Like the little engine that could...

It began with the idea that I could.

The very first lesson that I received on the idea of self empowered healing from "mental illness" was during that week in the hospital in September of 2007. (You can listen to this part of my story here on Blog Talk Radio with Michele Rosenthall of Heal My PTSD)

A Note: keep in mind, I had continued to read and study mental health issues for years but had been dismissed by my previous providers when I asked if I could ever live and function on my own, without "meds" and lifelong "talk therapy".

So while I had believed and hoped all the years in this system that I could find my way out of this dark place, like many others, I trusted and believed it when my doctor and therapist told me that this was something to be managed for the rest of my life.

Hint: if anyone is telling you "you can't"...this does 3 things. 1. it puts them in control and 2. it re-enforces that I am incapable and re enforces that false belief of helplessness to change or better my situation and 3. it creates an unhealthy dependency and re enforces that state of perpetual victimhood and hopelessness as we continue to believe that the power to heal lies with someone or something outside of myself. (more on this another time...)

For more information see Michele Rosenthal's post of March 8th 2010 on Knowing when to seek a different kind of help.

I was very literally going through withdrawals from all the medications that I had been dependent on to make it through each day. There had been a mood stabilizer, an antidepressant or two, the pain killers, muscle relaxers...etc).

Over time the medications were changed and dosages increased as my body developed a tolerance to them. I believe it was this tolerance that saved my life but that's another story...

I had become used to not sleeping years before as the racing thoughts and nightmares took their toll on my mind and ultimately my body as it began to break down from lving in the stress response for so many years without relief.

The doctor was asking me how I was sleeping. I told him I wasn't sleeping but that I would stare at something - a light through the crack in the door, a spot in the wallpaper, the frame of the door to make it through the long nights. I said that I was wishing for sleep...but sleep would not come. In other words, I was using dissociation to cope with my insomnia.

In one sentence he said something that changed my life, altered the course of my journey.

"You know that you don't have to go there, you don't have to follow those thoughts."

I was stunned. That had never occured to me before. That I could choose to not follow the racing thoughts?

My mind went back to the first time I told a "mental health professional" that I wasn't sleeping, that I was pacing my house like a caged lion, waiting for an attack from my abusive husband who had been stalking me for the past year. You can read more about my journey into the mental health system here.

The solution I was given was the beginning of my dependence on things outside myself to "fix" me; I was given an antidepressant.

I was told and I believed, trusted blindly the word of the "professionals"; that my brain was now broken and irreparable. That I would need "meds", psychiatrists and a therapist for the rest of my life to "manage" this "illness" that had cropped up out of nowhere.

That night in the hospital I still did not sleep. I knew that in stopping the meds it would take some time for my body and brain to adjust to functioning without drugs in my system. So I was patient.

But I practiced "not following" the racing thoughts, instead creating a picture in my mind where I felt safe and at peace. This is where I would direct my thoughts as I learned to become aware of and redirect the movies, pictures and voices that played out in my mind.

Just as in the beginning I was willing to do anything to get better, to make the nightmares and voices in my head stop, to not be so overreactive to normal everyday life stressors that could send me over the edge - I now had a new hope that I could truly "get better".

I took this one little idea - that I could choose where my thoughts went - and this became the foundation for this new path that I would follow in my journey to find myself and create the life of my choosing that I am living today.

For the rest of my stay in the hospital I did not sleep more that an hour here or there before the nightmares and racing thoughts would wake me and cause me to walk the halls of the psych ward as my body began to adjust to it's new drug free state. In fact it took nearly a year before I slept for more than a few hours at a time without waking.

It has now been 2 years and 6 months since that fateful turn in my life when this doctor told me those words that changed the power structure in my mind and provided me with a new hope that I had the power within myself to calm my mind and find peace.

Today - most nights I can sleep a full 8 or 9 hours uninterrupted. But this doesn't just "happen". It takes a conscious effort to live this new life each day. This doesn't happen just because I "wished" it or wanted it or someone told me to do it, but rather because I make a conscious effort each day to be aware of my whole self; what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling and making a choice as to what I will do with that information in my chosen actions.

"I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I know I can."
— Little Engine That Could

DO NOT STOP YOUR MEDICATIONS ABRUPTLY. There are some serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms when psychiatric medications are discontinued even with tapering off over an extended period of time that can lead to an increase in both emotional instability and cognitive distress. Do your own research; talk to your doctor. Make a plan. But it is very dangerous to attempt to discontinue psychiatric medications abruptly. If you need more information on this topic please visit: www.bipolarblast.wordpress.com for a really great library of info and resources. 

Each of us has our own path to walk. This is my journey. That does not mean it should be yours. My hope is that this blog will provide you some information that will help you to begin to ask your own questions, find your own answers and encourage you to live the life you choose for yourself each day.

A bit of a rant, part of my story...how I became suicidal

Ok; typically I do not get on a soapbox about medications. While I have my own opinion about using "medications" to manage the symptoms of emotional and cognitive distress, I don't consider it my job to tell anyone else how to live their life or walk their journey.

But - today over at Bipolar Blast there was a post about how the use of medications corrolates too often with the suicidal thoughts that become the reasoning behind using them to begin with.

So I am not going to go into a rehash but ask you to take a look at the post over there.

What I am going to talk about here today is how I began searching for help while going through an unbelievably difficult year.

The details are not important in this context but on the list of "life stressors" I had a 100% score - no wonder I was feeling overwhelmed and shut down ie what the doctors called "clinical depression" (which was an iatrogenic drug induced depression caused by the stimulants I was prescribed - see the story below for the details). 

 What I have since learned is simply my brain and body telling me enough already - take care of yourself. (the stages of grief/loss/change)

But back to the post I mentioned...

What I realized as I read this post was that I was not the only one who had NEVER had a suicidal thought in my life before taking these "medications"... and here I learned that I was not the only one who had had this experience.

My story; I got connected with a well meaning woman from NAMI (who by the way is funded by the pharma co's - check out Senetor Grassleys recent report here) - in order to help me to receive "treatment" she COACHED me to tell the nurses and doctors at the hospital that I was having suicidal thoughts in order to be admitted to the inpatient ward (where I thought I would find help, compassion and solutions...instead I learned how to be a "compliant" patient.)

I remember the day very clearly; it was December 1993. About 10 days before Christmas. In fact it is one of the last days that I remember clearly.

It was the day I gave up.

As she coached me to tell the nurses that I was feeling "suicidal" and having "those thoughts", I remember thinking that I did not want to do this, but - if doing this would help the doctors tell me what was wrong with me, help me find an answer to what was going on with me, then I would do it. I was willing to do anything to find relief; even lie about feeling "suicidal". I remember feeling completely defeated and ashamed to having to resort to lying in order to get "help".

How did this all start?

Several months earlier (fall of 1992) I had seen a psychiatrist who told me that if I took the powerful stimulant medication Dexedrine that I would no longer have an anger problem (duh - abused, violated, neglected and then asked what I had done to "make" the abuse happen, told I had "made it up", was lying...good cause for some anger wouldn't you think?).

After talking with me on the phone and a (very) short meeting in his office he instructed me to try the Dexedrine. He told me that this would help me to "concentrate" and it would calm my "anger". (Another post another day on my experience with ADD/ADHD issues perhaps).

The Dexedrine started a downward spiral into psychosis and depression. I quickly dropped from a healthy size 12 to a near skeletal size 0/2. I'm 5'9" tall. Do you think I could look pretty psychotic and like I was abusing these drugs? Yup.

I began experiencing insomnia that led to more psychosis, paranoia and in time, mania that was eventually diagnosed as "bi polar" "disorder". At the same time my husband was stalking me and harassing me with "hang up" phone calls several times each day and his presence in my life was always just beyond the reach of the restraining order.

I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't eating. I experienced my first panic attack and thought I was dying. I paced my home in a state of hyper-vigelance not knowing when my husband might surprise me again or what to expect. I blew through $10,000 in less than a month at one point. (this was my first serious run in with drug induced mania).

This was the beginning of how these "medications" created this serious "mental illness" that had to be "managed" with "medicine" for the next 15 years. Years that I will never get back.

The next "medicine" that this Psychiatrist prescribed was Desipramine. An old time anti depressant. Within a few months I ballooned up to over 200 pounds. Along the way Ativan was added to the mix for the drug induced anxiety that was being fed by the panic attacks and hyper-vigelance of being stalked 24/7 for nearly a year. 

Between these 3 medications and the level of extreme stress I had experienced over the past 12 months - well, we had the makings of a future psychotic, paranoid, unemployed welfare recipient and lifetime subscription to the revolving door of the psych ward.

Over the years, more medications were added to the cocktail, doses were changed periodically when I complained I was not seeing improvement since as I was told by my doctors, "psychiatry is more and art than a science". If only I'd known then just how true this statement was.

That afternoon as the sun shone outside and I sat sobbing on the corner of my couch in the home that would soon be foreclosed on (I had not been able to work during this time as I could no longer think or function in this capacity since beginning these "medicines").

That afternoon was the end of my life as I knew it as I gave away my own power and accepted what I was told; that I was simply "broken" and irreparable. That this was the best I could hope for now.

I am not going to tell you or anyone else how to live your life or go off meds. I am not saying that anyone is out to "get me" or that there is any conspiracy going on.

What I am saying is check your gut. Don't trust blindly. If that is where you are, then thats where you are and there is nothing wrong with that.

But for me - that was no longer enough.

Is there a "biological" component to the cognitive and emotional distress we can face when we are overwhelmed with life or having come out of an abusive or traumatic experience?

Yes.

There is a physical and chemical stress response that is a NATURAL response to feeling overwhelmed or threatened. (This can be especially difficult for those who have experienced child abuse since we don't develop the skills to manage life and the related stressors. Survivors of child abuse or neglect may not develop that internal sense of power that we are in charge of our life and can live in a chronic state of hopelessness and helplessness, dependent on things outside ourselves to guide our lives.)

But this is a NATURAL response to some not so normal life circumstances and I have concluded that I am not "ill", "disordered" or in need of medications to "fix" me as I am not "broken" but rather injured. I was not in need of "medicine" as much as to simply feel safe.

Medications in low doses may have their place in helping us to cope for the short term. UPDATE Nov 2013: I no longer believe this after spending 6 years in horrible withdrawals from psychotropic drugs and learning how to resolve my distress as normal human experience; there are numerous ways to bring a state of calm to an individual that do not include neurotoxic chemicals. But - when they become the answer to an invisible "disease" that has no biological beginning and no ending - they become more of a life sentence than a solution. ****

When the pills we take create more and new symptoms to be managed with yet another prescription - perhaps it is time to look deeper for our answers.

It is possible to mend or "heal" from the emotional and cognitive distress that has become known as "mental illness"?

It is not easy to face what I would rather forget.

It is not easy standing up for myself in a system that tells me I am less than someone who is "normal" or if I complain that this "treatment" or "therapy" is not working and I am labeled as non compliant, resistant, paranoid etc etc.

It is hard work to go through the emotional healing and learning the developmental life skills, experiences and education that I did not get in my upbringing.

But as one who has become a mentor to me in this journey has put it - it became more painful for me to NOT change than it was to go through this pain in order to get out of that dark place.

caveat: I do not expect everyone to have the same opinion as I do. This has been my journey. Thank you for respecting that.

DO NOT STOP YOUR MEDICATIONS ABRUPTLY. There are some serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms when psychiatric medications are discontinued even with tapering off over an extended period of time that can lead to an increase in both emotional instability and cognitive distress. 


To safely withdraw from psychotropic drugs one must be responsible to understand both the process and consequences of this choice. 

For more information and resources to safely plan and prepare to reduce or withdraw from psychotropic medications please visit www.proactiveplanning.us or send a message requesting information to: proactiveplan@gmail.com

****October 2011 - I am going to update this and change my position. I no longer believe that these drugs have benefit other than short term reduction of symptoms that may allow someone in distress to sleep and regain their footing. Long term use of these drugs can result in severe and life threatening iatrogenic (doctor induced) disease and physical metabolic disruption Ref: the 25 year disparity in life span that is caused in those who use them. Not to mention the loss of quality of life caused by living in a drug induced state of chronic sedation.****

Kicking self sabotage in the butt

Well, it's the first Sunday morning of 2010. I'm all cozied up in bed with my coffee and vanilla/cinnamon cream....my dog is resting beside me. The weather outside is frightful (did you catch that? "let it snow, let it snow, let it snow :) )...

And I'm still feeling some butterflies about facing a new year that has a hint of success in it already. My mind keeps returning to all the things that I have yet to do in order to be prepared to do the job I have been hired to do. My mind also returns to the (many) failures of my past.

Self sabotage. I've been giving some thought to this idea for some time now. What I've come up with is self sabotage is saying I will do one thing but then not taking the actions to follow through and make it happen. In this instance it is having success knocking on my door but then allowing the fear and panic to stand in the way of preparing to do the job I have been hired to do.

In other words - I have the opportunity to plan and prepare to do the best job possible for my client (a local company has hired me to facilitate/coach a program in house) but the butterflies, panic and sense of being overwhelmed with the hugeness of this project leaves me frozen and unable to take action. This is self sabotage.

But - this is different than in the past where I did not have the tools to overcome this state of "frozen". So instead of viewing this as the entire next 8 weeks that I have to have perfectly prepared...I can:

1. let go of my past failures. Recognizing that those thoughts and pictures running through my head of all the times this has happened before-the opportunities had and lost - is not helpful. It's a lot like "stage fright" I would imagine. I know my lines, I know how to do my job and I am good at it but the spotlight is on me and I'm feeling a bit like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming semi truck. The good news is that now I can recognize this for what it is, let it go and move forward. I can put one foot in front of the other and simply do my best today.

2. I can let go of the future. In my minds eye I can see myself stumbling and clumsy. I see a lack of confidence and running away with my tail between my legs like a dog who has been startled by a loud noise. Entertaining these thoughts of and picturing failure is not real confidence building so I can switch that up and visualize myself being fully prepared, tall, confident, smiling, professional, well received - instead. The trick is to be aware of these kinds of thoughts and feelings of inadequacy so I can make that conscious decision to turn it around.

3. I can pay attention to my self talk (what I call the "subtitles" to the constant thoughts that run through the back of my mind at any given moment). I can keep telling myself that I am terrified, scared, anxious, panicked...or I can admit to myself that yes, I'm feeling scared but I'm going to be all right, I am good at what I do and I will be well received. That my value is not on doing this good enough and all I HAVE to do is do my best.

4. I can take action. In my past, I didn't have these cognitive tools to be able to coax myself out of that frozen state of inaction. And even though I may have had the knowledge and skills to do whatever it was that I wanted to do, or reach whatever goal I had set out for myself...I was unable to move out of the way of the semi and got knocked down over and over. A sort of self fulfilling prophecy; I think I'll fail therefore I feel anxious resulting in inaction. Sometimes this would result in last minute chaos as I rushed to throw something together (like hitting the library on campus the night before my midterm was due). Or perhaps I just remained inert and unable to take any action at all (like not finishing the guest post I was asked to write). In this case passivity became the basis for "it didn't matter anyway". Today though, I can recognize this inaction as a symptom of something deeper and I can break down this very large project into some very manageable small pieces.

Self sabotage. Seems to be very much tied to the past in which I was taught to believe that I was helpless to change my circumstances. Those times when I was constantly corrected and chastised for not doing something (whatever it was) "right" enough or "good" enough.

But today and each day now I can see my self sabotaging behaviors for what they are - a relic from a past that no longer exists, a wound that is finally ready to heal, an opportunity to "step off into the unknown" and know...really know...that I will find something to stand on, find my wings....and fly.

Image source: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs40/f/2009/006/2/a/I_can_Fly_by_widjita.jpg

The Emperor Moth story

"The emperor moth is the most majestic species among all the moths. It has wide wings spanning out majestically when it flies. Before it can become a full grown moth, it has to be a pupa in a cocoon. Now, the interesting fact about the moth’s cocoon is that the neck of the cocoon is very narrow.

In order that it become a moth, the pupa of the moth must squeeze its way out of the narrow neck.

One day a man found a cocoon of an emperor moth. He took it home so that he could watch the moth come out of the cocoon. He sat and watched the moth struggling to force the body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. It just seemed to be stuck.

Then the man being kind decided to help the moth. So he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The moth then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. He expected that the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the little moth spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly. A few days later, it died.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the moth to get through the tiny opening was the way of forcing fluid from the body of the moth into its wings so that it would be ready for flight. Once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. Freedom and flight would only come after the struggle. By depriving the moth of a struggle, he deprived the emperor moth of health.

The only way out - is through. --Robert Frost