried and it didn't work, he told my mother, who rushed me to the emergency room to have my stomach pumped. I remember being extremely angry that nothing was happening and being furious with the drug manufacturers that taking large quantities of their product didn't make me just fade out permanently. When we got to the emergency room though, apparently there were effects because my heart rate was up, my breathing was becoming shallow, and my blood pressure was all over the place. If I hadn't made those movie plans, I probably wouldn't be here today and my poor mother would have been the one to live with finding me dead on the bed with the empty bottles on the nightstand, wondering what the hell happened.

Two things stand out to me about that stupid thing I tried to do. The first is that while I was in the ER having my stomach pumped, I overheard the doctor telling a nurse that I was "just trying to get attention." I think that really sums up the misunderstanding about depression and suicide. If someone seriously makes an attempt at suicide, yes, they are trying to get someone's attention. But it's not just an adolescent acting out. It's a cry for help and I am furious in retrospect that the doctor was disgusted with me. Where was the concern that should have been there? Why didn't that doctor want to know why I had tried to kill myself?

The second thing that I remember, with a sick feeling every time I think about it, is that I learned later that my friend, who came to the emergency room to make sure I was okay, had lost his brother to suicide. His brother had hung himself and I believe my friend was the one who found him. I didn't know because he hadn't told me, but I still feel guilt that I put this guy through something that would so obviously be extremely traumatic for him. I guess I didn't know him well enough for him to share this very personal information with me, but I wish he had. Because if we had talked about that on that pleasant summer afternoon, would it have made a difference in my decision? Maybe. Probably. Suicide should not be swept under the rug and if you ever wonder if someone you know is thinking about doing it, ask them. If they are thinking about it, they will be grateful that someone cares enough to ask and if they are not thinking about it, you are not going to put the idea into their head. It doesn't work that way.

It's not easy for me to tell this story. But the reason I do is that suicide is such a major part of bipolar disorder. I don't know the statistics - I've read them, but I can't quote them. What I do know is that bipolar people are far more likely to die young from suicide. It's a fatal disease...or it can be if you don't get help. I got help back in the 80's by seeing a psychiatrist weekly, until I finally decided she just wasn't helping me and I wanted nothing more than to go back to college and be "normal" again. Cycling, but I didn't realize it at the time. Being bipolar, you have periods of remission of the disease when you actually believe that there is nothing wrong with you and I know now that this was one of them. I had convinced myself that I didn't need therapy and they hadn't correctly diagnosed the bipolar disorder then, or put me on any kind of medications. In fact, I don't think the SSRI's for depression even became popular until the 90's.

I was lucky that I was "unsuccessful" in my attempt to remove myself from this earth. I went on to marry a wonderful man and have three incredible children, who wouldn't be here if I had died when I was 19. But the disease did not go away and it never will. I have what's called "rapid cycling" and "mixed episodes" where I am both hypomanic and severely depressed at the same time. It's such a fun thing, both in my head and for my family. And when I am sick, the idea of suicide still comes to me. But every time I find myself thinking the world would be better off without me, I think of that woman in New York and wonder how her children are doing and how they felt. I know that I could never be selfish enough to leave my husband and children wondering if it was something they did that caused me to swallow that bottle of pills. I don't want my children to have to say, "My mother killed herself." Ever. So I take my medication, I go to therapy, and I listen to that voice of reason that says I don't really want to kill myself. Those thoughts are flawed and I know it.

YOUR face is needed, too

2011-06-12T08:39:00.000-05:00

Several days ago Amy posted a discussion on wegohealth.com
entitled 'Faces of Mental Illness'. I, and others, took the idea and elaborated in our own ways on it.

I wrote a blog post in reply to it that you can find here if you haven't read it yet. Overall, I think the reaction to the original piece has been great. It is currently one of the top entries over at Wegohealth and the reply I wrote here on my blog has been driving a lot of traffic as well. Looking at the search terms that have brought people here, I have to say that I am very excited. The first one I saw was a person searching for an answer to 'How to tell if someone has a mental illness'. Similar ones followed over the next few days and I hope that all of you that came here because of them found in some way or other what you were looking for. The other search queries were:

1. Important people and actors and actress that have Mental illness
2. what are some of the issues that a person with mental health face.
3. what could we, as a society, Do to lessen the stigmatization of mental illness?.

All great question and all gave me some nice prompts to use over the next weeks. But back to the original piece. Melissa from Sugar Filled Emotions
has also decided to do her own spinoff. For that she needs your face. She hasn't said what exactly she will be doing with the photos she has and will receive but knowing her, it will be great. If you're interested in finding out more about it, check out her 'I need your face' blog post.

L joined his first #mhsm chat

2011-06-08T10:29:00.000-05:00

Last night's topic of the #mhsm tweetchat was 'Bipolar'. I was following along when L noticed the topic as he was looking over my shoulder. He liked what he saw and decided to read along on his own. Sadly, twitter was conspiring against him though and most of his replies didn't post. We talked about the chat afterwards and he said he got some good information from it. Speaking of which, when I have some more time later I will go through the the transcript from last night's chat and post a list of the resources and tips and tricks people talked about.

It was a great chat as always and I, as well, got some great ideas that I would like to implement for us. The one that I think might be the most helpful to us was the suggestion to have a plan. Sounds pretty logical to have a plan, doesn't it? While I am sure we all have our ideas and routines on what to do when situation x happens, this takes it one step further. The idea is to write up a plan and have it handy at all times. The person that suggested it even said she has hers laminated.

I think it would be helpful for L to have a visual reminder of his emergency plan and not just have me tell him especially in times when he is unable/unwilling to acknowledge that, for example, the rule is to not argue while in the car. So with that, I know what we're going to do today.

The Face of Mental Illness

2011-06-06T08:55:00.001-05:00

Late last night one of my online advocate friends posted a blog post over on wegohealth.com. A great post that we all should read and try to answer for ourselves.

It was a short post and ended with the following questions:

Are you guilty of looking for a "face of mental illness", are we all? Do you wear your mask to the doctor's office or for family members? I think it's important to show the world that all kinds of faces can be associated with mental illness. How about you?

There is one question I would like to add to this. Has the face of mental illness changed for you since your own diagnosis? Since your mother's, son's, best friend's, coworker's diagnosis?

I don't know if there ever was a 'face of mental illness for me'. Mental Health has always been a fascinating topic to me, I worked with (and as a teen baby sat) kids with various disabilities. One of my classes in high school covered some of these issues in the context of education for people with various health issues. Between my own interest, that class and hearing my mom speak about her job where she helps facilitate ways for people with various handicaps to stay in the workforce and get them the aid they need, I learned early on that the 'look' of any illness is so varied that you cannot put a real face to it.

There is not one stereotypical look of a depressed person, a person with bipolar, schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder. In the blog post from last night another friend posted a picture of herself followed by 'This is my face. Can you tell by looking at me that I have a mental illness?'. I jokingly said that it must be her glasses that define her.

But isn't it true that so many times we as society want to define what any given category of people look or act like? As humans we want things to neatly fit into our little boxes. Preferably one box only for ease of understanding. We want to be able to understand things because the unknown scares us. It is so much easier if we can sort things neatly and without any problems. The not knowing scares us.

And that is where our old friend 'Stigma' comes to play yet again. That is why people are afraid to seek help. That is why we too often pretend to be okay when we are screaming for help on the inside. We don't want the facade to drop and too often that leads to people waiting to get help until they have no other choice BUT to seek help. As long as 'I' look the part (neat, tidy, productive), 'I' cannot have a mental health issue. 'I' am smiling so 'I' cannot be depressed... 'I' don't look or act like 'those' people that are on the news and on TV.

Those of us living with mental health issues in some shape or form have our work cut out for us if we want to lessen the stigma. It will mean that we need to show that people with mental illness look like the girl next door, the cashier at the supermarket, the star athlete from the pro-football team, the actor in hollywood. Because these ARE the people that deal with mental health issues. They more often than not act and look just like those who have not been affected.

Onlookers (including first responders) watch man commit suicide

2011-06-04T12:14:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I was looking through yahoo news and ran across the following headline '‘Handcuffed by policy,’ fire and police crews watch man drown'. After that headline, I had to find out what was going on. Apparently, Zack, a 52 year old man, had waded into the water to commit suicide. First responders were called to the scene but because of budget cuts that had ended the land-to-water rescue program they were not allowed to intervene (see this video for more information)

From the article: Officials blamed a departmental policy, stemming from budget cuts, that prevented them from jumping in to save him. Procedure trumped the help that was needed. This was a human being obviously attempting to commit suicide yet first responders and beach goers stood by and watched him wade into the water. According to witnesses he kept looking back at the beach where the people were watching him from.

I have never been suicidal and I hope I will never be able to understand why anyone would feel so terrible that taking their own life seems like the only way out. I have seen L so depressed though that to him it seemed the only solution. We have dealt with several suicide attempts on his part, not to mention the times when he was 'just' suicidal without attempting. Talking to him during those times only can offer a glimpse into what is going on inside of him then.

Now try to imagine feeling at your worst as it is, feeling that there is no way out other than ending your life. That nobody cares enough to help. And your feelings are suddenly validated by the fact that the people sworn to rescue and protect you are just standing around doing nothing. Nothing at all. What if just going out in the water close enough to talk to him could have saved his life? I am not even trained to do anything like this but I cannot imagine just standing there and not even ATTEMPTING to help. At least go into the water to try to talk to him. Let him know that there ARE resources available to him. That people CARE.

Are you in crisis? Are you feeling desperate, alone or hopeless? Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK(8255), a free, 24-hour hotline available to anyone in suicidal crisis or emotional distress. Your call will be routed to the nearest crisis center to you.

* Call for yourself or someone you care about
* Free and confidential
* Available 24/7

It's been too long (yet again)

2011-06-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

I have taken yet another blog exodus for the past few weeks, well almost months. May is always a difficult time for us. Most people I know that are dealing with mental illness in some shape or form have a time frame when things generally are more difficult to deal with. For L these times are around his birthday in May and around Christmas.

For us it has meant dealing with him being more depressed and more irritable. This year was better than the past few but still difficult to deal with for all of us. His birthday means a return of his old feelings of inadequacy. Why those seem to go hand in hand we have yet to figure out so we are left with just dealing with it. We dealt with a return of his fears of me leaving him, a fear that he always seems to carry with him and that generally comes out when he is depressed. He gets into his own head and become his own worst enemy.

Logically speaking he knows that there is no basis for his fears yet he seems unable to get them out of his head. The more he tries to avoid these thoughts, the more they haunt him. He starts to think that everyone must hate him. After all, he doesn't like himself, so why should anyone else?

We worked through it again. Like we do every year. And we will continue to do so as these episodes happen. I will keep reassuring him (and that will mean less blogging because at times this blog and reading what I write makes him feel bad)

There was a huge silver lining in this past episode though. In the midst of it, he came to me one evening, gave me a big hug and told me how much appreciates all that I am doing for him and our family. He had been pushing me away all that day and been trying to create some emotional distance so these few words meant the world to me.

May's Love Drop

2011-05-05T10:00:00.001-05:00

Hey guys! The Love Drop team is at it again! Last month they gave over $6,000 worth of cash and goods to their recipient, the Kahlen family, who had been going through a financially hard time due to the economy (and whose daughter is currently battling Tuberous Sclerosis). They focused on their love of spending time together, and brought them over 8 pairs of tickets to a whole bunch of local events. It was awesome, and you can watch how it all went down here.

This month they rally behind the Stalnakers - a family who, along with thousands of others along the gulf coast, are still reeling from the effects of the BP oil spill. Our goal is to get them a reliable used car this month as their previous two have died, and it's getting harder and harder for them to manage w/ the one they're currently borrowing. They've been giving back to their community since they moved in, and now it's time for US to help them!

Want to help? Here are three ways you can participate:

1. Help them get a car! - Our #1 goal is to give them a reliable used car in decent working order. If you have any leads, discounts, or connections in this area, please email Love Drop and let them know.
2. Give $1.00 - This money will help get them back on their feet, and relieve some financial burden. Every dollar counts!
3. Give a gift or service - Gift cards are always helpful. Places like Target, Wal-mart, restaurants, etc would definitely help them out. Services too - especially those you can offer yourselves, or from your company.

Thanks everyone! We'll let you know how it goes!

Gone with the wind...

2011-05-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

I had all intentions on blogging about how my first appointment with Miss K's counselor went last week. Tuesday was busy so I decided to do it on Wednesday. Well, that obviously didn't happen.

Early last Wednesday we had left the girls with their great-grandparents. We knew the weather was supposed to be bad but figured it wouldn't be THAT bad. L and I went out for lunch but right after getting our food L insisted on leaving and getting the girls. So we went to pick them up around 2:30pm.

It was pouring down already by then. We made it home just in time though we were without power. We headed straight to the bathroom where we spend most of the next 5 hours because of the constant tornado warnings. Three little kids (past bed time for Little K after a while), no power and a tiny bathroom made for a fun evening. By 8pm they lifted the tornado warning and we all headed to bed. Well, L tried to find a grocery store to stock up on some things but by the time he got there was turned away because their generator stopped working. First thing the next morning we got up and went back to hunt for an open grocery store. We found one but they were almost completely sold out of everything.

They were saying at that point that it might be 4-5 days at least before we'd get back power so we went to the coast. Luckily we had gotten gas on Wednesday and still had 3/4 tank of gas. If it hadn't been for that we wouldn't have been able to leave since no gas stations were open anywhere within a 1h radius and those that were open had a wait time of a few hours. We made it quiet a bit past Birmingham before we needed gas and by then we were in an area that hadn't been hit by tornadoes.

We stayed at a hotel so that I could work. Though working and being stuck in a small room with several kids is not all that much fun. It beat the alternative though. L did amazingly well throughout the stress of the tornadoes and the stay at the hotel (more details on that within the next few days). It wasn't until we got home on Sunday when the adrenaline rush wore off and he started feeling the stress of it all. It doesn't help that he and I are both sick now with a bad cold.

But we are thankful that we only lost power for a few days and had to throw away all the food from the fridge/freezer. Too many people here were much less fortunate.

Patience, do you have it?

2011-04-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

A friend and coworker recently invited me to join Plinky, a website that offers a daily question for users. I joined and promptly forgot about it. That is until today. Earlier I received the weekly compilation of all questions and there was one that caught my eye right away.

With three kids, a husband, a full time job and just life in general you would think that patience was something I would have long since learned and mastered. And I have to say that I AM rather good at it. For the most part. Then there are days like today when two out of three kids are not feeling good and are whining constantly (but refuse to nap) and my patience goes out of the window.

But here is my list of three things that I have absolutely no patience for.

1. Stupid/ignorant people. People that refuse to learn from their past actions/mistakes and insist on remaining ignorant. I have no issue with people that for whatever reason have difficulties with this but if a person CHOOSES to not learn, chooses to remain racist/homophobic/prejudiced in general then I have an extremely difficult time remaining patient and will in general remove myself from whatever the situation might be.

2. Ignorance as a whole. This goes along with the first point. Willful ignorance drives me nuts. If someone chooses to maintain their position despite being presented with evidence that their logic/thinking is flawed then I have no patience for them. This certainly includes issues like mental health, an issue that obviously is near and dear to my heart.

3. Injustice. This is something L and I have had numerous discussions about. I have no problem addressing a person I find to be committing an act of injustice (be it in person or online). L on the other hand hates confrontation and at times would prefer I held back.

As I started writing this I asked him what he thought I should choose for the three talking points. He knows me so well that he got all three of them right on the first try.

What would your list look like?

It's that time...

2011-04-19T11:35:00.000-05:00

I have been thinking about this for a few weeks now and apparently L has as well. He had a difficult weekend though dealt with it rather well. A little short at times but no outbursts. The problem is that Miss K is at the age now were she is much more aware of people's moods. Because she has seen her daddy get very upset over small things she has started pushing him away if she perceives him as being 'mean' or 'upset'. She will not talk to him during those times and actually hide from him.

This behaviour of course is extremely hurtful to L. It tends to make him feel extremely rejected and in return his first instinct is to withdraw from Miss K. They have made a lot of progress together compared to last year and one of their favorite things to do is to go fishing together (in the past there have been times when she refused to go anywhere with him without me there).

Back to this weekend, as usual the endless circle of one rejecting the other started when Miss K perceived her daddy to be upset with her. It was actually L that brought up counseling for her. It solidified my decision that it was time. I called around and found a place close to our house that does play therapy for children. Next week I will go and meet the counselor to give her background information on why Miss K will be coming to counseling and to tell her about Miss K's likes/dislikes so that therapy/counseling can be most effective from day 1. We will also add family counseling for Miss K and her daddy for the two of them to learn together how to deal with these situations.

Wish us (and especially the two of them) luck and if you pray, we would appreciate any prayers you can spare for us at this time.

HAWMC Day 14! Another poem

2011-04-14T18:04:00.000-05:00

Today, let’s make lists (I won’t say the “p” word) that are 5-10 lines long – each line being a lie or misconception about your health condition. You can use lies or misconceptions you’ve heard before or make ones up. Use your personal experience or get elaborate with fiction.

I was kind of dreading this challenge because it originally called for writing the "p" word aka a poem and I have never been good at those.

{8 hours later... I managed to get so side tracked that I am just now getting back to it. Ooops. Second time's the charm?!Let me apologize in advance for the terrible quality. But at least I tried, right? RIGHT?}

It can't be true,
It's in your head.
This isn't YOU.
Just get out of bed.

You say you're manic
You need to spend money?
You want to panic?
This is kind of funny.

Your life goes on,
If you just want it enough.
There is nothing to run from.
You just need to be tough.

April's Love Drop

2011-04-14T12:00:00.001-05:00

Hey guys! The Love Drop team is at it again! Last month they gave over $5,000 worth of cash and goods to their recipient, Katie, who had been battling a couple of brain tumors over the years, and it culminated with a surprise gift of 15+ friends showing up at her house to celebrate with her. It was awesome. You can watch how it all went down here.

This month they start all over again and grow support for the Kahlen's - a family who has been hit hard by the economy, and by their daughter's serious medical condition, tuberous sclerosis. In addition to financial assistance, they're planning to unite the artistic community to help support Kent's glassmaking work.

Want to help? Here are two ways you can participate:

1.Give $1.00 - This is the best way to help out and join their team at the same time.
2.Donate a piece of art - They will be hosting an auction this month, and would love to feature your artwork in it. Proceeds go to help the Kahlen's this month, and is a great way to promote your work :)

We'll let you know how it goes! Thanks everyone.

HAWMC Day 13! For what could he say? What could anyone?

2011-04-13T20:21:00.000-05:00

Open a book to any page. Today is a meditation on naming blog posts. Pick up a book, magazine, newspaper – anything with written prose in it – and choose a phrase or sentence at random. That’s the title of your blog post for today.

So often we get hung up on titling our posts. Are you someone who blogs first and titles it later? Or are you someone who knows what your title is the minute you come up with a topic? Today’s exercise will help you step back from the titling responsibility (or stress, as the case may be) and allow you to write, trying to tie your post to this random word, phrase, or line. Whatever you found in the book is your blog post diving-board – use it to stand up on, then dive in from. Take 15-20 minutes (or less) and write.

In order to fulfill this blog challenge (after having been absent for a few days) I picked the closest book to me which happened to be Martha Grimes' "Dust". The first sentence(s) I came across after opening the book were

For what could he say? What could anyone?

Fittingly enough that fits perfectly for L's and my situation. There are many times when one of us is at a loss for words. How do you explain L's illness to a 4 year old? How to you explain to others why you are staying in a marriage that others would have long given up on? How do you explain the mood swings, depression and rage?

Too often we all feel at a loss for words. To explain to ourselves and others what is going on. It is one of the reasons why I am writing this blog. It is an attempt to give a voice to myself and others in situations like this. Mental illness robs too many people of their voice because they do not understand it, because of the stigma, because they are afraid to speak out.

At the same time I know that oftentimes I am at a loss when it comes to reacting to L. When he is depressed, how can I, that has never dealt with depression to the level that L has, react? When he was suicidal, there were no words that could take the pain away that he was feeling. When he is manic and feels driven to spend money as if it were growing on a tree in our backyard, there are no words for me to stop it. He KNOWS that he can't/shouldn't do it but the drive is so strong at times that he feels helpless.

The most difficult time I have though is in explaining our kids what is going on. I am thankful that Miss K was so young when L was going through the worst of it. If I am unable to explain to her what is going on now, how would I have ever been able to explain to her what was going on 3 1/3 years ago when neither L nor I understand it.

There will be many more situations where one, a few or all of us will be speechless. But by writing this blog I am hoping to take the feeling of helplessness away from being lost, from being speechless. I know I am not alone and there are others who at times can be MY voice just like I am hoping that I am lending a voice to others that might feel lost. Together we have a voice.

HAWMC Day 12!

2011-04-12T10:00:00.000-05:00

Ekphrasis (writing about another art form). An ekphrasis gives life to a piece of art through storytelling. An ekphrasis in writing can be completely made-up fiction or it can explain the visual details of the original art piece. Today’s prompt is to create an artistic blog post inspired by someone else’s visual art.

After spending a good 30 minutes browsing Flickr's Creative Commons I have finally made up my mind and found the perfect picture.

by ` TheDreamSky from Flickr Creative Commons

*Timer set* One thing that L and I have been trying to actively work on is our marriage. It is, as always, a work in progress. Some days are better than others but that is not a situation unique to living with someone with a mental illness. Not that it makes it any easier but every marriage has its issues. I would be willing to go as far as to say that no marriage is perfect and I personally would be wary of anyone claiming otherwise.

We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary last December. A milestone that many (and at times that included the two of us) did not think we would reach. There are still times when L is doubtful that we will last much longer but that is generally because he is not doing well mentally and gets the thought that I will leave him stuck in his head.

How did we get this far despite all the trials we have faced? From a surprise pregnancy with our oldest, to separation from the military, to all the issues we have seen because of his illness. We have endured more than many people will in much longer marriages. It takes work. A lot of work at times but it is worth it to me. That is the advice I always give to someone getting married. I have heard people say that once they are married things will be easy because there won't be any need to impress the other person anymore. Yet if we get complacent in our marriage (or any relationship) that is when the issues start.

Over 6 years and by now three kids later we still try to make time for just us. We are lucky enough to have family that helps us achieve this but even if they were not there we would still try to make sure to have just 'us' time. Downtime for the two of us to reconnect after a busy week for me and after dealing with the stress of every day life. We are not always successful at leaving the week's problems behind but at least we try. We need that down time for us, for our marriage and to be able to tackle the next week or month ahead of us.

The three words magnified in the photo are fall in love. It is something I try to do over and over. I fell in love with him the first time back in 2004 but that doesn't mean that small every day things like him taking Miss K fishing or seeing him for the first time with Mr K don't make me fall in love with him all over again. It is what keeps me going and I hope and pray that I will never get to the point were falling in love with my husband again and again has become impossible.

*beeeeeeeeeeep*

HAWMC Day 10! PostSecret

2011-04-10T13:55:00.000-05:00

HAWMC Day 9! Free Write

2011-04-09T22:06:00.001-05:00

There is no real topic today other than 'Do what you wish with this day'. The suggestion was made to participate in Kendra's #stopselfhate initiative by writing a love letter to ourselves. Kendra is a wonderful advocate and I hope you will take a moment to check out her blog at VoiceInRecovery.com.

But while I am planing on taking her up on the challenge this month, today I want to reflect on the past 8 days of #hawmc. My New Year's Resolution had been to get back into blogging after I had kind of started to blog less and less at the end of last year. I did great at first but towards the end of my pregnancy and then with the addition of Mr K and getting back to work it became difficult again. #hawmc is affording me the option to not have to think for a while about what to blog about. That isn't to say that I'm not putting thought into what I am writing but at least I don't have to come up with an idea. And isn't the idea sometimes the hardest part of coming up with a blog post? At least for me it is.

It is fun to get out of the rhythm of doing nothing but 'normal' blog posts. I normally would not have thought about doing a haiku or acrostic. I don't think too many people have.

While i enjoy the change of pace I think what I am enjoying the most is reading everyone's posts. There are so many other health activists that I would never have known about had it not been for #hawmc. My favorite post so far has been the entry for Day 3 by Tales of SWAGing. It has it all, even Bacon cupcakes.

I have learned a lot reading other people's entries and I hope that other people have learned from me. There are still 21 challenges left and I can't wait to tackle them for myself and to learn more about other people.

HAWMC Day 8! Write a poem

2011-04-08T10:05:00.001-05:00

Write a poem where every line is a health question. Today’s prompt is to write a 5-10 poem where every line is a question. The questions could be ones you have, ones you’ve heard, or ones that are rhetorical.

How do I explain this to my children?
How much do they understand?
What will happen tomorrow, next week, next year?
Why us?
What has he done to deserve this?
How can we change things that resist change?
Why? Why? Why?
Why are there so many unanswered questions?

HAWMC Day 7! Leave your health a voicemail or send a text

2011-04-07T08:43:00.000-05:00

Leave your health a text or voicemail. Time to check in with your health! You call, ready to talk, but it turns out that your health isn’t exactly responsive and is probably screening your call. No matter – leave your health a voicemail. What does your health’s voicemail message sound like? And what are you going to tell your health today?

So without much further ado, here is my voicemail to health. Wish (s)he would do me the courtesy of calling me back and giving me an answer. But at this point I've kind of given up on that ;) I wish we as a family could cut ties with Bipolar but it's like one of those annoying (and at times rude) relatives that you just can't cut ties with and that will be with you for the rest of your life.

HAWMC Day 6! Why I write about (my) health

2011-04-06T20:30:00.000-05:00

I write about [my] health because….

Internet and social-media-skeptics always ask me the judgmental “why.” “But why would I blog?” “Why would I have a Twitter?” But what they are really asking is – ‘what’s the point of all of it?’ Well, friends, is there one? Why do we do what we do?

Today we are asked to write about why we do what we do. A great question we should all keep in mind no matter what we do. It is always good to be aware of our motivation.

Shortly after I started to actively blog again after a long absence I wrote an entry called 'Why I do what I do' that is actually stickied right under the header of my blog. Back then we were just starting to put our marriage back together after L had (unbeknownst to me) stopped taking his meds. Things had started going downhill to the point of me moving out into my own place with our daughters intend on getting a divorce. The reason I took up blogging again was my attempt at chronicling us reading 'The Love Dare'. It morphed into me blogging about our family live and the challenges we face because of his diagnosis.

It was as much for myself as it was me trying to reach out to others in similar situations. I refused then and still do now to let his illness make us live in the shadows. I am not going to hide the fact that my husband has mental health problems just because society is stigmatizing those living it daily. The only way to achieve change is to be the change.

HAWMC Day 5! A Health Haiku

2011-04-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

Health Haiku. A haiku is a “miniature Japanese poem consisting of 17 syllables – five syllables in first line, seven in second, and five in the last. No rhyme or meter scheme is employed when writing haiku. The aim of the haiku is to create something greater than the sum of the parts.” Traditionally, haiku poems were written about nature and gently capture the essence of the aspect of nature that is being described.

What is more natural to us than our bodies and our health? I think this fits together well. If you’d like to take a more authetic perspective, you can include a Kigo, or “seasonal reference” (to April or spring, perhaps?) in your haiku.

Hope is in the air
New beginnings every day
Spring Awakens everything

HAWMC Day 4! A cure has been found!

2011-04-04T14:43:00.000-05:00

Today's challenge: Ludicrous headline or cure.

Press Release for Immediate Release!

A cure has been found!

Something that has long been just a suspicion by friends, relatives and strangers has now been conclusively proven as true by Mr Smith' next door neighbor's cousin's ex-wife's second husband's granddaughter: Mental Illness is imaginary! The great news about that is that a cure has finally been found. People claiming to have a 'mental illness' are lying or at the very least imagining it. The cure is simple: just snap out of it or as professionals call it JSOOI. Of course there are various versions of this.

Depression? Think of happy things. Your life is great so no need to be depressed. JSOOI
DID? Stop playing pretend. You are YOU not more than one person. JSOOI
Bipolar Disorder? We all get happy and then sad. Stop exaggerating! JSOOI
Paranoia? You are not that special that everyone is out to get you. JSOOI
PTSD? It wasn't that bad and you're not the only one.
JSOOI
Addiction? You just WANT to do these things. You can stop at any time. JSOOI

As we can see this works for any and all 'mental' disorders. After all, it is all in your mind so JSOOI.

HAWMC Day 3! Yahoo Answers (and a look at Charlie Sheen)

2011-04-03T13:34:00.001-05:00

Question: The oThr day I was like tOuchIng thIs peRson and thEn lIke me BFF SaId he had ths Wierd tHyng wHerE shE saId he haD bIpolAr. WTH iS tHAt and dO I liKe hAve iT nw?

Answer: Nah, you're okay. It just means that he has lived at the North and South pole. How awesome is that?

-----------------------------------------------------

Today's challenge is to write a Q&A in the style of yahoo answers and we all know how weird those can get. A quick search on there came up with 63230 results. In my experience bipolar disorder is one of those illnesses that many have HEARD but have no real idea what it is. Or people will have a general idea because of what they have heard in the media. Sadly, most often the portrayal in the media is negative or sensational.

The most recent case of bipolar disorder in the media I can think of would be Dr Drew (and many others) speculating that Charlie Sheen has bipolar disorder. What does a look at Charlie Sheen as 'poster child' for bipolar disorder show us? We see a man that is delusional, making outrages claims, out of control, has past history of drug abuse. Yet we still don't see the true human side of this illness. What we are 'missing' is the other side of the illness presented in the depressive phase. Not to mention the times in between when the person with bipolar disorder is neither depressed nor manic.

People were still cheering on Charlie Sheen. His twitter account broke records when the numbers of his followers broke one million in hardly no time at all. Most I am willing to speculate followed him for the simple entertainment value they perceived he had. But if this is really a case of mental illness, why not step back and let him get the help he needs? Situations like this are difficult enough for the affected person and their family to deal with but having to go through a situation like this magnified by the extreme media attention? I cannot even begin to imagine.

HAWMC Day 2! Word of the Day

2011-04-02T09:43:00.002-05:00

Today's challenge was to go to dictionary.com and use their WOTD as an inspiration for today's post.

UNCTUOUS
Insincerely or excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; marked by a false or smug earnestness or agreeableness.

I sat staring at that word for a few minutes trying to figure out how to use this as a prompt for today's challenge. I was truly stumped (it didn't help that I'm still tired). I then went to see the sample quote that was given and that certainly helped. One of the quotes was this

She recalled being offended by the "phoniness" that stemmed from the contradiction between her mother's charming, even unctuous public manner and her anger in private.

I think many of us living with mental illness either as the patient or as a family member tend to try to live two separate lives in an attempt to hide what is going on at home from the outside world. The reasons are manifold. For many it is the shame created by the stigma surrounding mental illness. For others it is to 'save face' in front of extended family, co-workers, strangers because of cultural or personal reasons.

Mental illness is still something most only whisper about. The crazy aunt or uncle. The only time society talks about it loudly is when it hits the media. Cases like the Arizona shooting of Congresswoman Gifford in January when Americans were wondering why family and friends did not realize how 'troubled' the shooter Jared Laughner was. The same happened when Cho Seung Hui shot and killed 32 students at Virginia Tech in 2007. Attempts to understand these and other tragedies led to people throwing around various mental illness diagnoses without a real understanding of the nature of the illnesses they were throwing around.

Is it really surprising in that case that people want to hide their own illness? People with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia etc are too often seen as violent, unreliable, and a host of other negative associations. The truth is that people with a mental illness are more likely to be the victim then the perpetrator of a violent crime.

The only way to change the public perception is to speak out and to show the real face of mental illness. We can all take a part in that by speaking out and breaking the silence.

HAWMC Day 1!

2011-04-01T11:11:00.002-05:00

Say what? I am sure most of you that are reading this are scratching your head trying to figure out what HAWMC stands for. About a year ago I had joined Wegohealth.com a website for Health activists and those seeking information/support on their health issue. How does this tie in with HAWMC? April is Health Activist Writer’s Month on there. HAWMC stands for Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge. Today is the first day of 30 days of posts with prompts on blog posts.

Write a health acrostic! Use your condition’s name or the word HEALTH to make the acrostic or initialism.

Happiness
Exists
After
Lots of
Troubled
Hours

Since I am blogging about L's mental health problems I decided that this would be the best choice. His 'problems' effect the whole family in many ways. Yet despite many difficult hours over the past few years there is a lot of happiness that exists. Happy hours, days and weeks made even more precious because we never know how long they will last.

A second dance team perfoms in straight jackets

2011-03-16T12:52:00.001-05:00

The mental health social media community has been buzzing for a few weeks now with news of stigmatizing dance routines performed by the Waunakee High School dance team (Go here and here for past blog posts about it) and then later the Robert Morris University Women's Dance team.

Both teams' coaches, in completely separate performances on completely separate levels, thought it would be a great idea to perform a dance routine featuring their dancers in straight jackets with disheveled looks.

A lot of thanks has to go to Chrisa from The Mindstorm: Raising a Mentally Ill Child for alerting our community to these things and for actively reaching out to these two schools and the media. Communication between the mental health community and those outside of it is so important. Only with an open dialogue can we achieve change.

While these performances struck a cord with many and led to people feeling offended and hurt, we can hope that both the high school and the college will follow through with their promise to use these experiences to create dialogue with their students and to improve the mental health services and information they provide. Let us all use this as a starting point to create more awareness outside of the mental health community. Maybe this can be used to help people feel able to seek out help and not feel the need to hide their problems and fears.

If used properly these performances that portrayed mental illness in such a negative way can lead to a lot of good in the end. It has already led to new conversations and the promise of change at at least Waunakee High School and Robert Morris University.

Change in .2 seconds

2011-03-14T08:56:00.000-05:00

As I have been blogging lately, L had been doing tremendously well for the first two weeks following Mr K's birth: sleeping normal hours, staying up all day without a nap, helping with the girls by taking them outside, letting me sleep in etc.

Early last week that changed. He went to bed at a normal time the night before and was in a good mood. When he got up the next morning all of that had changed. He was still tired and getting more and more irritable as the day went on.

Yesterday was yet another good example of it. We had gone out to lunch. The place we ended up going to wasn't his first choice but was still his suggestion. He had been a bit on the edge all day but insisted on sitting down inside. We had barely started eating when he 'lost it'. He was extremely agitated to the point of having to leave the restaurant leaving me with the three kids and having to get everything packed up and get the kids ready to leave. I was about to go outside when L came back in. The time outside had helped him calm down. Now however we were faced with the fact that he was upset with himself for having had this happen. So we went home and finished dinner there.

This change in moods is difficult for me to deal with since it can happen so suddenly and without warning. It is even more confusing for the kids. Especially Miss K. She tends to retreat when L starts doing worse (which in return makes him feel worse). They both cherish the times when L is doing well and spending time with just Miss K.

He has an appointment with a new psychiatrist tomorrow as the clinic he normally goes to finally found a replacement for the old one that left last year. Wish him (and us) luck.

Love Drop

2011-03-11T12:18:00.000-06:00

Last month the Love Drop Team raised over $13,000 (and 3 iPads!) to help two little boys with autism receive a service dog. They were beyond touched, and we did this in only 1 month - that's it. Everyone came together and gave a few bucks each to impact one family's life. If you were a part of it, THANK YOU! You can check out the final video of us showing up to their house here - it's pretty cool.

This month we start all over again and rally behind Katie, a single mom out in Dallas battling not only two brain tumors so far (she's knocked out one, and currently working on the other), but who's also dealing with hydrocephalus. We're teaming up with folks at Blissdom this month to not only bring the community her way, but to make a huge dent in her medical bills.

Want to help? Here are 3 ways we could use you:

1. Give $1.00 - This is the best way to help out and join our team at the same time.
2. Join our blogger network - Blog about our Love Drops each month like I am :) It's easy, it's rewarding, and it REALLY helps spread the word (which in turn helps our families). Love Drop will give you all the content you need.
3. Give a gift or provide a service - Gift cards are always helpful. Places like Target, Safeway, gas stations, etc would definitely help them out.

Thanks for reading! Here's to love, baby.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~ A bit early...

2011-03-09T14:23:00.000-06:00

I am reposting this as today's guest blog with the permission of Robyn. She is planning on blogging through their journey with their oldest daughter's experience. I am posting this earlier than my normal guest blog entries because I know there are many here who will be able to support Robyn as she (and her family) prepare for this.

On October 24th 1997 I gave birth to Honor Virginia. From the start, that mothers instinct told me that something was not quite "right" with her. She was horribly horribly colicky. A lot of babies are, but this was extreme. It appeared as though she was allergic to milk based formula. She would projectile vomit whenever she ate, then her poor little tummy would continue to throw up until she was down to bile. There were many nights that my mother and little brother would hold her little body while she got sick over and over again while I was at work. After about 2 months of this, we switched her to soy based formula and she started to do better. But, she was still colicky up until after her 3rd month of life. The 11pm to 2 am screaming fits were just unreal. There was no stopping it. We swaddled, we rocked, we did everything we could , but it wouldn't stop until she was just beyond exhausted and she would pass out.

After dealing with the colic, she started getting her teeth. Wow, they just erupted in her mouth one right after the other. Her gums were always swollen...she looked like a snaggle tooth little thing. Every tooth in her mouth, up to her 2 year molars were in by her first birthday.

Around 7 months or so, I noticed that her moods could shift. She was the only little baby I knew that would actually throw a fit when told no, or just for no reason. She was a really cute baby tho. She knew how to get everyone's attention on her. She would crawl around and pop up just to hear people react to her. But you had to hold onto her because you never knew just when she would get upset, arch her back and attempt to fly out of your hands.

If ever there was a 1 year old you could hold a conversation with, it was Honor. Full, complete sentences by 1. It was a little strange, I admit, being able to talk to such a little person, but she was just so smart, and we figured it was shown in her language capabilities.

Immediately after her first birthday she started getting chronic ear infections. Every 3 weeks or so until she was 26 months. We did one set of tubes at 18 months, but within weeks they were forced out via double ear infection. Finally, after having a massive infection at 26 months and having her ears suctioned out and given oral antibiotics and ear drop antibiotics, the ear infections slowed significantly.

Time went by, we had 2 more children, each with their own issues, but neither of them had the same emotional issues as Honor. She was so hyper emotional. She would be sobbing one minute, and the next second in hysterics laughing, then super angry and almost raging the next minute. We would joke that she needed an "agent" while living in CA because she was so theatrical. Looking back now, we can see that she was just cycling rapidly.

It was always hard for Honor to make and keep friends. She was so "intense" that it would turn off other children, or their parents even. And, well, if a parent doesn't like a kid, they don't want their children to play with that child. We have been blessed with a lot of close friends who get and understand Honor. Some have known her since she was 3, and have seen most of the emotional battles we have faced with her.

Honor at this point, had never really "slept" an entire night of her life (she was 5 now). I took her to the Dr to have her evaluated for Sleep Apnea which she of course had. Because she had developed a heart murmur (which can cause serious complications in connection to sleep apnea) the ENT Dr recommended having her tonsils taken out. We did that as soon as we could and right away, the murmur stopped. She started sleeping "better", but still not quite all night long.

When Honor was ending Kindergarden, she was first diagnosed with ADHD. For the first year, since she was still so young, we opted out of medication. Only after learning that she was one of the smartest in her 1st grade class yet she was scoring the last on her testing, we decided to try her out on Adderoll XR @ a dose of 5mg. There was almost an immediate change. She settled down and wasn't "bouncing off the walls" any more. She could go into her room and draw, which has always been a passion of hers. Whatever her current 'obsession" was, she was drawing it. From about 2-8 years of age, she was all about dinosaurs. Then she started to get into anime and that's what she's currently (at 13) still drawing. She has gotten really really good, and her talent shines through either via pencil or on the computer.

Time went by, and as she grew, her dose did as well. Within a year we were up to 15mg of Adderoll. She was maintaining in school as far as her school work went, but still struggling emotionally and with friends. We started counseling when she was in 2nd grade so she could start to learn some better coping skills. She would lash out in an instant towards her siblings and peers. Most of the time, you could see that she instantly realized, just a second too late, that what she did was not acceptable, but she just couldn't control her impulses. There was zero impulse control.

At around 9 or so is when she would start having panic attacks. They weren't your "typical" panic attack with shortness of breath or anything like that. She would have vomiting spells where (like when she was a baby on milk formula) she would throw up for hours. We ended up in the ER twice for dehydration because of it. She would be so so sick. At this point, I didn't realize it was a panic attack. I know now that when she has these spells, she's got something going on in her head that's got her upset.

Then came puberty. (And by this time we had given birth to baby #4 and #5 and were pregnant with baby #6). We had stopped counseling for a bit, because her Dr was no longer available and things were "okay" for the most part. But as her body started to change hormonally, that's when things began to take a turn for the worst. Her outbursts were more frequent as well has her mood changes. She was having more issues at school and with friends. I had been doing a lot of research on my own and I suspected that she might have Bipolar Disorder, but I'm not a Dr and how does a parent go in and diagnose a child for the Dr. We got a referral for a Psychiatrist and went to see her. What a disaster!!!! The Dr (after 15 minutes with us) told me that Honors issues were because I was a bad mother and had too many kids. Had Honor not been the oldest of 6 in my "chaotic disorganized house" (which it isn't) that she wouldn't be the way she was. I left that appointment sobbing my eyes out. I made an appointment with our Primary Care Dr and obtained a referral to a new Psychologist in hopes of getting a referral to a new Psychiatrist through him. I wanted her seen at Balboa Naval Medical Center. Being an Army brat, I grew up in military care and with Champus and Tricare Prime, and after this one visit with a civilian provider that went so terribly wrong, I needed to be back in my comfort zone. We got an appointment immediately.

After filling out what seemed like books and books of paperwork, the Psychologist rediagnosed her ADHD, with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies as well as ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) tendencies as well. We continued seeing him biweekly for some time, but at this point, Honors panic attacks were getting more frequent and disruptive to her personal life. She could not longer go spend the night with a friend because she would obsess about what was going on at home and was "fearful" that something would happen to her family while she was gone. Then she would start to throw up and need to come home. Fast forward a month and we were referred to a colleague of her psychologist for psychiatric care and he took control of her medication. At age 12 she was up to 30 mg (an adult dose) of Adderoll XR. He added Paxil to help her with the anxiety. It eventually started to work. She was able to spend the night out with friends (close by).

However, her moods...EVERYWHERE. Roller coaster ride doesn't even come close to describing it. My husband was telling me 'normal people don't act like that". She was all over the place. She was still seeing her Psychologist every other week when things started to spiral downward for her. After an incident with her younger sister where I was fearful for her safety, we decided to put Honor in a Partial Hospitalization Program at the local mental health hospital. She was there for 3 weeks and was able to be observed by the on site Psychiatrist. That Dr noted her mood changes and her impulse control issues. After then being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder Type II, she was taken off of the Paxil (I can't remember why at this moment), and she was prescribed Lamictal which is a mood stabilizer, Abilify and Cymbalta for depression.

She started to come around, but after 3 short months, Honor came to me telling me she wanted to commit suicide. I had to take her to the ER. After 12 hours, she was transported to inpatient treatment at Sharp (where she did her Partial Program). She stayed there for 4 days. At that point, she was taken off of the Cymbalta because it can increase suicide risk in children under 18. Her withdraw from that was pretty hard. She was very anxious about it so...throwing up.

This very cycle repeated itself the end of September, then again this past February. After consideration, her Psychiatrist at Sharp recommended long term treatment at a residential treatment facility in TX. She has been accepted by Tricare and by the RTC Meridell and we will be arriving in TX this Sunday. While she is there, she will be getting a full comprehensive workup, a neuro-psych eval, IQ testing...all of it. They will take scans of her brain to see if there is anything else going on. Honor will be there for roughly 6 months. Either Brendan or myself will fly to TX once a month for on site meetings, and we will also do weekly family therapy meetings via teleconference. It's going to be hard to be away from my oldest baby girl, but my hope is that this treatment center will help her get to where she needs to be physically and mentally.

Please pray that this works. Updates to follow.

Proud of L

2011-03-07T10:00:00.000-06:00

We had been meaning to sell our old car for a while now but never got around to it for various reasons/excuses. So we just kept paying on a car we weren't using and that was just sitting around. It's been over a year and we finally started talking about actually selling it this past Friday morning.

The tags had expired in February 2010 and L went by himself to renew the tags so that we could take the car to Carmax to try and sell it. Because of the car's condition I was hoping to break even between what we still owed and what they'd be wiling to give us.

L did all of it. He went inside the dealership by himself and dealt with the whole process on his own. It might not sound like a whole lot to most people but for him it was a huge success. Over the past few years I have had to 'hold his hand' for a lot of things like this. Making phone calls, set/cancel appointments, etc. So this is a big thing for him. He was exhausted after we left but he did it. I hope he is as proud of himself as I am of him.

Overall, he has been doing wonderful the past week and a half since we came home from the hospital with the baby. He has helped with the girls by taking Miss K fishing or just by taking them outside. It has been a huge help while we are adjusting to having the newest member of the family with us.

A lot has happened

2011-02-26T17:47:00.000-06:00

Since the last blog entry a lot has happened. We welcomed Mr K into our family on 2/22 and both girls are smitten by their little brother. Miss K has not moved from his side and while it took Little K a little longer she has now warmed up to him and keeps wanting to help.

The week leading up to the birth had been stressful. L doesn't deal well with any form of stress and not knowing when the baby would arrive was difficult to deal with for him. His way of dealing with it was to constantly bug me if I had had any contractions and to keep asking when the baby would get here. The past weekend we made 3 trips to the hospital because I was having contractions and he was so worried that we wouldn't make it to the hospital in time. I think had I let him we would have camped out in front of the hospital until it was time to go.

We are now trying to settle into a new routine with three kids. There are still (new) things that are making L feel extremely stressed but those will always be there. To see him with his little guy is wonderful though. He loves him with all his heart (and I keep having to stop him from waking up Mr K lol).

Standing up for all of us and our loved ones

2011-02-10T09:09:00.000-06:00

The past few days since I first heard about the WI dance team that did the 'Psych Ward' routine have been filled with so many wonderful examples of people in the social media world speaking out against the original NBC article. Monday's guestblog was one of the extreme highlights of these actions. If you haven't had a chance to read Erika's Open Letter (which was first posted on The MindStorm - Raising A Mentally Ill Child) please take a moment to do so. I am sure you will be as moved as I was by the words of this 14-year old girl.

As the days passed more and more people are taking a stand against this dance routine and the NBC article. It is encouraging to see people rally together and pass on the message that it is NOT okay to perpetuate the stigma and that behind words like 'psych ward', 'crazies', etc there are real people with real stories. People that are hurting alone or with their families because they are afraid of facing the stigma associated with seeking help. Mental Illness is invisible to many because people are not able to put a face to it. The unknown is scary and the media portrayal generally is not helping the cause but instead moving us further away from where we need to be.

It is not until we speak out for those of us unable to do so. We need to put a human face to this illness and show that is okay to seek help, okay to give help and most importantly that it is okay to talk about openly and out loud.

Amy (from Una Vita Bella) made the following vlog in response to all of this:

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2011-02-07T09:11:00.002-06:00

A twitter friend (and recent guest blogger on here) tweeted yesterday about the WI dance team that performed a 'psych ward' routine for the State dance competition last week. The article she linked to was an opinion piece posted on the NBC sports page. One of the young readers of my friend's blog (The Mindstorm - Raising a Mentally Ill Child) wrote the following Open Letter to the dance team's coach. Erika's letter is very powerful and I hope you will be as moved as I was by her strength. Thank you Erika for letting me share it as well.

Dear Head Coach Erin Cotter;

I would like to tell you a story, and I would like you to read. Truly read it. As, though it is a story of my life, it is also a story of thousands. Many of whom are even at your school.

-----

A little over a year ago, I was admitted to a inpatient psychiatric hospital. I was severely depressed, anxious, hallucinating, delusional, cutting myself, purging and making suicide plans. It had been going on since I was two. Life didn't mean anything to me at that point. I loved my family and I loved my friends; I'm sure they loved me. Unfortunately, that love couldn't heal that pain. Not by itself. My therapist couldn't do anything, either: he didn't know and I refused to let him in. So, I made my plans, wrote a will of sorts, penned the letters and signed a farewell statement making sure that everyone knew that this was my choice – not the fault of anyone else. I was thirteen.

But then, in one unexpected, bizarre moment, I made a second thought.

The rest after the jump:

To this day, I am not sure what stopped me. The religious will claim it was God's Divine Intervention; the secular will tell me that it was evolution: that primitive, ultimate need to survive. Truthfully, it doesn't matter: that day, as I was fighting with my mom because I refused to go to school, I knew I had to do something. She told me she was making an Emergency Appointment with my psychiatrist. I wanted to argue; but something held me back. I went to the appointment and, in a slurred and pained explanation, I told him I couldn't take it anymore. I told him I was in pain. I told him that I needed help.

When he brought up inpatient admission, I knew that it was what I needed; but I was terrified. So many questions spun through my mind. Would I be given medication? Would the other kids like me? Would I be able to keep my shoelaces? It was a week before Christmas. What if I didn't make it home in time? My stomach twisted and I felt nauseated. A headache sunk its teeth into me. I hated myself. I felt like failure; as if, because of this, I had let everyone down. Pulling into the hospital's parking lot, it was hard not to remember society. To them, this place was a joke and the patients that slept there were the deranged outcasts of society. To them, I was now an outcast.

I remember that first day well. My father – the only available person - had brought me in and I was helping him with the paper work (my parents had divorced years ago; he had been too caught up with drugs to learn anything about me). There was a TV in the admissions room; toy advertisements were playing, smiling children running through the house thanking their parents for getting them what they always wanted. The irony stung. Happy families, smiling kids, a white Christmas; it all seemed so agonizingly unreachable. In grief and rage, I bit down on my lip. I can still taste the blood.

After a few hours had passed, they walked me to the unit. The doors were heavy, reinforced, electronically locked and coated with alarms. Everything in me told me to run – quick, get out of here!; but I was too exhausted to do anything other than what I was told to. The doors made a sound as they locked. My heart was heavy. I couldn't have cared less.

One of the staff members brought me into a small, locked room. They took out a clipboard and told me to strip. Said that it was a required; that all my marks, wounds and imperfections needed to be accounted for. The blood running through my veins ran cold; frozen, ice-like. I choked; clammed up. I had been sexually abused for seven years. I had PTSD. I had an eating disorder. I had a father who told me who I was screw-up. I hated myself. None of that mattered. They had to make sure I was safe; that the other patients were safe. They needed an explanation for every mark. They needed to search everything: from my shirts to my socks to underwear. I tried to laugh it all of. I'm pretty sure I failed.

The reality of where I was sunk in with a fallen weight. Tears formed at my eyes. A scream built in my throat. I wanted to run; get away. I didn't want to be there. I knew what would happen if I did that, though: security (if I got far enough, police) would be on me; my stay would extent; and I would lose even more privileges.

The next few days are both vividly clear and a disorienting blur. I went to groups. Took medication. Begged the doctors to send me home. I didn't want to be here for Christmas. I didn't want to remember it was Christmas.

And I remember the snow. It was powdery and reflected the sun in that blinding way. The staff brought out sleighs from the storage shed so we could glide down the hills and slopes of the property. Our unit even took a picture with Santa. I imagined that, in the cars that drove by – hundreds each day, I'm sure – Christmas music was drifting out their windows and to us. I almost wondered if their happiness would have some spiritual-echo effect on us. Some times, I could forget where I was. Pretend I was at boarding school, or some gifted program. A program where they send all the functional, , successful”, normal kids; the kids that think a psych ward is somewhere you send the “crazies” and “psychos”. The kids who can use those words without thinking about the people they describe. The kids that you coach everyday. The kids that can be ignorant to the reality of mental illness. And the adults, like you, that enable that.

The fantasy never lasted long. I always woke up. I always remembered where I was. It was impossible to forget.

One girl, who I had grown extraordinarily close to, tried to hang herself on the unit. I had talked to her only minutes before. She had talked about ways to hurt herself behind the staff's back. We talked about that a lot. I didn't take her seriously. I blamed myself. All of us did. The staff talked about the seriousness of suicide and about reaching out. When they left the room, we laughed bitterly under our breaths. Most of them had never felt that hopelessness. All of us had.

I ASK YOU: How is that fun, catchy or humorous?

Eventually, as all things do, my stay came to an end. I went home – in time for Christmas, too. My journey was not over. I had been sick for a long time. It would take many more hospital stays, outpatient programs and a lot of treatment – medical treatment – before I was able to say that I didn't wake up everyday wanting to die. A few days after that first release – and the others after that - I went back to school. You never would have guessed what I had been through; where I had been. I didn't look “crazy”-I never had. I looked like any other teenage girl. I went to classes with everyone else. I talked to other kids. I attended school events. I would have the seen your dance team, had I gone to Waunakee High School. And you would never have known. In fact, the next time you perform, I want you to look at the kids in the audience. About 1 in 10 children under the age of eighteen have a mental illness; 1 in 5 have a serious mental illness (SMI) like the ones you mock. ONE IN FIVE.

How many kids are watching you perform? How many are in your school? How about in your district? Your town?

In fact, for a district that claims it values its students, you are callously alienating and hurting quite a lot of them. But don't worry, they won't tell you: the mindset of teachers, parents and coaches like you have effectively silenced them. Stigmatized them. Made them feel like less than human.

This isn't an overreaction; a small, thin skinned group of people whining and ranting. It isn't about political correctness. And it isn't about hip-hop. It's about people and it's about a DISEASE they struggle with every single day. A disease that rids them of their happiness, stability and normalcy. And it IS a disease. A disability. And you are mocking it to the highest degree.

Of course your students and parents didn't complain; of course you didn't think of mental illness. You have not had to suffer from it or know someone who has. You think its a joke because you have not experienced. You CAN bury your heads in the sand. And you know what? I hope you never know it feels like, because it is painful, ugly and it will drive you to think things that you never thought you would. Do things that you used to mock and laugh at.

I do not expect you to change your mind; but I certainly hope you try to, because a empty apology for something you aren't sorry about does not cut it. Mental Illnesses are life threatening diseases. People die from it, everyday. Did you know suicide is the third leading cause of death among teens and that these disorders are the most common reason for it?

If your dance league sang had routine that included hospital gowns, fake IVs, behaviors associated with dementia, shaved heads and a song about a brain tumor, the nation would be seething with anger. There would be outcry. Cancer patients would be sharing their stories. Families of lost loved ones would be sobbing on TV. You would apologize and admit you were out of line. Maybe donate money to Make-A-Wish or the American Cancer Society (both great organizations).

If your dance league had a routine that involved Autism, Down's Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Learning Disorders, Cognitive Disability and had the word 'retard' or 'stupid' in it, the nation would be seething with anger. There would be outcry. People with these disabilities would be sharing their stories. Families and caregivers would be sobbing on TV. You would apologize and admit you were out of line. Maybe donate money to Autism's Speaks or National Down Syndrome Society (both great organizations).

Here? We are told to shut up, stop with political correctness and not be offended. If a mentally ill person spoke of their feelings, they would be criticized and told to get a thicker skin. If a family that lost someone to suicide sobbed on TV, they would be told that their family member is in Hell, no disease killed them and to get over it. Nobody seethes. The nation doesn't care. You don't see a problem in the routine. Your athletes go on thinking it's OK to mock and make fun of these issues. You continue to alienate other students. And you get to keep your head in the sand and claim this isn't about mental illness; but about hip-hop. Nobody thinks twice.

Nobody, that is, except the people you hurt. The people you make feel like less than human. The people whose you minimize and joke. The families that have the death of their love one thrown back in their face. The people who refuse to seek help because they are afraid people will think they are 'crazy', 'psycho', 'insane'. The people who refuse to seek help help because they KNOW that people will think that; they will know because they see it from the people they are supposed to trust – their teachers, their coaches, their school. These people. These families. They are in your school. They are in your students' classes. They are their friends. They are your students' teachers – your co-workers. They are the guidance counselors. They are YOUR friends.

But don't worry, they'll never tell you: the mindset of teachers, parents and coaches like you have effectively silenced them. Stigmatized them. Made them feel like less than human.

So go ahead, do your dance. The next time you perform, though, look at the crowd. How many people do you see?

Sincerely,

Erika

A wonderful week

2011-01-28T21:14:00.000-06:00

Last Monday L and I had a long talk about how he had been dealing (or not dealing) with every day life in our family. He has been somewhat in denial that Baby K is due in less than 5 weeks and there was a lot left unspoken prior to that conversation.

It was one of those where you are not sure how to approach the subject but you know you have to. Ever since, he has made a huge effort to be more involved in family life again and even took Miss K out on a daddy/daughter date yesterday. The two of them tend to clash easily because they both would rather retreat in order to avoid getting hurt. This week of L being involved was exactly what we all needed.

One thing that tends to suffer when things are going downhill is our communication and we have both made a more concerted effort to spend time together and to just talk. Tonight L and I went out and it was a fun evening. Almost like it used to be. It was a wonderful change of pace and I have been telling him how proud I am of him for making this effort. He even smiled...

Sickness has descended upon our home

2011-01-20T11:17:00.000-06:00

Sniffles, sore throat, fever for L, all around fun. Luckily (*knock on wood*) the girls are not sick. L has been sick for a few days now and I started feeling a sore throat come on late last night. Have you ever seen the video 'Man cold'? That is how I feel around here lol

Not to mention that I am pregnant as well. Things have been a bit tense because of all of this. L's already low patience level has dropped and he's been spending a lot of time in bed between not feeling well and trying to avoid the normal busy-ness of having two little kids run around.

Let's just hope that we're all feeling better soon and that the girls will stay happy and healthy.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2011-01-17T10:00:00.000-06:00

I recently received an email from Chrisa offering to do a guest blog for me. When I accepted her offer I did not know her story was but WOW what an inspiring person. But read for yourself

Tim’s Story

How do you explain when it began? I didn’t know at the time what was going on. But hindsight, as the saying goes, is 20/20. I often wonder if we’d not taken things our pediatrician said as gospel, not questioned a specialist who made a judgment call, pressed more for information, if we wouldn’t be in a different place than we are today. Much of our story is my and my husband’s hindsight, looking back on events and milestones with much more clarity than we possessed when it originally occurred. Our family story is still evolving.

Tom and I were both 26 years old when we were told the only way we’d have a second child was through an egg donor or adoption. Alex, our oldest was three and we’d been trying for a second child for just over a year. Hearing that news was hard but we had already decided that, if it came to that, we would adopt. It didn’t take long – we told everyone we knew and within a few months, an acquaintance of a friend of my parents was looking for adoptive parents for her daughter’s soon-to-be-born child. The birth mother wasn’t a teen, but she was cognitively disabled and had proven unable to raise a child in the past. In order to avoid this new child from going into “the system,” the grandparents wanted adoptive parents picked out before he was born. Other potential adoptive parents had wanted extensive family histories and genetic testing since the birth mother had a disability. We didn’t. We simply wanted a child.

Three months was all it took. We brought Tim home from the hospital, just one day old, perfect in every way. Alex was excited. Our parents were thrilled. We couldn’t believe we were so blessed. Tim seemed to develop in the usual way, meeting milestones for rolling, sitting, height and weight. He loved rhythmic things – baby bouncer, bouncy seat – and he absolutely pitched a fit if he wasn’t in his exersaucer or bouncer, all day, every day, self-stimulating (stimming), perhaps, even then. By his first birthday, he hadn’t said a word. The pediatrician told us it was “second child syndrome,” that Tim’s every need was being answered by his big brother. Tim would grunt, and Alex would say, “he wants juice.” We took that as reasonable.

It was less reasonable when, by four, he was only able to string one or two words together to express himself. He would rage, violently out of control nearly every day – rage we chalked up to frustration at not being able to communicate his needs. He fled the house so often that we had to put a deadbolt on all the doors, keyed on both sides. He refused to play with other children, preferring to play alone, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, babbling with his stuffed companions. His first day of preschool we asked the teacher to let us know if she thought Tim might have any “issues.” She called before the school day was over.

We began the testing. A Neuropsychologist diagnosed him PDD-NOS, saying, “I’d say he’s autistic except he has excellent eye contact and a good sense of humor,” completely ignoring the fact that those two things rule out all Autism Spectrum Disorders. Fragile X testing was negative. The school offered speech therapy and chalked up the continuing rages and fleeing behavior to Autism. Continued testing by the Neuro and the school district added diagnoses of Expressive-Receptive Language Disorder, Sensory Integration Disorder, and Developmental Delay. When Tim was five, we adopted our daughter, Di, who was four. Tim wouldn’t interact with any children except her, and we thought it was good for his social and speech development that they bonded so well.

Speech therapy gave way to a full-time special education class, which gave way to the first of five therapeutic day schools, first for Autism, but after we engaged a child psychologist and, at her recommendation, a child psychiatrist, schools for children with emotional disturbances. But it wasn’t until age 11 after weeks of uncontrollable rage, when his psychologist sat me down and gently explained that my child was psychotic and needed to be hospitalized, did I realize what she’d been trying to soft-shoe to me for nearly a year. Tim did not have an Autism Spectrum Disorder. He had a mental illness and needed hospitalization and, very likely, medication. As I sat, stunned, she gently told me, “he will likely be hospitalized several times.” I brushed that notion off at the time. But between that first hospitalization March 2006 and June 2009 there would be 11 more, accompanied by 27 different med combinations, daily therapy, and refinement of his diagnosis from Bipolar NOS, to Bipolar 1 with psychotic features to Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar subtype. Tim was actively psychotic – hearing voices, plagued by delusions – and alternately manic and depressed for much of that time, if not all of his life. It was just much more noticeable since his speech had gotten to the point where he could explain what was going on in his head.

In June 2009 Tim was granted an Individual Care Grant from the state of Illinois, a unique state program that provides funds for intense community based or residential services for severely mentally ill children. It was a month before his 15th birthday and, after years of talk of suicide (and one attempt) alternating with violent, destructive rage, we sat him down and explained the options. He chose residential to, in his words, learn to be independent from us. Either Tom or I had been with him (except for the 5 hours a day he was in school, when he went to school) every hour of every day since he was four. We were all exhausted. Alex had spent as much time out of the house as possible, and Di mostly hid in her room, understandably diagnosed with PTSD in 2009.

Tim went to residential treatment in August 2009, and he resides there today. Through intense treatment, a very predictable and rigid schedule, and Clozaril (we had several psychiatrists, including the head of pediatric psychiatry for a large hospital in the Chicago area tell us we were down to that or ECT), Tim is pretty stable today. His voices are never gone, but he has learned how to block them out (the meds help). He does cycle, as regular as a calendar, experiencing psychosis and depression in mid to late winter, and psychosis and mania mid fall, yearly for the past three years running. He is still plagued by anxiety that feeds his psychosis, but his personality is starting to show again. He is extremely creative, and paints almost daily. He loves action movies, R&B, and sight gags. He knows how to make pasta from scratch. He’s trained our dogs to shake and catch balls in the air. Tim comes home often for weekend visits and we are able to spend time as a family again, boating, going to movies, and sitting down to dinner, and he’s progressed to the point where we tentatively think he’ll be home for good by this time next year. It’s been a long journey, and now we are in the beginning stages of planning how to live our lives once Tim has aged out of the ICG program. Tim will most likely never be independent, and we understand and are preparing for that. But he can and will have a life he can enjoy and be proud of, thanks to the difficult choices we’ve made today.

Hindsight being 20/20, I have looked back and thought, if only our pediatrician hadn’t told us Tim’s not talking was normal. If only the Neuropsychologist hadn’t looked at that one symptom. If only we’d questioned more and accepted less. Maybe we could have gotten Tim stable so much sooner. Maybe he wouldn’t have spent 300 days inpatient in three years. Maybe we wouldn’t have had to send him away to get him the treatment he deserves. But that’s a fool’s folly. Now I spend my spare time telling our story, volunteering for the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation, and helping other parents get through IEP meetings and understanding diagnoses. We learned late for Tim. Not too late, just later than we could have. Should have. If you have a child that you think might have a mental health condition, I hope our story helps you realize that it’s not your fault. That your child can and does have a future. That you have the right to question everyone and everything. And that there are others out there, going through what you’re going through. And we’re here, ready to embrace and go through it together.

Chrisa Hickey is, in her words, “a mom, eCommerce Professional, and all-around loose cannon.” She blogs at www.chrisahickey.com and can be found on Twitter @Chrisa_Hickey .

Only 7 weeks left

2011-01-11T10:00:00.000-06:00

I have only 7 weeks left until my due date. 3 weeks until they will not stop labor should Baby K decide to come early. That is not all that long in the grand scheme of things. We keep talking about rearranging the bed rooms and move the girls into one room. At this point we are no closer to that than we were when we first started talking about it months ago. Not only do we need to move stuff around but we still need to make a decision on what bed to get for Little K to transition her out of her crib. So much to do, so little time.

My goal is that the next time the girls are with their great-grandparents to get this done. An ambitious goal, especially considering L has been going through some depression after his last few doctors appointments and has been lacking in motivation to do anything. Not to mention that he twisted his ankle a few nights ago.

If it's not one thing, it's another around here.

A new psychiatrist

2011-01-05T09:23:00.000-06:00

L's old psychiatrist left the office and moved away so it was time to find a new one. His first appointment was yesterday. As usual that meant a lot of anxiety in the days leading up to his appointment. With anxiety for L come random irritability, too much sleep and anger. He is also much more likely to fear that we all just want to leave him and that he is unworthy of love.

It didn't help that our GPS decided to NOT lead us to the right location and that we ended up being 6minutes late. Luckily we didn't have to wait too long after arriving to be seen by the doctor.

Since it was his first visit with her we of course went over all his medical history. It is one of the reasons why I go with him since he is likely to simply not remember important things (like his first hospitalization, dates, meds he has been on etc).

One of the things that has been a potential diagnosis (unrelated to mental health) has been narcolepsy. Aside from sleeping a lot he will randomly fall asleep doing other things. We never got a sleep study done because the doctor at that clinic wanted him off ALL his meds within a weeks time frame which we refused to do. Him being completely unmedicated (and weaned off like that) was just not worth it. Anyway back to yesterday. His new doctor is willing to treat him for narcolepsy. He'll be started on a very low dose and we will go from there.

We talked about a few other things during his appointment some which made him very anxious and ready to leave. His new doc didn't let him step out though and after about 5-10minutes he started doing better again.

However, once we left all his pent up anxiety and frustration came out and led to a loud disagreement between us. He has agreed to go back to his psychologist to give CBT another shot. Last time he tried it he kept falling asleep during his appointments rendering them rather useless.

Let's hope that yesterday was a good start to this new year and will be a fresh start for all of us.

Our New Year's celebration

2011-01-04T10:00:00.000-06:00

New Year's is especially special for us since it also happens to be our anniversary. This means that a few days ago we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. Six years filled with laughter, tears, hugs, joy and heartache. It has definitely been a crazy 6 years.

When L and I met he was still in the Navy and about to move to his new duty station which just happened to be Guam. I was still living at home in Germany. We got married after knowing each other for just 10 months all of which we spent apart. Well, all but 5 days. 3 when we initially met and the two days leading up to our wedding. Most people did not think we would last. Yet here we are. Still married, baby #3 on the way and weathering all kinds of trials and tribulations.

Fast forward to last Friday. Just like the previous year we decided to spend our anniversary at the Melting Pot. Our girls spent the night with their great-grandparents giving us a chance to get out on our own.

Our reservation wasn't until 10pm but we left our home at about 5.30pm with the goal to just walk around a bit at the mall (which is an outside mall) and maybe see a movie. It had been a warm day so we figured it'd be a nice way to enjoy the evening. Our first stop was at the restaurant at the movie theater for some delicious cumin fries with ajoli dipping sauce. We couldn't agree on a movie and the weather started to turn. It started raining. A little at first and then more and more.

L's mood was getting worse as well. There were too many people for him and he wanted to skip our date and just go home. We still had 2 1/2 hours at that point until our reservation. He kept feeling as if staying out late equaled danger. Yet because he kept switching back and forth between that feeling and feeling 'normal' he was also feeling extremely guilty for (as he put it) ruining our anniversary and New Year's. I was trying to reassure him that it was okay and that we could just celebrate our anniversary at some other time. In the end we managed to pass those 2 1/2 hours and did go to the restaurant and had a good time. The food and service was excellent as always and I ate WAY too much.

At least I had a good time. Not sure how much of L's was just pretend for my sake. I hope that he did enjoy himself. Asking him would do no good because he would just say he did have a good time.

Here's to many more years and that the 7th year will be a wonderful one for our whole family

Looking for 2011 Mental Health Monday guestbloggers!

2011-01-03T10:00:00.000-06:00

It has been a while since the last guestblog entry. If you don't know what it is check out one of my earlier blog posts explaining it all in more detail.

In short, I want to offer YOU the chance to share YOUR story. Why? Because I believe that every story is worth sharing. There is someone out there who feels alone and that he/she is the only one who ever had and ever will go through this situation. There is someone out there who knows someone that is going through what you have experienced and who can use your story to come to a better understanding of what their friend/family member/coworker/... might be going through. But most importantly to help erase the stigma that is still holding back many from seeking the help they might need.

You can share your story with your name attached or completely anonymously. It is up to you to decide how much or how little to share. If you are interested or have any more question please email me or leave a comment. Please feel free to share this blog post with anyone you feel might be interested as well.

My blogging resolution

2011-01-02T10:00:00.001-06:00

In yesterday's blog entry A look back on 2010 and ahead to 2011 I started out by talking about my resolutions and then got completely side tracked. So let's try this one again.

My blogging resolutions for 2011:

~ Blog at least once a week
~ Restart the 'Mental Health Monday Guestblogger' (if you are interested even as repeat guest please let me know!)
~ Stay true to myself

Sounds easy enough, right? Looking at last year's blog numbers I blogged on average every other day. Not that it really HAPPENED that way but it sounds much better than saying that I took weeks off at a time towards the end of the year. Wish me luck and let's hope that this will be a resolution I will be able to stick to.

A look back on 2010 and ahead to 2011

2011-01-01T09:58:00.000-06:00

Do you have any New Year's resolution? Do you think they will stick? I normally try not to make any simply because I know that I hardly ever stick to them. But I am getting ahead of myself.

What a year this last year has been. I got a job with a wonderful company at the beginning of 2010 and it couldn't have come at a better time. Thinks between L and I had been rocky for a while and in February the girls and I moved out into out own place. L had stopped taking his meds for a while and was making decisions that were putting our marriage in jeopardy. After a week of me having been gone from our home we decided to not give up on us under the condition that he would continue to take his meds (that he had started taking again on his own) and that we would start going to marriage counseling.

We also found out we were pregnant with baby #3 this past year. Baby K is due on March 1st, though I am hoping he won't wait until his due date to join our family.

This past year has not been an easy one but there have been many highlights. Things like meeting new people thanks to my blog and participating in #mhsm chats, Miss K having her first ballet recital and starting preschool, Musikgarten with both girls, celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary yesterday and L putting in more effort into everything and a year without hospital stays for him.

The last one might not sound like a lot for many but it is a huge accomplishment for him. Since his initial mental health related inpatient stay in October 2007 this past year has been the first one without any kind of extended hospital stay. He came close a few times but with the help of his doctors and social worker at the VA we were able to manage those times at home.

What is to come for 2011??? A new baby to add to our family, hopefully a continued getting better for L, continued counseling, raising our beautiful girls,... I am looking forward to this year. I am excited about the challenges this year will provide and can't wait to see where our journey will take us this year.

Yet another sleepless night

2010-12-16T08:37:00.000-06:00

Or at least a night with very little sleep. I worked until midnight last night and it was past 1am by the time I finally fell asleep. L however did not sleep at all and woke me about around 5am and then again at about 6am at which point I got up. Here I am now tired and rather grumpy because of lack of sleep and L spending $20 on who knows what (since he says he doesn't remember). I knew he was going to 'get a snack and a drink' at the gas station but not that he would spend all of the money he had.

$20 generally isn't all that much but he has been having more and more issues with reigning in his spending lately. Even grocery shopping has become difficult again since he tends to run out before the next week's grocery budget begins.

In return he starts getting upset with himself over his inability to control this issue and his current 'solution' is to want to live on the street so that he is less of a burden on the family.

As for me, I am just exhausted. Running on not enough (restful) sleep, normal pregnancy third trimester tiredness during the day, a 4year-old that is anxiously awaiting Christmas and somewhat confused by her daddy's action are all starting to get to me.

I've been slacking

2010-12-11T22:13:00.000-06:00

I know, I know. Last time I posted I promised to be more active just to fall off the wagon again. I have no excuse and I just want to apologize to all my readers.

Things around here have been difficult as was to be expected this time of the year. Afterall, it happens every year. A couple things are different though. I am pregnant and hence more hormonal which in return makes it more difficult to deal with some of the things going on.

The biggest difference though is that at now 4 years old our oldest is reacting much more to the changes than she has in the past. A blog post about just that should follow sometime next week.

We have dealt with an ER visit for L due to severe depression that resulted in nothing, trying to get him seen by a psychologist to see about getting his meds changed (his old one left the clinic where he is seen and they only have a temp filling in who is backlogged until late February). Not to mention normal family stuff like kids' activities, birthday parties for Miss K to go to, Thanksgiving, preschool for Miss K and my job and my volunteer position with the International Exchange Program.

I don't even remember if I ever updated on the Vegas trip I was supposed to go on. If not, that will be a post on it's own as well. I miss blogging but with so much going on I have just not found the time to sit down and write a thought out post.

So for now, I am back. And hopefully I'll be posting more regularly again. I have truly missed it and how it has helped me. Time to remember to do some self-care.

It's THAT time of the year...

2010-11-09T10:00:00.000-06:00

November and December are traditionally bad months for L. It is something we have been dealing with for a years now in some form or fashion. Two years ago it meant two inpatient visits in December right around Christmas. Once for a suicide attempt, the other for being suicidal. We have not had a single inpatient stay for him since that time though we did have a couple ER visits and emergency appointments because of him admitting to me that he was being/feeling suicidal. The latest one was at the beginning of this year.

Right now it seems as if this year is shaping up to be another bad one. He is already extremely stressed. Some reasons are valid, other are exaggerated because of his mental illness. I have been keeping an eye on him more and more and we are back to weekly appointments with his counselor for now.

So if I go MIA from time to time over the next few weeks, it is most likely that I am just busy with life around here, the girls and just taking that extra minute or two to try to breathe and relax.

I have a trip coming up

2010-11-04T08:03:00.000-05:00

Through my volunteer work with an exchange student program I qualified for a trip to Vegas. This trip is coming up soon. From the time I found out that I qualified it has caused anxiety in L. It is only a 4day/3night trip but the anxiety he is feeling is building more and more.

Since his mental health problems started to get worse in October 2006 (and in some ways before that as well) he has become very dependent on me being there for him. Even when he was admitted to the hospital and on his camping trips I was still close by and if necessary could be there within few hours at the most. This time I will not be able to come back until my plane is scheduled to leave Vegas. It is making him very uncomfortable.

His mind has been going non-stop about all the bad things that might happen while I am gone. Logically speaking he knows that the things he is afraid of will not happen or are extremely unlikely to happen. It is the old 'What if...' game that he is so good at. We spent an hour at his last appointment talking to his counselor about these issues and tried to find ways to make him more comfortable with the idea of me going on this trip. He has another appointment next week before I leave to talk to his counselor again.

I hope that this will end up being a (somewhat) good experience for him that will show him that he will be okay and that he CAN do this. It is making me nervous as well since I don't know how he will do during this time. In the end I need this though. I need to get away for a while and just try to relax and recharge.

Been MIA... again

2010-11-02T10:42:00.000-05:00

Things around here have been crazy yet again. L went camping with his mother, stepfather and our oldest daughter and the whole trip turned into a disaster. It's a long story and since it involves other family members I will just say that I was extremely proud of L for how well he handled the stress of that whole ordeal. He was able to make sure that it didn't affect our daughter and that she still had a great time fishing, hiking and just being outdoors.

It was two days after they came home from their trip though when he had had a chance to relax that the stress finally caught up with him full force and we dealt with a few difficult days last week. On top of that I have been busy at work, with the exchange students I am responsible for (two had be be moved to new families and that meant lots of paperwork, home visits and making sure everyone was feeling okay), and of course our two girls.

Our youngest was diagnosed with eczema which I had hoped would not be passed down from me to the kids. But it's been getting worse so I've been tending to her more. And then today is our oldest birthday! I can't believe she is 4 years old already!

I will try to be better at blogging (and tweeting). This time of the year is always difficult for L but more about that in the coming days.

Very impressed with the church I attend

2010-10-25T08:49:00.000-05:00

A lot of times people with a mental illness shy away from churches because the stigma attached to their illness is so great and they have been made feel unwelcome by their fellow worshipers. Many people I have talked to (and many blogs I have read) talk about being an outcast and afraid to admit to their illness because they have been treated differently in the past. Some people have been made to feel as if they are weak in their faith and if they just prayed harder/better they would not be having the problems they have.

Especially the stigma surrounding suicide is keeping many people away from the church and keeping many people inside afraid of seeking the help they might need.

One of the things that has oftentimes been said at the church I attend is the importance of mental wellness. We have a 'Minister of Counseling and Enrichment' who is the director of the 'Enrichment Center' here in town that offers counseling services for individuals, families and couples.

Last year around the time of 'Mental Illness Awareness Week' I noticed bright little cards all over church with numbers to local services like NAMI, and the local Mental Health Organization. I never picked one up since I had the numbers on there. This past Sunday I did pick one up and looked to see if there was anything on the back as well. And there was.

This is what it said:

Mental Illness is an experience of exile made more unbearable by other's ignorance of what they are going through. Jeremiah's words call us to greet those with mental illness with welcome, support and acceptance. "God grant us justice to those chosen ones who cry to God day and night." God has made us all trustees of God's hope--how can we make that hope real for those with mental illness?

I hope that many people throughout the time these cards have been laying out have read this message and been able to take something from it. Be it that they finally felt the courage to approach someone to ask for help or that it at least opened their eyes at least a little bit to those around them affected by mental illness.

Mental Illness is a topic too often ignored or, worse, demonized in many churches. This is such a wonderful step in the right direction for those that feel like outcasts in a community they want to lean on for help.

Need lots of prayers and/or good luck vibes

2010-10-20T09:02:00.000-05:00

Please send whatever you can our way. This is nothing serious. No life or death situation (I would hope lol) but L is going camping with Miss K, his mom and stepdad tomorrow and they won't be back until Sunday. At least that's the plan for now. Since I am working I won't be able to join them until Saturday.

L has been preparing for this trip for about a week now and it is stressing him out quiet a bit at this point. His relationship with his mom is somewhat tense most times so this isn't helping much. So why is he going? To give his family some time to spend with Miss K. She used to go over there for sleepovers but after some incidents in the past we don't allow that anymore and she has only been there supervised by us.

I'm pretty confident that things will work out fine. If not, I can always make the drive up to the camp side and pick them up early.

~Mentalhealth Monday Guestblog~

2010-10-18T08:00:00.001-05:00

Please welcome today's guestblogger as she shares her story.

Imagine spending most of your adolescence not pining over your crush, fighting with homework, or hanging out with friends, but being shipped from doctor to doctor, and with each new doctor or therapist, you are given a new description of what is obviously “wrong” with you.

The National Institute for Mental Health’s website claims that 26.2% of Americans suffer from some form of mental illness. What they do not discuss on their website is misdiagnosis.

I was eleven years old when my mother started taking me to a psychiatrist. My grandmother had recently died, and I was depressed. My grandmother had been more of a mother, at that point in my life, than my mother had. So, naturally, I was grieving. My sessions with the doctor felt like a three-ring circus; the doctor trying to nudge some form of communication out of me, my mum trying to tell the doctor what pills I should be on, and me in the middle, sitting sullenly, just wanting to go home and cuddle with my dog.

After months of failed attempts to get me to communicate, my doctor suggested that I should be admitted to an in-patient treatment facility. My mother was loath to do it, but her girlfriend convinced her that it was a good idea. At the end of that three-week hospitalization, the doctor told my mother than all I needed was “some love and attention, and maybe a new pair of glasses. “
Off we went to the next doctor. My mother was convinced, at this point, that something was terribly wrong. I had become more and more quiet, and while my grades were fine, I was dealing with a lot of transition. With each new person my mother took me to, ostensibly to “make [me] talk, and tell the truth,” since her girlfriend had her convinced that I was lying about everything, I received a different label.

Depressed. Schizophrenic. Bipolar.

Parts of my adolescent years are very blurry, because with each diagnosis came a plethora of medication to go with it. Some made me (even) more photosensitive than I am naturally, so I either wore a wide-brimmed hat when I went outside, or I didn’t go outside at all. Some of the medicines made me sensitive to specific foods. Many of them made me sleepy, all the time.

When I was 14, my mother insisted that I ride on the bus for children with special needs, because “that way we know you won’t wander off.” By fifteen, her girlfriend had decided I needed to be homeschooled, so I was. By the age of seventeen, I had overdosed twice on prescription medication, not by choice, but because every time I tried to speak up for myself, more pills were shoved down my throat to make me ”more docile.”

When I moved to Arkansas to live with my stepdad, I was seventeen. I was sickly, and silent. I had given up. My stepdad claimed I looked “like someone in a concentration camp. “ When I found out that, in the state of Arkansas, it was illegal to drop out of school before you were eighteen, I was happy, for the first time in a very long time. And then, the next round of doctors came…
I wish I could remember his name, because he changed my life.

The first few months of treatment were somewhat similar to what I was used to. Dad stating his case, me just sitting there, looking up from my book only when someone addressed me directly, then making as few and non-committal responses as I could manage. One day, though, the doctor made Dad sit in the waiting room; he said he just wanted to talk to me. Dad was flabbergasted, but far less than I was. I was shocked enough to follow the doctor back into his office, sit meekly in one of the cushiony chairs, and stare at him because I was simply shocked. He asked me some rather pointed questions, some of which he had asked before, but mostly questions about the gaps in my history that I had staunchly refused to talk about with any parental figure around. When he was done, he asked me why I had never mentioned any of it in session before, and my response was, “I really didn’t figure anyone would believe me. And I’m sick of getting hurt for lying when I’m not.”

I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. It changed my treatment drastically. Instead of anti-psychotics and sedatives, most of the medications he prescribed for me helped combat anxiety and depression – and they worked, without making me a zombie! I could function! Before this point in my life, I would have sworn that all psychotropic medications were meant to subdue any normal, healthy reaction to life. He proved me wrong. I will be forever thankful. Thanks to this paradigm shift, I graduated from high school. I went to college. I believed I could have a life, without all of the insanity I had been raised with.
I seldom talk about my diagnosis, or my diagnosis history. The stigma that comes along with any of the disorders I have been diagnosed with tends to leave people almost afraid of saying the wrong thing, or somehow afraid of upsetting me. I am tired of being handled with kid gloves.

The January 2001 Journal of Psychiatric Services states that fifteen to forty percent of bipolar patients are misdiagnosed. A variety of research suggests that African-American patients are more commonly misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. Doctors across America have been censured for the misdiagnosis of ADHD in children, and for the misdiagnosis of ADD/ADHD in adults. This is a pervasive problem, yet it’s not something you hear about in the mass media very often.
So my suggestion to anyone who reads this is to, please, do some research before accepting a diagnosis from any doctor, of any specialty. Knowledge really does give you power.

For those who might care to contact me, I can be reached on Twitter @faerielyght, by email at faerielyght1981@yahoo.com, and via blog at http://faerielyght.blogspot.com

Lots of bonus points today

2010-10-13T10:15:00.000-05:00

It is still early in the day and L has already earned numerous bonus points today. I have a work meeting this morning and he offered to take Miss K out of the house to the playground and then lunch so that she won't be in my hair while I'm attending the meeting (for those confused, I work from home so the meeting will be taking place via the internet). He got some extra points for doing this because he has a headache and instead of getting grumpy is still doing this.

It might not sound like a lot to some people but for L this is big. L has always had problems relating to Miss K. He'd never been around kids much so he is a bit clueless at times when it comes to babies/toddlers. That in combination with his mental health problems and the way he grew up has caused some issues between the two of them. They both have made a lot of headway over the past few months though and it just warms my heart to see them get along so much better (for the most part).

I now try to encourage regular 'Daddy - Miss K' dates and I know they both enjoy them immensely. It gives them a chance to connect one-on-one, a time they both need.

For now, I am enjoying the quiet after putting our youngest down for a nap while waiting for the meeting to start soon. Today will be a good day.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-10-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

Today's guestblogger is Kelli. Thank you for sharing your story!

Do you ever dread when your at the store and see your Aunt Mable by the milk so you try to avoid her so you dint have to hear another story about her bunions? What if you had a panic attack because you have to go to the store and might see someone you know? Well for me, that's my reality. My name is Kelli. I'm a fun loving, cupcake making 20 year old. I love to swim and dance and go to baseball games. I try to live as normal of life as I can even with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). SAD is when a person has an irrational fear of social situations.People with this disorder can have a false belief of the situation, distorted thinking, may have a hard time speaking in public or on the phone. This can completely shut a persons social life and relationships... but it doesn't have to. Social Anxiety Disorder is treatable!
I may have SAD but this isn't a sad story!
Ive had problems with some sort of anxiety most of my life. I think I had my first panic attack at age 10. Ive always have been a social butterfly and has never met a stranger in my life. In middle school I was in the choir and in high school i was in a few of the plays and musicals. Now your probably asking yourself... how can you be so outgoing and still have an anxiety disorder? The answer is simple, those situations are predictable. I know who's going to be a play practice and i know what to anticipate and how to prepare myself.
When i go somewhere like a mall or even the grocery store, that's when i start getting anxious and the thoughts start flooding my head like, "Its Thursday, Claire likes to come here but maybe it wont be today or maybe she came earlier', or Ive seen this persons mom in here before i hope she doesn't see me then tell her daughter that she saw me" I have this huge fear that Ive going to see someone i know and in there head they are judging my every move. I know they probably don't even know I'm there but I just cant shake it. This fear holds me back alot, it makes a shopping trip longer than it should be because I'm always scanning the room multiple times and figuring where i could hide if need be. Dates are also hard! My fiance' and I go out for dinner every Monday for a date night. There are 2 reasons why we go on Monday nights, 1. its the one night where we both have the day off and 2 Monday nights are less busy than other nights. I always have to sit facing the door and there are many times i cant focus on our conversation. I personally don't think that it puts a strain on out relationship but I do feel guilty when i don't give him my full attention. I wish i could but this fear of finding someone i know just holds me back
SAD also effects my job as a Massage Therapist. I work in a salon and there are many times where i have to grab the phone when everyone else is busy. i usually don't mind but if i know the person on the other line or i don't know how to answer the question i get really nervous. Its really hard to stay professional when inside your panicking. I love that we have a computer system and i know exactly who i have for the day. That helps my anxiety knowing that i have a plan for the day. I can also see who else is coming in for the other stylists. What i hate is walk ins, i never know who is going to walk through those doors. I try and hide my anxiety from the other girls i work with and i hope they will never find out. It makes me feel embarrassed and childish but i know this is not my fault.
I have never been on medication for my SAD. My parents have always denied that Ive something wrong. They've always thought that its just an attitude problem or that i would grow out of it or that i was just doing for attention since i was a middle child. When i was old enough i talked to my doctor on my own we sat down and told me some of my options. I had never been on any long term medications before and i was nervous about starting a new medication especially when my parents and i weren't on the same page. I then started researching more natural means of treatment, start from there and see how it went, if that didn't work then i would start a low dose of medication. The first thing that i did was to start meditating every night before i went to bed. It really helps me concentrate on something else and center my mind. I feel like I'm in a better state of mind and it helps the attacks not be as severe. Now I'm not saying that i don't have panic attacks, actually i still have then often but I'm starting to figure out how i can deal with them. When I'm faced with a situation i try take deep breaths and start a meditation mind set, even in the store. Another thing that i tried was acupuncture. Acupuncture can naturally tap into your nervous system, stimulating epinephrine and serotonin aka the calm and happy hormones. I can tell a difference almost instantly, it makes me feel so good and refreshed. The effects from me last about a month or so. Its something that i enjoy and look forward to my sessions. I know this isn't for everyone but for me this has really worked for me.
My advice for anyone who has Social Anxiety Disorder, remember that it is not a death wish. You can still enjoy everything that you are use to doing, you just have to find a way to make it work for you. There are some days that i wish that i could be a normal person and be able to confidently walk into a store, and i hope one day ill be able to do that but for right now I'm still in control of my destiny and i feel that my SAD is in control but i also know when i need to ask for help, there is no shame with asking for help, i don't know where i would be without the support of my friends and family and I'm grateful for everything that happens to me!

Thankful Saturday

2010-10-09T09:14:00.001-05:00

I started feeling kind of off Thursday afternoon: headaches, heartburn, nausea. I chalked it up to being pregnant. It didn't get better though and by Friday night my head was pounding and I felt as if I was starting to have a temperature (that reminds me, I need a new thermometer ASAP). I made it through work okay and was so thankful to finally go to bed after midnight.

L had a 'no sleep night' and that meant, as it usually does, that he woke me up a few times throughout the night. I had mentioned last night that I wanted to call his grandparents to see if they could watch the girls just so that I could get some rest today before work this afternoon. So he called them before I got up and they said 'No problem! Bring them over!'.

I am feeling a bit better than I did last night but I am so thankful that they are here and so willing (and able) to help us with the kids. It makes things much easier for me and takes a huge load of my shoulders.

It's already Friday again???

2010-10-08T08:45:00.000-05:00

I have been feeling as if time is flying by. This morning I looked at my calendar and realized the week was almost over. Between work, the girls' activities and appointments time is just slipping away. I can't decide if that's a good thing or not.

I am almost halfway through my pregnancy, and L is talking about moving (again). I am tired of moving. In the almost 6 years of our marriage we/I have moved 9 times. The first few were because of the Navy when L was still enlisted. The rest were because L is simply restless. He is looking for a place that will bring him happiness and take him away from the problems he has had in all other places. To me, he is running away from things he simply cannot run away from. His mental health problems won't stay behind when we move. They will come with us. Logically speaking he knows this and we have talked about it numerous times. Yet part of him is unwilling or unable to accept this.

He has changed his mind already several times on WHERE he wants to move. Who knows what his final verdict will be. Only time will tell. Though at the rate time is going by right now that might not be all that long from now.

Semi successful camping trip

2010-10-06T08:04:00.000-05:00

This past weekend we took a family trip to a camping ground about two hours away. In my almost 28 years of existence on this planet I had not been camping before. I was very unsure if I would like it but L absolutely loves camping and had wanted to take all of us along for a long time. So we finally went...

We left around noon after the girls had gone to their Musikgarten class and arrived at the 'primitive campground' around 2pm. We set up camp and just relaxed. Well, L relaxed. Little K had not had a single nap all day at that point and was getting unhappier by the second. She refused to sleep, didn't want to sleep and just was not a happy camper (pun intended). Since we still needed stuff I took her with me to get some more supplies.

Th rest of the evening did not go any better. I have to say a huge 'AWESOME JOB' to L though. Despite the stress of Little K screaming constantly he did extremely well. He took care of Miss K while I tended to the little one. Her and I ended up trying to sleep in the car.

The next day was a big 'Daddy-Miss K' day where L took her on a 1 1/2h hiking trip, followed with a trip to Ruby Falls. He did great. Better than great.

Even when we had to leave earlier than planned he handled the disappointment very well. No yelling, no irritability. Just acceptance.

In that aspect the camping trip was a success (plus we got some great family pics and pics of the girls playing in the fall leaves). We learned one lesson though: next time leave Little K with her great grandparents. And there already is a next time planned. This time with L's mom and stepdad. Let's see how that one will go.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-10-04T11:20:00.000-05:00

Today's guestblogger is Steph who thankfully agreed to do a guestblog on rather short notice. So here it is

“What a difference a Year Makes”

I realized that this time last year, I was about to enter one of the most difficult times of my life. From October, 2009, to the present day have been some of the most difficult days of my life. I struggle everyday to live with Mental Illness. I thought that I would reflect a bit on what the last year looked like for me.

This time last year I didn’t know that there was a Mental Illness Awareness Week.
This time last year I had successful career, that I thrived at.
This time last year I was a strong independent woman.
This time last year I was sociable.
This time last year I was fun to be around

But I was also…

Suffocated by depression
Having panic attacks at the drop of a hat.
Not speaking to my friends and family for weeks even months at a time.
So overwhelmed by many of life’s daily activities that life was difficult to manage.
Having periods when I would not sleep for more than 3 hours a night for days.
Quickly becoming a recluse.

A year later, and so much has changed. I am now a person living with a mental illness that is not depression. Most of the time I feel that I am that mental illness. Being diagnosed in early 2010 with bipolar disorder and social anxiety disorder, I am amazed at how much my life can change. I do not work anymore. I am no longer social. I am just trying to make it through the day . I am truly a shell of my former self.

Part of that change is certainly the medications that I take to control the erratic behaviour of being bipolar. The very high highs of hypomania, when I would not sleep very much for days, send 100’s of e-mails, speak quickly and loudly, do three times the amount of work as normal, spend money that I didn’t have and be walking on a tight rope of craziness. To the depression, where unfortunately I live most of the time. A place that is like a comfortable heavy wool blanket, weighing down my shoulders, and inviting me deeper and deeper into its warm arms, while I struggle constantly not to just fall right in and disappear. The drugs are not fun. They are hard to deal with and they dull the “fun me” right out of existence. The person that used to be the life of the party is gone. I struggle sometimes with stringing a sentence together, let alone being witty or amusing for others.

The other part of the change is purely living with and accepting the fact that I have a “mental illness” and its impact on my life. Being bipolar has an impact on all aspects of my life. It is not like having hay fever (although, I do have hay fever too!). Having a mental illness impacts everything. I am now aware that every aspect of my life is weighed on a delicate balance so that I can manage my illness effectively and well. I see the different parts as a spinning top. If one of the areas of my life is out of whack then the top spins out of control and stops working. Between sleep, diet, exercise, medication, therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Mindfulness Meditation and social interaction, there is a fine balance to maintain in order for me to stay healthy.

What I have found the most difficult over the last 9 months is the mourning of the old me and the struggle to find an identity without work and with mental illness. The woman that made everyone laugh, was witty, worked hard and loved her job, is no longer here. She has been replaced by the new me; an individual who is trying to keep it together everyday, who is having a good day when two things on her to-do list get done, who is not working and doesn’t know when she will be able to, who is happiest being alone with no one to talk to, and who is trying to just make her life work.

The new me also has labels that are so prevalent that they feel like they are tattooed on my forehead: Bipolar, Crazy, Anxiety, Manic, Sick. Funny enough, I accept these labels and use them. The new me has become an advocate for Mental Illness over the last year. I have found strength in telling my story, in person, at group therapy session, on my blog and through twitter. I have found support and friends that are wonderful through these outlets. I have also found a voice for my illness. A strong voice for those who cannot speak up for themselves. I have a feeling that the next year will include this voice in some way. I’m not sure how, but I will continue to be an advocate for myself, mental illness and those who are unable to speak for themselves.

So, where do I want to be this time next year….

This time next year, I would like to be working in what ever form that is.
This time next year, I would like to have better control of my medication.
This time next year, I would like to continue to be an advocate for Mental Illness.
This time next year, I would like to celebrate the new me. Mental illness and all.

I hope that you will take the opportunity of Mental Illness Awareness Week to tell your story of mental illness to a friend, share your experience with mental illness on your blog or through twitter/face book, ask someone how they are feeling and help if they need it and be aware that some of us struggle even when things appear “normal‘ on the outside.

If you would like to contact me, I can be reached on twitter @stephintoronto, by e-mail at stephintoronto@gmail.com or on my blog at http://princessrantsandraves.blogspot.com/

Stress, stress, stress

2010-09-29T07:54:00.001-05:00

Things around here have been stressful lately (which is why I have been kind of absent) Between working a lot, the house not having sold yet and L stressing out because the house hasn't sold yet, I had to take a short leave of absence from the online world. I have felt kind of disconnected from my online friends but hopefully I am ready to get back into the swing of things with my work hours being normal again.

But back to L. The stress of selling the house is really getting to him. In a 'normal' world there is no real reason for that. He doesn't have to take care of the bills since I do that, the house has been on the market not all that long yet and we had a couple interests on it just nothing that worked out in the end, ...

The problem is that he is really good at playing the 'What if...' game. Only his tends to be very focused on possible negative outcomes with little room for positive. It is something he has been trying to work on for a long time but stress aggravates this problem for him. The more stressed he gets the more negative his thinking gets. The more stressed he gets the more irritable he gets as well.

I try to stay positive because it simply doesn't do anybody any good if neither of us believe things will work out okay. And afterall, there is nothing saying that the house won't sell anytime soon. We could get an offer today, tomorrow or next week. Even if it isn't until next month that would be okay.

Yet getting L to emotionally understand that (because logically speaking he knows that that is the truth) is a different matter all together. It is a work in progress. So until then

APPROACH WITH CAUTION!

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-09-27T07:50:00.000-05:00

Today's guestblogger is Katie. I am extremely thankful for her willingness to share her story with me and all of you today.

I’ve struggled with whether or not to attach my name to this blog post, not because its likely that someone I might know could recognize me (how many Katies are there in Kansas?), but because what I’m writing about is something I’ve tried to disconnect from, to disown. For a while, I succeeded and it all became someone else’s story, the kind you hear and shake your head at - grateful it wasn’t you, but it’s time that I reclaim what happened to me, own it, and I suppose recounting it all to you is the first step in such a process.

During my sophomore year of college I began seeing a therapist for depressive episodes and anxiety attacks. I was a reluctant patient, unwillingly to disclose much about my feelings or my life; I assume I was pretty hard to treat. Obviously, because I was unwilling to put much into my recovery, I never really felt better. Unwilling to acknowledge my saboteur tendencies, I simply switched therapists. Somewhere around the third session, I told them in so many words that I didn’t think I deserved to be happy because I had ruined the life of an ex-boyfriend, which would always lead to them asking me to describe that relationship. A few sentences later, they would gently ask if he’d ever hit me, and I would adamantly deny it, rapidly shaking my head and shrilly insisting that wasn’t what had happened, not to me.

It was an obvious lie, and everyone in that room knew it. I didn’t know how to explain to them then that even though we’d been broken up for several months, and I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since, daily, I could still hear his voice, low and angry, feel his hands gripping my arms too tightly, see the malice in his eyes, and it wasn’t just memory, it was very real; the abuse was still happening. When it first began in the weeks following what was a genuinely traumatic breakup, I wrongly assumed it was somewhat normal. After all, for the duration of our three-year relationship I had been terrified and trapped. It was just more of the same. I never left my room willingly, save for class and sometimes not even then, and if, on a rare occasion, a friend had managed to bribe or guilt me out of isolation, I’d spend the entire time feeling like a trapped animal, stalked by some unseen but omnipresent predator. The one time I thought saw his truck parked on my college campus, I stood, frozen in fear, for several minutes, staring and shaking. My roommate knocked her desk chair over and suddenly he was there, screaming, throwing objects, threatening me; only he wasn’t, and she was utterly confused and rightfully disconcerted by the way I had curled into a ball, whimpering and whispering placations.

But it didn’t fade, and the longer he was gone, the more intense and frequent those episodes became. Loud noises, particularly the sound of two objects making contact, sent me reeling, as did screaming or arguing. I couldn’t stand being touched, especially not on my neck or face, and certain smells turned me nauseous and panicked. It became an ongoing and losing battle I fought daily to avoid those triggers. At my lowest point, hopeless and exhausted, I wanted to die, convinced it was the only way escape the daily haunting and the “life” I was now barely living. But it did change, I can’t say exactly when or why, it was a gradual process, finding worth in life again, finding ways to reclaim myself; I started talking about it, only to a few people and in a very vague way, but it helped. When faced with a trigger, I fought to remind myself of where I was, who I was with, that I was safe.

I found an amazing relationship with a man who makes me feel loved and protected. I wish I could offer better advice, but I believe that much like the trauma itself and the way it is both internalized and manifested, recovery is an individual process.

Five years later, I’m not fully healed, but I’m confident that the path I’m now on will someday lead to that. Would I have been better off if I had sought professional help? Possibly, and I still may choose to do so, I think now I can finally nod my head in response, and explain what I sometimes see and feel. There’s this assumption that goes along with domestic abuse that leaving the relationship, makes you a strong, empowered woman. I never felt either of those things; I left but those memories, that trauma never left me, and they never will, but I can at least say that now they don’t define me. My past, my mental illness is part of who I am, but not completely, nor will I ever again let it be. There is hope, even if its been ripped from your hands, it is never really out of reach.

~

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-09-20T08:00:00.002-05:00

Because of some family issues the guestblogger that was scheduled for today had to cancel at the last minute. We are currently re-scheduling for sometime in October. In the mean time I will share with you a guest blog entry I wrote for someone else last week

When Amber asked on Twitter if anyone was interested in writing a guest blog entry for her, I was interested right away. I have been blogging on and off since late 2007, took a long break and have been back full force on my own blog since March of this year. When I asked her what she would like me to write about her answer was ‘Something you’re passionate about’. Oh the choices that left me with!

Let me start at the beginning though and let me introduce myself. I am Kris, 27 years old, mom two two darling girls, married to L, and a full time employed work-at-home mom. I blog over at Our Journey Through Life and you can find me on twitter at @GermanInAlabama.

As I said, there are lots of issues I am passionate about: breastfeeding, hosting/being an exchange student, mental health awareness, … Out of those the issue I am most passionate about is mental health awareness. It is a topic I was relatively clueless about until life forced me to become educated on this topic. This happen gradually at first when my husband was diagnosed with depression and GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) around the time of the birth of our first daughter in November 2006. By October 2007 there was no way around educating myself on it more when L started slipping into his mental illness more and more to the point of being hospitalized for the first time after a serious psychotic breakdown.

At that point he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Finally things made sense. We had an answer to why he had been acting the way he had. It did not leave us with an instant solution (and even now 3 years later we are still working on it) but it gave us the key to start fixing things. One thing I soon realized though was how lonely I still felt. People didn’t and don’t generally like to take about mental illness. There is still so much stigma attached to it. It is kept hush-hush if there is someone in the family with depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia,… It’s the ‘crazy great-aunt’ one might have but finding someone willing to talk about a spouse, parent or sibling with anything mental health related can be very difficult. I realized that if I wanted support I needed to reach out to others.

That is how my blog was born. Earlier this year I finally decided to check out Twitter. Only because my job ‘made me do it’ since until then I had been kind of weary of it. After all, what good could 140 characters at a time do? I was proven wrong. It has turned out to be a never ending source of support, education and resources for me. One of this invaluable resources is the #mhsm chat. #mhsm stands for ‘Mental Health Social Media’. People from all over the world from all kinds of backgrounds meet there weekly at 7pm CST (check here for your time zone) to talk about various issues from Mental Health Week, to Suicide Prevention, to more personal issues like how to find and give support.

We would love to see you there! And I hope you come check out my blog and maybe you will even email me to share your Mental Health story on one of the Mental Health Monday guest blog spots.

The familiar guilt...

2010-09-17T08:00:00.001-05:00

I know I have been MIA again and I am sorry for that. Life has been crazy and extremely busy. Today is my first day off in quiet some time. L and I have a busy day ahead of us though. Musikgarten for the girls in the morning, drop them off with the great-grandparents, go to our house and do some cleaning/straightening and sorting through the stuff we have left there to downsize. And then a Sunday School get together in the evening. Rest? Who needs it?

On Monday we had some problems. I had been planning for a while now to go to a restaurant with a friend who I hadn't seen in over 2 years. Since L at times has problems remembering things I had reminded him numerous times in the week leading up to it and also a few times throughout the day.

Yet about 2 hours before I had to leave L started getting upset. The girls were spending the night (something we had agreed on so he wouldn't have to watch them and put them to bed) and the realization set in for him that he would be alone for however long I would be gone.

At that point the guilt started setting in for me. A leftover from when he was doing much worse. I am happy to say though that I stayed strong and still went and even enjoyed my time away. I didn't let it rush me through dinner like I have allowed for it to happen in the past. After a few busy weeks that night away was what I needed.

When I got home things went much better than I had anticipated and L apologized for having gotten upset.

But this feeling of guilt is something that at times is difficult to overcome. I have gotten better at it but it is still there at times knocking at the door at the most inconvenient times.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~ PTSD

2010-09-13T08:47:00.000-05:00

Today's guestblogger is a good friend of mine who I have known for about 5+ years now. I am very thankful that she was willing to share her and her husband's story with me and all of you.

Hello, my name is Brittany and I am married to an Operation Enduring Freedom Vet who was diagnosed with PTSD in 2007. My husband's case a bit different because he was never deployed in a combat setting, but to a place that wreaked havoc on him psychologically for six months. We knew when he came back from his deployment in 2003 that things were difficult for him. Nightmares riddled his sleep, flashbacks and intrusive thoughts snuck up on him at random, and his patience and general zest for life where disintegrating.

Like any good paranoid service member, my husband opted to keep his problems to himself. Unfortunately when you are in the military, if you are deemed "undeployable" you are essentially no longer any good to the military. My husband loved his job as a Navy Corpsman, and wanted to make it a career. It became increasingly harder for him to "hide" his condition as the PTSD manifested into a general depression and he began to gain weight; he was sent into a final tailspin in February of 2005 when we received a late night phone call telling us that his father had committed suicide. The last three years of his enlistment in the Navy were a struggle. He was verbally combative with superior enlisted and officers, his weight yo-yo'd, and it is only by the grace of God (and some really good higher enlisted friends who went to bat for him) that he didn't get disciplined or discharged early.

Since getting out in 2008, my husband has been hospitalized twice at a Specialized InPatient PTSD Unit (SIPU) at the VA Hospital in Roseburg, OR. He started seeing a counselor early in 2008, but only because I made the phone call and drove him to the appointment. He was pretty sullen and grumpy, but he knew things weren't going well for us, and after a particularly bad incident one evening in May, he knew that he had managed to frighten me. We were lucky in the fact that the
counselor had gotten us in immediately, and my husband had clicked with him fairly early on in their sessions.

Also during this time, my husband was working as a customer service representative for a major medical insurance company. He was having difficulties working there, but didn't understand why or how. He didn't understand that the passion and outrage he felt for his wronged insureds' was too extreme. He found himself going straight up to the Vice Presidents of the company and waging war on his insureds' behalf. He even managed to get company policies changed in a few cases. He didn't realize that while he was battling these individual wars, that his voice would elevate - high - or that he would hit his desk, or his leg, or throw papers. He didn't know that while he was eloquently stating his case on behalf of the insureds' that his face would screw up into a hostile, menacing glare or that he would flush with anger - but his coworkers (mostly women) did, and they were afraid of him. He was so shocked, and genuinely hurt, that someone could be afraid of him because he truly is one of the sweetest, most caring men, who would never hurt anyone. His personality is genuinely happy and easy going - but the PTSD has manifested within him and made this alternate person who comes out when threatened or when he thinks something/body is being wronged. (I do need to note that while my husband worked for this company, he was promoted twice, and won a customer service rep award. He was exceedingly good at his job.)

After his second hospitalization, we decided that he would no longer be able to return to work. We applied for, and were granted, Unemployability benefits from the VA, and he hasn't worked since July 2009.

I have learned the hard way that this is not a topic you can discuss easily with people who are not affiliated with the military. Like most mental health illnesses, people do not understand, or choose not to understand, what you are struggling with. My own sister believes that my husband should be able to take a pill and simply "be better." Pills can only help with the chemicals in your brain, they cannot help with the thoughts or memories that haunt your days and nights.

Our life has changed considerably due to my husband's PTSD. We used to have people over a lot, go out a lot, do things with other couples, etc. He has imposed on himself (and essentially me because I want to be with him) an isolation. His "bunker" consists of his house. He can control who goes in and comes out of it, how long they are here, where they go, what they see, what they do, etc. One of his biggest "side effects" from PTSD is the control factor. He NEEDS control, because he lacked it during that deployment. Because he had no say in what was seen and did. The big difference between him and veterans just beginning their recovery is my husband is aware of his need for control, and even knows that in most cases it is unnecessary. It is something that he works on consistantly. Saturday was my 30th birthday, and we had about 10 people over to the house. I was really worried about how he would handle the stress of having that many people over, and wanting everything to go so well for me, and in the
end, I was really needlessly worrying. He did amazingly well; he did have anxiety prior to people being there (upset stomach, slightly dizzy, and sweating) and he just confided he had another relapse towards the end, but truly he did an amazing job.

So where does that leave us now? I can report that I am 37 weeks pregnant with our first child, a little girl. I have a crazy mixture of emotions, some of which are the regular first-time mommy emotions, some of which are the, "My husband has PTSD and I don't know how this is going to change things..." emotions. For the last 7 years, things have been just him and me. For the last five years, things have been about him, me and working with his PTSD. My husband will be a stay at
home daddy, and he really can't wait for her to be here. I am not afraid of leaving him with her when I return back to work. He is amazing with children, and has wanted a baby of his own for a while now. While he still has the symptoms and anger management issues, I know in my heart that none of that will matter when it comes to her. I do slightly worry about him being shorter with ME because he will be keeping it together for our daughter, but that is a bridge we'll have to cross when we get there. Right now, I remain optimistic and hopeful.

The thing I tell every wife/girlfriend/mother/sister of someone who has been diagnosed with military related PTSD is: it's not the be all, end all. You will have hurdles, slip ups and setbacks. But you can still have a good life together. Treatment is essential. Couples counseling is recommended. Communication is a must. If you find yourself not communicating, just talking/screaming at each other, then go to the counselor together - sometimes s/he can decode what you're saying and put it into terms the other person can understand. Once that door is opened, walk through it together.

How suicide affects us all ~World Suicide Prevention Day~

2010-09-10T09:15:00.001-05:00

For years I had always hear that 'everyone knows at least one person that has committed suicide'. For years I thought I was one of the lucky ones who got to go through life without this being true for them.

Then in the summer of 2006 I got a call from my mom. My biological father (who I hardly knew) had killed himself. Even though I barely knew him it hit me hard and I struggled with what emotions to feel. A few months earlier I had gotten an email from him, the first contact with him in over 6 years, in which he for the first time ever apologized. Looking back it was the note of someone struggling with a lot of things. I felt guilt for blowing him off after that email. I felt guilt for not giving him that other chance he had seemingly been looking for.

That is when I realized that if I felt that strongly about the suicide of a relative stranger how would the suicide of a friend or even loved one affect me? Yet still, it did not seem like something I would ever have to deal with.

A year later L's mental health started getting worse and worse. I knew he was depressed yet the thought that he might be suicidal did not cross my mind. He never said he was, so we were okay. Or at least that was my conscious thought on this subject. In October 2007 we were at home watching the Food Network after our then 11-months old was in bed. It was almost 10pm and we were relaxing before going to bed soon ourselves. He had been depressed but things actually seemed to be getting better. We were having a pretty decent and normal conversation. Until within minutes things changed.

L got up to use the bathroom and came back with his gun. He sat down and before I knew what was happening was pointing it at himself. He was crying, telling me that he couldn't go on, that it was just too much. I had NEVER been so scared in my life up until that point. Not for my own well being but for his. Everything else is a blur from that time. I don't remember how I got him to give up his gun to me but somehow I did talk him into giving it to me. We both cried and cried.

The next morning I called his local VA clinic and spoke to their social worker to get L to be seen ASAP. They saw him that same day but by then he had convinced himself that he was okay. That it had been a one time thing. They tried to get him to admit himself to an inpatient stay but he told himself that he did not need to go. I did not know much about suicide and mental illness at that time so I believed him.

A week later he was admitted to the hospital for a severe psychotic breakdown and for the first time the diagnosis of 'BIPOLAR' was mentioned.

That is when I first started blogging and made it my personal goal to learn as much as I could about all of this and to reach out to others in my situation. I did not know of any resources at that time and I want to help others who might be in that situation (and those who think they never will be) to know that there IS help out there and that they are not alone.

If you or a loved one feel suicidal you can call one of the many lifelines like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or Hopeline. There are trained people there who can help you find the help you, your friend or family member might need. Please check out the Resources link on the top of this page for some more great resources for various mental health issues.

Every 40 seconds someone takes their life by suicide. You are not alone. Reach out and let someone help you. Suicide is something that affects us all sooner or later in our life. It is best to be prepared for when this time comes for you.

The Inbetween

2010-09-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

We are neither here nor there right now. At least that's what it feels like. I can see L put a lot of effort into everything. He has been (voluntarily) spending more time with all of us. Things still seem a bit awkward when we dare together but that is just the leftovers from the past few weeks that were plagued by fights, disagreements and living next to each other instead of with each other. We are definitely on the right path again.

Our oldest just started preschool and there are times when L will have to drive her to preschool and pick her up. Yesterday was the first time that he had to do that and I was unsure how it would go since he had to get up much earlier than he normally does and because I was unsure how Miss K would react to it. There are times when she acts as if she wants nothing to do with her daddy which is extremely difficult for L to handle.

Thankfully, yesterday went over smoothly. There were no complaints from L and he got up with no problems and Miss K accepted it without being upset about it as well. It set a great precedent for the next times that L will have to drive her and is one big load off my shoulders. Not to mention that it gives the two of them some time to spend together which they both need.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-09-06T08:36:00.001-05:00

Today's guestblogger is Steven. You can find him on twitter as @EatsShootsEdits. He also blogs on his own blog 'The Emperor has no Toque'

"The Stigma of Crazy or No I Do Not Bark at Squirrels"

Nuts, Crazy, Insane, Shitzo, Bonkers, Not Quite Right, these are a few of the terms people use to describe people living with mental illness and by no means the only ones there are hundreds if not thousands. No other illness has so many adjectives, don't believe me just try and find other names for Diabetics. So why this? why my condition? Why is there such a stigma on Mental Illness?

I have felt the sting of the stigma of mental illness, have felt the nervous disconnect the mistrust people have with someone who is living with Mental Illness. It comes in many flavors kinda like a Baskin Robins of Stigmata. We have all seen the severely schizophrenic homeless who wear tattered clothing and have conversations in with the voices that their brains produce in their heads. Some will laugh at them, a lot of people do, others will cross the street to avoid them.
Most never try and talk to them like the humans they are.

Part of the stigma of Mental Illness is that we are all bad people, who are delusional, manipulating not to be trusted. Why is this, I feel it comes from many places so I will list a few for you;

Lack of Knowledge: Most people just plain do not understand Mental Illness and have a problem connecting chemicals in the brain with behavior / mood. There is little info or attention given to crazy, we do not have ribbons, or runs few to no celebrity faces, so we are a unknown and what we do not know scares us.
Media: The media does a poor job of portraying people living with
Mental Illness, we are more times than not seen as Murders, Abusive, Thieves, drunks, addicts and general well crazy folk. Show me one character in the media who is living with Mental Illness in a positive way.
Past Experiences: There are lots of us who had a Bipolar parent, spouse or sibling that may have harmed us physically or mentally. The so-called family black sheep who is looked at with pity and or scorn. These folks have a axe to grind with everyone who lives with a mental illness and generally puts everyone in the same straight jacket.

I am very open in my life about my living with Bipolar, I generally tell anyone whom I am getting to know that I am. This is a double edged sword or should I say maybe triple edged because I get three usual responses. the nope stay away, the ok I will let you in but you are still crazy and that scares me, and finally the who cares I like you anyway it is part of who you are.

There is even a "Caste System" of socially ok crazy folk and the really sad thing is this caste system is also followed by other mental health patients and professionals . The people who suffer from anxiety disorders or low level OCD and manageable depression are at the top. They are the safe, the harmless, we all feel for someone who has anxiety or depression. Then we move on to the Major Depression & Major anxiety-OCD they make the world a little more uncomfortable. Next on
the stigma plate are the scary ones, Bipolar ooooh it is like a boogyman, to some real fucking crazy and they walk among us almost invisible ready to pounce. Then the bottom of the caste system are the people living with schizophrenia or anti-social disorder they are seen as less than human by both the general public and alot of professionals.

How do we change this Stigma? I blog about my crazy as personal way to beat it down. I speak about Mental Illness in public and my openness or self outing of my mental illness is also a way of breaking this stigma. But more needs to be done, we need a run or two maybe a walk. we need a ribbon and celebrities to come out of the Crazy Closet and profess their "Mad Pride". Because we are not less then, we are not deserving of discrimination, or to be treated as criminals because we are ill. Would you put a diabetic in dirty hospital ward because he or he stopped taking their insulin? Would you cross the street to avoid someone with MS? Or maybe you would not be friends with someone who had Hypothyroidism. I know these sound silly but it is no different. No one with Mental Illness did anything to contract or bring on their disease it just happened.

Please join me in working to lessen the Stigma of Mental Illness because it is the right thing to do.

Great evening

2010-09-04T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last night was just what we needed. We all went to a small local fair. Not too busy (which is always a HUGE plus for L) and most importantly L liked the idea of going. It was raining until about 30minutes before the fair opened but it stopped just in time and the weather was perfect for being out. Not too hot, not too humid.

Miss K got to go on real fair rides for the first time and she loved it. Her favorite was the kiddie ferris wheel even though she was holing on for dear life at first. It was a great experience for the girls and L did wonderful. He spend time talking to the girls, took Miss K on the BIG ferris wheel and won prizes for her and Little K.

We were able to stay for almost two hours and enjoy the evening without too much of a rush. We even got through the sometimes difficult time of leaving. In the end I think we all had a good evening.

Felt terrible yesterday

2010-09-02T08:00:00.001-05:00

I went to bed early Tuesday night because I had a headache. I was hoping it would be gone when I woke up the next morning. No such luck. It was still there the next morning when I got up at 7:30am to get ready for work. And it did not go away until almost 6pm yesterday. Halfway through the day I was lucky enough to add a lovely pregnancy symptom to the list of 'Things that made me feel bad': heartburn.

I was hungry but had to force myself to eat. I tried to eat and got nauseous. I'd get up and get dizzy. On top of all the physical problems, I had a very busy day at work and as much as I tried to stay calm it apparently still showed in how I talked to the girls. L had a not so good day as well and was very short with the girls.

When I was trying to put Miss K to bed I could tell that she had had a rough day as well. It was much more difficult to get her to sleep and something that normally takes 30 minutes between getting ready for bed, reading a couple books and just talking about how her day went turned into a several hour long process. At one point she came out of her room to bring me some pictures she had drawn. She handed them to me to me and said: "Mommy, when you get mad just look at the pictures and they will make you happy again."

Even at 3 1/2 she had picked up on what I had been trying so hard to hide from her. Not that I really was mad. I was just exhausted and very short all day. But in her own little way she understood that I needed some extra love and a pick me up. She truly is a special little 'big girl'

BUSY day

2010-08-31T15:47:00.001-05:00

Today is only half way over and I am already ready for bed time. Our oldest is starting preschool twice a week on Thursday and today was 'Meet the teacher' day for the kids. Miss K has been waiting for this day. She even packed her backpack this morning.

[3hours later]

I got busy making phone calls and before I knew it it was 3:40pm lol Only 1 1/2 hours until Little K's bed time and 3hours until Miss K's bed time. YAY! Then it's time for some mommy time. I better finish this post before I get distracted and it's 9pm or something like that.

This morning was extremely busy. As was the afternoon obviously. ;) Miss K LOVED preschool. I might as well have left since she wasn't paying attention to me anyway. She was too busy playing with her friends. She didn't want to leave when it was time to go. After that we waited for ballet to start. Something else she enjoys immensely. While she danced Little K and I got to spend some together which was nice. I know we will enjoy our 'Mommy and Kayleigh' time while Miss K is in preschool twice a week. With the new baby coming in March I think it is something we really need.

I;m hoping to make Thursday night date night. The girls will be spending the night with their great-grandparents and L and I need some time for just us.

But for now I am looking forward to the girls bedtime and then another great #mhsm chat!

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-08-30T08:05:00.001-05:00

Today's guestblogger is Esther. She is sharing her story of dealing with PPD after the birth of her first daughter. You can also find her at her own blog Journey Through PPD

My name is Esther. I'm blessed with a wonderful husband, a fabulous 16 month old daughter, another baby on the way (due in April), and 5 awesome pets. I'm happy with where I am in life right now, but a year ago that wasn't the case.

When my daughter was born, I had a bad case of what I thought were the "Baby Blues". I figured they'd go away and that I ought to just suck it up and drive on. I figured it was normal at 3 weeks post-partum to cry for no reason whatsoever, have no energy, be unable to sleep, and a myriad of other symptoms. I even googled it and read that that was fairly normal and that it ought to go away pretty soon. It didn't. I didn't cry for no reason as often (shopping buggies left in a parking spot at Wal-Mart no longer sent me into a melt-down) but I had no energy, had horrible mood swings, was pretty much uninterested in any activities whatsoever, didn't really care about much of anything, was always sad/down, couldn't sleep, so on and so forth.

At my 6 week post-partum checkup, I was given a questionnaire to fill out that would give the provider doing my exam an idea of whether or not I had warning signs of Post Partum Depression and if I needed to talk to anyone. I checked a few of the boxes because I had an idea that I needed to talk to somebody. However, the nurse practitioner didn't even look at the sheet, didn't ask me how I was feeling, and pretty much ignored me the whole time I was there. I figured this meant that I was fine and just needed to stop being a cry-baby and start chalking it up to fatigue, or that I was acting spoiled because I no longer had as much me-time and alone time with my husband as I was used to, or something like that. So I went on with life. I started pushing away my friends, I wouldn't answer calls or texts or return voicemail messages. I started occasionally having thoughts that brushed close to thinking about hurting myself. I started worrying that I would somehow hurt my baby. I felt guilty and I wasn't even sure what I felt guilty about. It didn't help matters any when I got my pap smear results back and they were abnormal. Being told there was a chance I had cervical cancer and that I needed to have further testing didn't exactly help my outlook on life become more positive. But I still didn't talk to anybody, I just kept going on.

In July, 3 months after my daughter was born, I finally hit a crisis point and realized that I really really needed help. It was something like 2am and as usual, I was up in the middle of the night. I was on the internet posting on a military significant other support forum. I had been posting a lot in the "protected" section about how miserable I was, how much trouble I was having sleeping, etc. and some of the ladies started telling me it sounded like I had some symptoms of Post Partum Depression. They gave me some links to read and I started thinking "Hey, that's exactly how I feel.". I walked away from the computer to try to go to bed and stopped at the stairs, thinking about how unhappy I was and how easy it would be to throw myself down the stairs to hurt myself. I walked away and went to bed. I couldn't go to sleep and found myself in the bathroom looking at leftover pain meds from an ankle sprain and my husband's surgery and thinking how easy it would be to take all of them and just sleep. I walked away and found myself at the stairs again. That was when it hit me how absolutely unlike me this was and that I had a serious problem. I did some more googling and read that with PPD symptoms, thinking of hurting myself meant I needed to call 911 or go to an ER immediately. I talked to my husband and ended up calling the chaplain (my husband is military), who told me that he and my husband's chaplain would meet me at the ER. As hard as it was, I threw on some clothes and went.

At the ER, everyone was so nice to me. I felt like a dam had broken, I started crying and literally could not stop. I was put in a room where they could watch me and some tests were run to see if there were any health issues that might be behind it (heart, etc.). Eventually, I was admitted to the hospital and transferred to a psychiatric care facility across town. I felt like the worst mom ever for intentionally leaving my husband and baby, but the nurse at the ER (who had struggled with PPD herself in the past) told me that it was a sign that I was a GOOD wife and mom for doing this for my family. Everyone kept telling me that but it took a few days before I started to realize it was true.

At Laurel Ridge, they tried talk therapy. That didn't work by itself so they put me on medication. I was upset about that because the medication they put me on meant I had to stop breastfeeding but I realized that my health was more important than breastfeeding and eventually I got over that hangup too. After about a week of medication, I was better enough to be able to go home (boy was I happy, and scared). I had to be hospitalized a second time a month later so they could adjust my medication again, because it wasn't working as well as it should have, but that second time did the trick and I was able to go on.

In early December, my Primary Care doctor discovered that I had hypothyroidism. We believe that the pregnancy caused this. Guess what... thyroid issues can cause depression! I was so happy that I almost cried, because I had a medical reason for the PPD. I was immediately started on Synthroid and within 3 months, I felt totally back to normal. 3 months of Thyroid medeication did what 6 months of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, and sleeping pills couldn't do. I was able to come off of the depression meds and have been off of them since March.

Now I'm pregnant again and I'm excited, but I'm a little nervous too, about what will happen if I have PPD again. The difference is that this time, I know the symptoms and I know what to do if I start to feel bad. My family and friends know now too. I think that one of the most important things for women who are pregnant to realize is that pregnancy, delivery, and motherhood can impact your mental health, and that if that does happen, IT'S OKAY. Struggling with Post Partum Depression, Post Partum Psychosis, or anything else of the type doesn't mean you're insane, it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with you as a woman. It doesn't mean you are any less of a wife or mother, and there is no shame in admitting you think you need to talk to somebody. Another one of the most important things is to be educated on the warning signs and symptoms of PPD/PPP, whether you or someone you know are the one pregnant/just had a baby. If you have friends who you think are having trouble, ask them about it. If they blow it off, talk to their family. Don't let them fool you and don't push them to get help just because you don't want to be "mean" or "intrude". There's nothing wrong with admitting you need help, it's a sign of inner strength. Also be aware that thyroid issues can cause depression. If they check your thyroid and don't see anything, have them check again a few months later. In my case, it took about 6 months after my daughter was born before my thyroid levels settled into a pattern that was diagnosable as hypothyroidism. You are your own best advocate, never forget that.

Psalm 23

2010-08-28T07:42:00.000-05:00

I have been trying to decide on whether or not to post this. And how if I do. A conversation with a friend yesterday helped me make up my mind. This friend is going through a lot right now, dealing with both physical and mental illness at this point. Yesterday she was close to reaching her breaking point. We are both religious though of different faith. But since we 'share' the Old Testament I decided to share with her that one of the most comforting things to me over these past 3 years (It's only been three? Seems like an eternity at times) has been Psalm 23.

Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

It has been my anchor ever since L had his psychotic episode almost 3 years ago that started all of this. I will not go into detail as I do not know if he would be comfortable with me sharing all the details but I will say that that night was the scariest thing I have ever been through. At one point he asked me to read to him from the bible and that passage is what I first landed on. After reading it over and over the first few times I lost track of the number of times I repeated it. But a sense of calm came over me as I was reading it. I still feel this same calm and soothing feeling now when I read it.

For a long time when things first went down hill, going to church was the only break I would get because I was too worried to leave him alone for long periods of time. And to this day, no matter how hectic the week has been, going to church is part of what gives me the strength to go on and deal with everything.

Waiting for what's next

2010-08-27T08:06:00.000-05:00

Things have been going pretty well over the past few days but after this last difficult month I feel as if I am unable to really enjoy it for what it is. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think in a way I am afraid to truly enjoy it and get lost in the good times because I am worried to get disappointed again when things get worse again. And right now i feels more like a 'WHEN' things go wrong than an 'IF' things go wrong.

Feeling that way isn't fair to L or myself but at this point I am still worried about what happened this last month. It happens every time we go through an extended period of things being bad. At this point with everything so fresh in my memory I question anything and everything. And I know it shows.

These transition periods truly stink.

Book list from last night's #mhsm chat

2010-08-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Last night's topic during the #mhsm chat was 'Outstanding people in Mental Health'. I think the general consensus was that #mhsm has assembled a wonderful group of people that are all inspiring in their own ways.

One of the questions asked was for participants of the chat to list some book resources on mental health. These are in no particular order.

1. "Bipolar Breakthrough by Ronald R.Fieve
2. "Flying with Paper Wings" by Sandy Jeffs
3. "I Never Knew I Had a Choice" by Gerald Corey and Marianne Schneider Corey
4. "My brush with depression" by Greg Wilson
5. "A Mind That Found Itself" by Clifford Whittingham Beers
6. "Loud In The House of Myself" by Stacy Pershall
7. "A Child Called It" by Dave Pelzer
8. "mind over mood" by Dennis Greenberger (CBT Handbook)
9. "When someone you love is depressed" by Laura Epstein Rosen and Xavier Francisco Amador
10. "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Herman
11. "Victims No Longer" by Mike Lew
12. "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness." by William Styron
13. "the Biolar advantage"
14. "less than crazy"
15. "Sugar & Salt"
16. "the unquiet mind" by Kay Redfield Jamison
17. "Body Image Workbook" by Thomas Cash
18. "Touched with Fire" by Kay Redfield Jamison
19. "Drinking A Love Story" by Caoline Knapp
20. "Edward the Crazy Man" by Marie Day
21. headspace published a collection of stories, poetry and art by young people - it's free - order here: http://bit.ly/dk7EAr

I will leave you with the words of the wonderful @perthones

"Every breath we take is a victory over illness & stigma"

Things are looking up... for now

2010-08-24T08:08:00.000-05:00

For the past three days things between L and I have been pretty decent. He seems to be getting over the need to spend too much time with his new friends and to want to spend more time with me and the girls. For the first time in a while he spend more than just an hour or two with us. There still was tension from the past few weeks as we are trying to get used to each other again without letting past disagreements come between us.

I know it is tough for me to not look for all the small signs that the situation might get worse again and to just enjoy the day by itself for what it is. I am trying and I think we did pretty well yesterday.

The best thing though is that we are able to talk again. Small talk is still difficult for some reason but talk about important things like how much time he is spending with his friends, plan together what to do the next day etc. I missed these conversations that are more than 'Oh, it's hot today, isn't it?'

We are on the right path again and hopefully it'll stay this way for a while.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-08-23T18:15:00.001-05:00

Please welcome today's guestblogger and support her as she is speaking about her struggle with ED. Since I am unsure what kind of triggers there are regarding this I would like to urge to be cautious when reading this.

The reason behind choosing to study Clinical Psychology...

Growing up I had a fairly normal relationship with food. I was never an overly big fan of take away and the like but to be honest that’s completely normal. I was a bit on the larger side and pushing a size 14 in some clothes. I didn’t mind all the time though, it was who I was and I felt fairly comfortable with being me. Everyone seemed to like me for who I was anyway, so what did being a bit bigger matter? What does it matter when you get ignored for your skinnier friends? What does it matter that people comment on your size? What does it matter when you look at yourself in the mirror and cry at your appearance? And what does it matter that you would do anything to change who or what you are? It doesn’t.

I know enough about all this to know there is never a single trigger towards eating problems. It is usually a combination of things. I’ve spoken to enough people who make the assumption that I have a mixture of reasons as to why I developed the issues, which I have, yet they all miss the obvious one. I simply don’t want to eat.

It started with having random days where I would just not eat; I loved being able to know exactly what I’ve eaten in a day. Listing it and knowing how many calories I had had became a daily game, which spiralled out of control. I enrolled at the gym and began going every day. Even days when I’d eaten nothing- just desperate to burn more fat, lose weight, look better. Anything. I was desperate. Desperate to
be a different person.

The first time I nearly passed out at the gym was scary- I was on my own and my legs just gave out. I sat there for a few seconds then tried to carry on. This clearly wasn’t going to work and so I gave up and went to my dance class, to push myself in a different way. No one knew and no one cared. I just knew how far I could push myself.

One week when my mum went away, I lived on ice-lollies and ice cubes. It was an amazing week and I have never felt in such control. I didn’t know at the time that this was going to be the start of a slippery slope into problems I would not be able to control. The thing was, the more people complimented me on my weight loss, and the more I wanted to lose. The more I thought I wasn’t doing well enough, the more I felt I had to work and the less I had to eat. However, if people hadn’t noticed, it would only have driven me to continue and perhaps work harder to get people to notice my weight loss. I didn’t want to be the big one any more.

I don’t know how I came to be so repulsed with myself- I just know that I am. There are days where I’m okay and feel that I am finally taking steps forward, but then there are many, many days when I am not okay and take tumbles backwards. These days are the days I need my friends around me. The days when I feel faint and exhausted are days I feel most in control, punishing my body. The days I don’t feel able to move, are the days I am most pleased with myself, because I know I’ve done this to myself. You could say that I’m a control freak. I love having control of a situation and being able to do exactly as I please. It would make things so much harder if my family did things such as big meal times, but then again maybe if
we did do that, I wouldn’t have been able to get this far in the first place.

The feeling of detachment i’ve felt during this is insane. Attempting to separate myself from situations which I might have to confront my “food daemons” or anything like that... This loneliness only furthers your belief that you’re doing the right thing... it’s you and your head... which is completely dangerous. There is so little awareness of eating disorders and the symptoms to look for etc. Most doctors don’t recognise eating disorders unless someone says “I think i have an eating disorder” or the person is completely emaciated, which is ridiculous. This is part of the reason why I’m studying at University, to be able to help others, either in the same or similar situation. I want to work hard enough to take away at
least one person’s pain from an experience, which in my opinion they don’t need to be going through; at least not on their own. I know those with eating disorders are normally reluctant to admit a problem or accept help... but sometimes i think that maybe if people were more understanding, they’d be less reluctant to do so?

Maybe.

This is only a very small account of some of the things i’ve experienced... but I’m willing to talk to others if they want or need to.

Feeling lost

2010-08-20T12:07:00.000-05:00

Things here at our home are rather difficult again. L told me last night that he is feeling suicidal again. Since he was out with friends we decided it would be best if he stayed unless the feeling was getting stronger. He was home by 10pm and we went to bed.

Being pregnant makes me much more emotional than I usually am so dealing with everything is much more difficult for me. L hates it when I cry because it makes him feel helpless and in a way guilty for not being able to change things. Put together my emotional state and L not doing well and you have a very difficult situation to deal with from all sides.

I want the emotional support from L and have him be there for me, instead of me. And I know he tries in his own ways but generally those ways mean avoiding the issues and avoiding being around me because to him it not being around me equals me not having the stress of being around him.

Our next appointment with our counselor isn't until next week and there is nothing available sooner than that. I tried that already. We will just go on the best we know how to.

The Ups and Downs

2010-08-18T08:10:00.000-05:00

Lately again we have had more downs that ups. I went with L to his last appointment with his social worker who also did our marriage counseling earlier this year. The first day after the appointment it was just as bad as it had been the two weeks leading up to it but Sunday and Monday were wonderful. Until we got into another argument late Monday night.

The problem we are currently having is that L has made new friends and that these friends seem to be his priority right now. We have this problem every time. In a way I understand why these friends are so important and I agree that they ARE important. It gets him out of the house and he has other people than me to talk to. But he tends to go overboard. With me being pregnant and much more emotional I am having a more difficult time dealing with it.

We are both so used to the status quo of him being home all the time after it being that way for years that we both have a difficult time dealing with this in a healthy way right away. Add into the mix that the last time L made friends it almost led to our divorce twice and there is a lot of added baggage and bad feelings.

It is something we are both learning about in our own ways. I need to let go a bit more, and he needs to learn to not go overboard. Hopefully we can meet in the middle. Until then we will go back to marriage counseling and try to deal with the problems that are happening along the way to the best of our abilities.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-08-16T08:00:00.001-05:00

Today's guestblogger is Bec. You can find her at her own blog Me plus Bipolar and on twitter at @allinherhead

My story began in early childhood. I remember in kindergarten I was given the lead role in a play, which was a mouse. I was the smallest child in the grade, so it made sense. The girl that wanted it, who was also the most popular girl, was the tallest so she did not get the role. She started to spread rumours about me. Since then I’ve never had a lot of friends. I learned at that early age how hard it can be to trust people, so I closed myself off.

The older I got, the more shy and introverted I became. High school was hard. I never felt like I fit in. I was starting to realize something was wrong with me, but I didn’t know what, or what to do. I wanted an adult to take over and help me. I was too scared to ask. Reading some of the journals I kept during that time, I can now see that I was depressed.

In year ten I went on a school camp, where one of the sessions was learning about self-esteem. To this day I still remember the teacher saying, in front of everyone, that I was a perfect example of someone with no self-esteem. I wanted to die. I was so embarrassed. The worst thing was that the school counselor was standing next to her, and he didn’t do anything. I wanted him to pull me up afterward and talk, or something. Nothing happened.

In my last year of high school, I’d managed to make a few stable friendships. I finally took a risk, and told my best friend, about a guy that I liked. I had not had a boyfriend before and was scared that maybe he wasn’t ‘cool’ enough, even though I was friends with him. That was a big mistake. She decided that maybe he was worth it and began to chase him and put me down in front of him. They ended up going out together.

That had been the one time I had really opened myself up and it backfired. I retreated further and further into myself. I was convinced I was too fat, and became very close to being anorexic. I had a part-time job and worked from 4-9pm after school. This seemed perfect because I could tell everyone that I ate dinner at work, and lunch at school. The fact was, I rarely ate anything. I was unwell and didn’t know what to do. No one questioned me about the weight loss. No one seemed to care.

I moved out of home at 18. I wanted to live my own life. I realize now that it wasn’t so much that my parents didn’t care, it was that they didn’t know how to show emotions. Moving out seemed to trigger mum. She passed away from cancer last year, and I will never know exactly what was wrong with her. She was only 52. I think it was paranoid schizophrenia, but I don’t know for sure. For a long time I was the only person she would trust. Everyone else, including her family, were apparently out to get her. There were stories of a pregnancy when she was nineteen that no one knew about, her boss at work 20 years later was apparently involved in the kidnapping of the baby, whose father was a famous musician. She lost her job twice. There was a lot more, but it is a whole story on its own.

When mum died last year, I was left to sort through her belongings. Neither dad nor my brother would do it. I found buried, amongst other things, a lot of paperwork that shed light on a few things, and opened up many more questions. Mum apparently had post-natal depression with my younger brother, and around that time my dad was suicidal. She had kept his suicide letters. I found paper work that shows mum’s sister had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals, and most likely committed suicide (I was only two at the time). It seems mum had been referred to psychiatrists and psychologists on numerous occasions, went to the first appointment, and never went back again due to paranoia.

I now understand why, when I was considering university options for when I left school, that she talked me out of studying psychology. 7 years later, I still wanted to study psychology, and am now doing so at uni.

I got married at 21 and have a great relationship with my husband. Shortly after we were engaged he was transferred interstate for work. I was unable to work in the area I had previously been, because IT services weren’t required in the small town we now lived in. My depression really hit hard and my lack of eating returned.

I hadn’t known what to do or how to ask for help, as I’d been bought up to avoid anything to do with emotions and to bury it deep in my mind. I ended up self-harming with the hope that someone would see and force me to get help. Eventually, I could no longer hide it. We had a friend who was a doctor and he diagnosed me with depression. I had so much trouble talking. I refused to see a psychologist because I was scared. I barely said anything to my doctor friend. But I was too scared to see a doctor that I didn’t know. That was when I started taking medication.

Three years after that move, we moved interstate again. This was when I started studying psychology. I convinced myself for a while that I was okay. I wasn’t and had another major crash. I managed to take myself to the local doctor and start back on medication. He was terrible. He believed the sole cause of my depression was that I was married with no children. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want children at that stage of life. He also ridiculed me for studying psychology, which he thought was quackery, given my ‘condition’. He made no effort to remember me between appointments and I had to re-tell everything each time. I don’t know why I put up with him. He eventually retired.

I found another doctor, this time one with experience and interest in mental health. I still see him today. He is absolutely fantastic. I feel very lucky that I found him. Earlier this year I was diagnosed with bipolar II and started to see a psychiatrist, who is also wonderful. I am finally getting the help I need and have learned that it is okay to ask for help.

A couple of months ago I finally told my dad about my mental illness. He asked what bipolar was, to which I said ‘manic-depression’ and he huffed and went back to watching TV. That was the entire conversation. I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t care, he just doesn’t know what to do or say about it. He doesn’t know that I know about his depression and previous suicide attempts.

I’m now 28 and think I finally have a winning combination of doctors, medication and support in my life. I’m slowly ‘coming out’ and hope to break the cycle of hiding mental illness in my family, which has only made things worse for everyone.

Letting Go

2010-08-13T08:13:00.000-05:00

Think about any attachments that are depleting your emotional reserves. Consider letting them go.
-- Oprah Winfrey

I was asked by a good friend yesterday how I am able to not resent L for some of the things that have happened in our relationship. Her husband has PTSD and he and L share many similar symptoms in their illness. They have been dealing with his illness for less time than L and I have been dealing with his.

I was honest with her. At times it is a daily struggle to not do just that. It is so much easier to hold on to past hurt, broken promises and unjust situations. My life would very different if L did not have a mental illness and was able to work. Truth is though, that he does have mental health problems and that because of them he has been unable to work for the past three years. During his acute episodes he can get loud, insulting, spend money we don't have to spend and just overall make poor choices.

It was a choice I made and am making daily to stand by his side through it all. There are things he has said or done that have been extremely hurtful. During those times I have to remind myself over and over that it is his illness speaking/doing and not he. That does not mean excusing everything but it does mean changing my perspective. I am allowed to be hurt, saddened, upset and mad. It is how I deal with these emotions that makes the difference.

If I were to approach L about these feelings while he is in one of these episodes it would do neither of us any good. During those times he is simply unable to listen and understand. It only makes him very defensive because even in the midst of it he knows deep down inside that there are problems. He is simply unable to reach down to that level and to use that knowledge.

Once things have been resolved, I had to learn to let go and to not let these emotions pile up because if I did not let go it would get too much. Each day deserves its own new chance without the weight of the past. Otherwise we would drift apart over these problems. That is something I do not want. Even with his problems I could not imagine being with anyone else. When we got married I promised L, myself and God that it was 'for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, til death do us part'. And I intend to hold up to my part of this promise.

Taking time to breathe

2010-08-12T09:48:00.000-05:00

I have been extremely busy for the past few weeks. I am hoping that this weekend I will have time to relax and just BE. I desperately need some down time to recharge. Being the energizer bunny only works for so long before even those batteries run out and I can feel myself reaching that point.

Tomorrow I will be going to L's appointment with him. We both need it and hopefully he will be able to help both of us.

The evils of Redbull

2010-08-10T08:00:00.001-05:00

L has a long love story with Redbull and other energy drinks. A leftover from his time in the Navy. It never made much of a difference in his behavior and would just help him stay awake. At the early stages of our journey with bipolar disorder we also dealt with him falling asleep at random like standing in line at the grocery store, at our oldest daughter's 1st birthday party while we were unwrapping presents, standing in his sister's kitchen were he was standing up asleep for 45 minutes before I finally found him. So he started drinking more energy drinks to try to stay awake.

Over the past year he has rarely drank an energy drink.

This past week I have noticed that he was becoming increasingly irritable, angry and just less pleasant to be around. Plus he seemed to be avoiding me. It has all around been awkward around our home for the past few days.

Last night I confronted him and made him sit down with me and listen to me. He told me that he has been drinking quiet a bit of Redbull since last Friday and that he, too, was starting to notice that he was 'a bit more irritable'. A bit more is an understatement but I am thankful for him realizing that it is having this effect on him. I told him that I want to go to his next appointment with his social worker this upcoming Friday and he agreed. He promised not to drink anymore energy drinks and hopefully he will be able to stick to that promise.

I was unaware of this until I did some research last night but apparently energy drinks are known to trigger mania. I wish his doctor would have told us that.

From psychcentral.com
Energy drinks such as Red Bull, Full Throttle and Rockstar are refreshing boosts for most people, but in bipolar consumers they may trigger mania.

~Mental Health Monday Guestblog~

2010-08-09T07:12:00.000-05:00

Today's guestblogger is Kaley. Please take the time to read her story and leave a comment of support for her

Toxic Relationships and Bipolar

“I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.” ~Helen Keller

I am relatively new to the world of Bipolar. I was only diagnosed three months ago. During that time, I have learned a lot about the disorder and myself. I have learned that I have a voice and am using it to bring about awareness to others who may not understand what we go through or may be afraid to ask for help themselves. However, I have realized that my voice is going unheard at home.

My family has been wonderful throughout this process. My mother, brother, grandmother, and aunt have all learned what they can, read my blog, ask questions after my psychiatrist appointments, and read about all things Bipolar. I wish I could say the same thing for my husband.

At my last doctor’s appointment, she actually called him “ignorant” and explained to me that he may be having a difficult time coming to terms with my diagnosis. Sure, he has come to Bipolar support group meetings with me a few times, but did not say a word. I will admit that he is very shy. But I was hoping for more. I was hoping that he would take the initiative to read at least one of the many brochures we have lying around our house or ask me SOMETHING about all of this. He never shows any interest in discussing how the two of us can cope with my shifting moods. The other night, my husband even got frustrated at me and told me he wished he had a “normal wife”. This got me to thinking that I certainly cannot be alone in receiving less than acceptable family support.

There is so much information on how to educate family members on what they can do to help and understand as best they can. But what can you do if they refuse to try and understand? Studies have shown that it is impractical and harmful to place the responsibility of emergency care in the hands of one person. It is better to create a Crisis Plan with a Support Team. A great resource is HelpGuide.org. In my case, I do have other family members that love and support me. It is just unfortunate that I do not live with them. My immediate crisis plan involves calling a family member, usually my mother. If things escalate, then I am always welcome at my grandmother’s house as she lives the closest to me.

Lack of understanding is a big problem for many people. No matter how hard we try to improve our lives, our spouses or loved ones return home from work or if they do not live with us, when we do see them, the toxic relationship becomes a trigger for us and we undo all of the positive things we have been doing. We revert back to our old ways and throw tantrums that we are later ashamed of. Only through educating others can we have true understanding and hope to live as close to a normal life as possible.

Old fears are returning

2010-08-05T09:14:00.000-05:00

With L trying to be more active and having made friends some of my old fears are returning. I am constantly on the lookout for signs of anything that might be going wrong. His last experience of making friends has scarred us both. It almost ended in the end of our marriage. Twice. So there is a lot of baggage attached to him making friends.

He needs his own friends and people he can do things with and where he feels accepted and as part of something. He needs to be able to lead at least part of his normal life without me there. After all these years it has become such a 'normal' part of our life for him to be always there that it feels so strange when he is gone. Considering that we have survived submarine deployments of 3-6 months with VERY limited communication this is a huge change from 3+years ago.

I want to trust in his ability to make the right decisions. We both need to believe that he can and will do just that but I am struggling with just that. Every time he is with his friends I wait anxiously for him to come home. I am hoping that as time progresses I will be able to relax and be able to go with the flow.