Carla Realized her normal was not so normal

Not everyone can tell they've been abused - most abuse isn't even physical. So for someone who comes from a background that did not include physical violations of some sort they may not recognize that the source of their mental health issues could actually be some of the more subtle and unseen forms of abuse that often lead to unseen injuries....

This week at my friend Darlene Ouimets blog Emerging From Broken Carla Dippel shares her journey through depression and the realization that her "normal" upbringing wasn't so normal.

An excerpt from Carla's post...

"My childhood would have looked absolutely normal to most people. I was never beaten, deprived of physical needs, verbally or sexually abused. But at age 16 I knew for the first time that I suffered from depression. It wasn’t the kind of depression that took me through huge highs and lows. It was just this ever-present, cloudy feeling. I operated my life in a constant state of anxiety. I strived to conform to what I thought was the “ideal” or “perfect” way all the time. I had a chronically low self esteem. I see now that the nature of my depression was exactly the same as the nature of my abuse."


Click here to read the rest of this post.


Related...


Abuse Disguised


I Didn't Know that I Didn't Know I Was Abused


 Seek Knowledge, find Wisdom, live your Truth!


Photo Credit

Seeking and living our own "truth"

Photo Credit

This quote came to me via @SarahEOlsen2009 and her Favorite Tweet Stuff email...

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." ~ Andre Gide

And this caused me to remember a post I did awhile back about learning to recognize oppressive abuse in the dance of "Power and Control" and how we as survivors are sometimes easily groomed into compliance and can find ourselves following someone else's "truth" instead of that of our own....

From the archives - "Abuse Disguised...." an article that stemmed from recognizing power and control in religious and other professional venues and interpersonal relationships...

"Abuse is not selective and is in all life arena's and

...is all about telling another what to do, how to do it and when to do it

and

"you are wrong if you believe differently than I do or try to do it in any other way"...."

In understanding how to recognize and make different choices about the relationships we choose in our lives and the emotional boundaries we establish, it is helpful to understand what both a supportive relationship that encourages one to live their own "truth" might look like - as well as what a relationship looks like that is perhaps more about following and adhering to someone else's truth.

So for the next few post's I wanted to take a look at the idea of recognizing the difference between learning to seek for, find and live our own truth and if we might be falling into the subtle trap of believing someone else's truth over our own.

Today then....

In seeking my own "truth" and finding relationships that supported my quest to discover how to go about creating and living my own "best life" each day I found one consistant factor that I could trust.

That if I was involved in relationships that supported my search for healing, wellness and my own "truth" - I saw progress in my quest.

I began to find peace, hope and happiness.

I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel

I had an overwhelming sense of "life is good" and "I am ok".

vs

the nagging sense of "something is wrong....

and it must be me"

and an overwhelming sense of hoplessness, helplessness and

..."life sucks"

...I'll never be able to do this "right" or be "good enough"

...that came when I was following someone else's "truth" instead of seeking my own.

And that brings us back to today's quote...

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." ~ Andre Gide

I began to recognize that when I was seeking my own truth, supportive relationships supported this and encouraged me, told me that I had the wisdom and the ability to find my answers and live MY truth vs the relationships that were criticizing, questioning and telling me that my answers were somehow wrong...and the answers they were providing were the "right" answers. That somehow their "truth" was the only truth and if I didn't agree...well, then...something was of course wrong with me.

Join us here next time as we continue to look at this idea of the difference between truth "seeking" and being a follower of someone else's "truth".

A Firm Belief, Reliance, A feeling of Certainty, Assurance

At some point I realized that a lot of my fear and doubt stemmed from a lack of that "firm belief", the "know" that fact of being certain, that assurance that I absolutely without doubt "knew that I knew"...

The solution?

First - to not crawl back into the rabbit hole with Alice and the Mad Hatter

....and learn what it was that would leave me with that sense of "knowing", that "belief" and "assurance" that I knew what I knew.

Boohya:)

Claiming A New Paradigm For Myself-Part 3 (conclusion)

Photo credit here

In the first segment of this series "Claiming A New Paradigm For Myself" I discussed how I became empowered to find my own answers when I let go of "illness" and began to embrace "wellness".

In Part 2 I shared some of the information that has influenced how I view the paradigm of "mental illness" and how I began to make that mind-shift from accepting “illness” as my focus to claiming this new paradigm of "wellness" for myself.

And today, in Part 3, I wanted to bring this series to an end with looking at tying this train of thought together and suggest that we can make room for a new paradigm, a different view - a view of "wellness" that we can add to our “toolbox”.

Claiming A New Paradigm For Myself – Part 3 (conclusion)

The issue for me as I have traveled this journey is that while I was accepting “illness” as my “paradigm” - and the offered solutions as the only solutions available - is that I felt helpless to change anything about my life because I felt hopeless that there was anything more that I could have outside of “illness”.

And what I’ve realized is that this “paradigm” of “illness” required me to be dependent on someone or something outside of myself…

And that I felt very dis-empowered.

And that there are other options.

“Mental illness” is often compared to things like diabetes or heart disease.

And in this paradigm of “illness” we as a society have learned to view these “diseases” as unavoidable, “genetic”….and scary.

A lack of knowledge had led us to believe that the only solution was the pills and surgeries that would “manage” these issues; but there was no “cure”. We were destined by “genetics” to be “sick” and dependent on people, places and things outside of ourselves for our solutions.

We believed that there was nothing we could do to change this; that we were "powerless" over "genetics".

Yet today, there has been a “paradigm shift” as we have come to understand through new knowledge that both diabetes and heart disease are often related to an unhealthy lifestyle and are very manageable…

And can even be overcome and turned around with lifestyle changes such as how we cope with stress, by eating fewer processed foods and consuming more whole foods, by getting off the couch and incorporating activity into our daily lives and so on…

So as I began to look at this “paradigm” or accepted way of viewing the issues of cognitive and emotional distress and its relationship and influence on how I “coped”…

I realized that Psychology had already given us much to work with and that I could learn to live differently.

That I could use labels like “diagnosis” and “symptoms” as a guide to show me the path to living in a state of “wellness”.

And although I didn’t set out to do this - what I ended up with is my own paradigm that took me from “illness” to “wellness”.

A path that helped me to find my way “through the darkness to get to the light” at the end of the tunnel - but I hadn’t yet seen as I’d been stuck on managing “illness” and blind to the idea that there was a light that truly existed.

This mind-shift – letting go of “illness” - empowered me to learn to live in a state of “well being” instead of medicating “symptoms”, managing a “disease” and existing day to day, surviving – but never “living”.

Part of making this mind-shift was realizing that by hanging onto the labels of “mental illness”, disease, disorder…I felt “powerless”. There was nothing I could do about an “illness” that I had accepted as “genetic” and therefore “unchangeable”.

It was when I chose “wellness” that I truly understood that I held the power to change my life within my own being.

~

Thank you for reading along as I dissected the process that I followed in my discovery that there truly were more options available to overcoming the emotional and cognitive distress that we have come to call “mental illness”.

Just as I learned to begin to ask the questions that empowered me to make that mind-shift from “illness” and instead choose my own paradigm of “wellness” – I hope you will begin to ask your own questions, search out your own answers and find the freedom to create and live your own “best life” – and that very simply, is the life that you choose for yourself each day.

I'd like to invite you to join me on the first Thursday of each month on Blog Talk Radio as I host the Heal My PTSD program “Empowering Solutions” where our goal is to offer you information, tools and resources that will empower you to create - and live - your own “best life”.

~ Susan

Q: What are your thoughts? How can you claim a new story for yourself?

I wanted to understand this "Paradigm" of "Mental Illness"

Map of Science

(def) paradigm |ˈparəˌdīm|

noun1 technical a typical example or pattern of something; a model : there is a new paradigm for public art in this country. See note at model .• a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of aparticular scientific subject : the discovery of universal gravitation became the paradigm of successful science.

Throughout my journey I have learned to rely more on my own ability to gain an understanding of and make decisions relating to the direction I have chosen to take (learning to fish for a lifetime) vs depending on others to provide me my answers or offer me my solutions (being "fed" for a day).

Today I wanted to introduce just a few of the ideas that I've taken into consideration that has empowered me to take charge of my healing journey and make that shift from dependence on people, places and things to define, label or "fix" me and begin to see myself as my own best resource...and advocate...as I made that shift from viewing myself through the paradigm of "illness" and created my own paradigm of "wellness".

You can read Creating A New Paradigm...For Myself Part 1 here.

At the online Encyclopedia, Wikepedia, Kuhn defines a scientific paradigm as:.

• what is to be observed and scrutinized
• the kind of questions that are supposed to be asked and probed for answers in relation to this subject
• how these questions are to be structured
• how the results of scientific investigations should be interpreted

Below are a few links on the research behind the field of Psychiatry, as we know it...

i.e. the industry and persons charged with constructing, asking and answering those questions that have created the currently accepted paradigm of the last 50 or 60 years about "mental illness", how it is defined, communicated, viewed and ultimately....how it and those given these diagnosis are treated and the therapies used to do so:

• "An SSRI maker flew my entire group to a Caribbean island," remembered a doctor from the East coast who did not want to be identified. Anymore. Source: No free pens....but big pharma influence still felt at Psychiatric meeting

• "After reports that most donations made to the big advocacy group came from drug makers in recent years, NAMI agreed to disclose its funding sources". Source: Read about Senetor Charles Grassley's investigation into the major source of NAMI's funding here.

• Read the article from the New York Times reporting that NAMI is funded largely by "Big Pharma" as exposed by Senator Grassley in 2009

• A video by Robert Whitaker on "Rethinking Psychiatric Care"

• Visit the National Empowerment Center and read about Daniel Fisher who became a psychiatrist after recovering from "Schizophrenia"

• At Amazon you can find the work of Dr. Colin Ross who as a psychiatrist is able to tell us the good, the bad and the truly ugly secrets behind psychiatry as it has become known. "Trauma Model: A solution to the problem of Co Morbidity in psychiatry" and his personal story and frustrations with the industry of psychiatry in "The Great Psychiatry Scam"

• Read recovery stories from those who've found their way out of the cycle of dependence on drugs to manage their mental wellness at the Blog rated #3 as "Top Health Blog" among numerous other awards as related to health and mental health issues. Source: Beyond Meds by Gianna Kali

• Read the post "A Tale Of Two Boys" that causes me to consider not only what we do to ourselves as adults, but the plight of the children who suffer and struggle.

• Read my personal story of how I was "groomed" to enter and participate in the "mental health system" here. "A bit of a rant, part of my story...how I became "suicidal".
• 
  
• And again...take a look at Robert Whitakers book that methodically and systematically reveals the Psychiatric industry as a huge marketing machine....

• And the DSM V; the "Bible" of psychiatric diagnosis - 68% of those charged with this newest version - the "DSM V" - reveal that they have ties to the Pharmaceutical Industry.

So here I've laid out for you some of the information that has influenced how I view the paradigm of "mental illness" and how I began to make that mind-shift to claiming this new paradigm of "wellness" for myself...

And hopefully I have reassured you that I didn't go off the "deep end" or a "witch hunt" against the millions of Doctors, Therapists and other helpers who have oftentimes affected and changed our lives for the better...and sometimes saved them.

In fact, this understanding has empowered me to understand these relationships better and made me a better advocate for myself and freeing me from that dependence to be "fed for a day".

I hope you'll join me here again as I continue to unravel this idea of "paradigm" and making that mind-shift from dependence on others for my answers to finding and creating my own paradigm of "wellness" based on my personal belief that with new information I could make the choice to find "wellness".

I hope you'll check the June 2010 archives and read more in the series "Claiming A New Paradigm For Myself".

Abuse: I "didn't know that I didn't know"

We'll get back to the discussion on making the shift from "illness" to "wellness" mindset shortly; in the meantime...

Some of us "don't know what we don't know".

Personally, over the years when I was asked if I was "abused" I would say shamefully "no" because first - I didn't know what it was like to not be abused, this was my "normal"...

...and second - I'd been trained to believe that somehow it was my fault what the adults in my life had done to me and thus as I grew into adulthood, I repeated this pattern in my relationships not because I was "bad", "defective", "less than" or "ill" - but because it was all I knew.

I "didn't know that that I didn't know" that I was living the generational pattern of abuse in my life.

I just thought something was "wrong" with me; that I was "defective" and as I entered the mental health system in 1992, the abuse was ignored and I accepted that I was actually "ill", "diseased" and "defective"; somehow I was "genetically" broken.
That something was "wrong" with me...not that I'd been raised in an environment that left me ill equipped to face the world as an individual.

This article I'm referencing addresses male to female abuse but truth is....these are indicators of men to women, women to men,male to male or female to female, adult to child, perpetrator to victim in any situation, any relationship.

Abuse of any kind is not restricted to "intimate" or "domestic" relationships but can be seen in all societal relationships in various degrees. It doesn't matter what we call it...."dating violence", "domestic violence", "gay or lesbian" violence, "sexual discrimination" in workplaces...

...it all boils down to one thing: a perpetrator needing to validate their existence through the control and oppression of another.

Think globally as in war and prisoner of war camps. Same idea, different people, places and circumstances.

Abuse is often tolerated as "normal" although in truth is an indicator of that struggle of "power and control" and that power imbalance in oppressive relationships and may often precede physical abuse and violation as the victims are "groomed" to tolerate the intolerable.
Knowledge is the beginning of the truth that will set us free.

Often, abuse issues are looked at as if controlling the "abuser" will change things yet we hear over and over how those who were once the victim repeatedly find themselves in abusive relationships and environments.

So while becoming informed and learning how to identify abuse is the beginning - the cycle of abuse doesn't "end" by focussing on the "perpetrators" and we know this because we frequently will leave one abusive relationship and find ourselves in another.

Escaping the pattern of abuse for me began with identifying what it was within myself that attracted me to and was the basis to repeat this pattern in my adult relationships - not by living in that state of hyper-vigelance where I had to be "on guard" to catch the next perpetrator.

As long as I lived my life "on guard" for the next "abuser" I was focussed again on finding my "solution" in something or someone outside of myself instead of concentrating on learning how to no longer be a victim.

This was that "false sense of power" that came from an environment where I learned to "be" good enough or "do" right enough to avoid being hurt or to be "loved" by manipulating situations and circumstances in order to be "accepted" in an environment where being "me" wasn't allowed. (I.E. if I could "spot" the abuse, I could "avoid" it someway or do or say something to make the abuser "love" me...or at least stop hurting me.)

We can't change other people or the choices they make... but we can gain the knowledge that will empower us in our own lives and help us to change things for the next generation.
You can read the article here.

Q: Thoughts?

She Didn't Call it Depression: Pema Chodron - The Doorway to Freedom

Pema Chodron didn't know what she was experiencing what we have been taught to call "depression", she didn't know she was "supposed" to take "anti depressant" pills, or that this was "supposed" to be a lifelong, bio-genetic "illness" that was "incurable".

You can view this video at Beyond Meds where I found it.

Here is a link to another post at Beyond Meds that highlights some of Pema's life wisdom.

I'm just sayin'.....somethin' to think about maybe.

Rock on.

:)

Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America — a note from Robert Whitaker

Over at Bipolar Blast ask Beyond Meds, todays post is a note from Author Robert Whitaker regarding his book The Anatomy of An Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. The link to view this book on Amazon is here.

The question...Could our drug based paradigm of care be fueling this epidemic?

Whitiker continues: To answer that question, I fleshed out what the scientific literature has to say about the long-term effects of psychiatric medications. I think an observation made by one of the many people I interviewed for the book aptly sums up the tale told in the scientific literature. She said:

“With psychiatric medications, you solve one problem for a period of time, but the next thing you know, you end up with two problems. The treatment turns a period of crisis into a chronic mental illness.”

After this tale of science is told (and the book basically relates a history of science that has unfolded since the 1950s), I look at why our society doesn’t know about the many studies that have documented the poor long-term outcomes. These study results never get reported in the newspapers, and the book explores the financial reasons why that is so.

You can read the rest of this note here.

You can see my earlier post on this issue here "Another rant...which came first? The Chicken or the Goose?"

So what's the purpose of posting this information? Because I believe that we as consumers are not getting all of our options, we are not being fully informed. Instead we are being sold on the idea that we are somehow biologically broken and that Big Pharma has the ONLY answer to the issue of mental health and wellness.

This is a subject not widely discussed yet and carries much of the similarities of the fraud carried out on consumers of tobacco product and even the most recent financial crisis where we were presented with the idea that the banks were operating in our best interest, yet their greed and offering only one side of the story - incomplete information - leads consumers to believe that as the "professionals" we can trust what they are telling us to be "truth" and in our best interest.

Each year, Big Pharma is being called on it's misuse of America's trust as they invent new ways of pushing their drugs, telling us that this is the only answer to our heartburn (try eating less junk) our "Fibromyalgia" (women are getting over this every day by excercising and managing stress healthier) or how this magic pill will "fix" us. And they have done a grand job at pulling the wool over the eyes of consumers as we staunchly defend that we are "chemically imbalanced". I know because I've lived it. To have done otherwise was unthinkable because this was my last hope at finding a solution to the emotional distress and faulty cognitions that kept me bound in self doubt and dependance on drugs to cope each day. After all, without being "mentally ill"...who was I and what the hell was "wrong" with me?

Today, the Government has finally stepped in and penalized Big Tobacco for the lies that we ate up when we bought in that tobacco was harmless and safe. Banks that have gouged Americans for years are being brought up short and held responsible for their mismanagement of America's resources. And each year Big Pharma pays millions in settlements to those their "medicines" have harmed and fines to the Government for their fraud in misleading consumers on various drugs.

This may not be your opinion, and my goal is not to change your mind about this but to encourage you to do your own reading and research on this message that somehow we are broken and drugs (not to mention the lifetime bill for never ending therapy that goes along with this assumption) are the only answer.

So here's what Big Pharma isn't telling us; that we can learn to manage our thoughts, our emotional instability and find our way out of the muck and mire of "mental illness". We can learn to develop rational thinking and emotional expression that heals instead of incapacitates us. We can learn the life skills to help us overcome those feelings of "less than" or "different".

Drugs? They may have a place and even benefit us short term to manage crisis and keep ourselves safe - but they also inhibit our ability to learn, to think, to recall and remember both short term and long term. But when they are heralded as the "only" solution to mental health issues the result can be painfully debilitating as our hope for a better outcome is reduced to simply "managing" and surviving.

Finding light in the darkness of mental illness requires the use of and access to our thoughts and emotions - the things that medication "numbs".

So while using medication may be helpful in the short term - the long term use of it inhibits and prevents us from accessing the natural solution of learning new ways of coping and how to trust the natural emotional process that we are working so diligently to avoid.

(Note:I am not a physician. This information should not be taken as medical directions. Do not discontinue any medications without first doing your own due diligence and making the decision that is best for you.)

*****

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