Grief is an Emotion, Not an "illness"

Photo credit links to story on Oprah.com

I don't often watch television since I've left behind "illness" for this new, full life of "wellness"...

I don't watch a lot of television but one day earlier this week I got home and flipped on the tv to a program on Oprah. The story was heart-wrenching - when he was just 9, Aaron's twin brother died of a brain tumor.

Aaron told his Mom that he "didn't want to be here anymore".

Aaron's Mom of course, calls the pediatrician who saved Aaron's life in more ways than one.

First, instead of labeling him "mentally ill" with "suicidal ideation" and "clinical depression" and so on....

she listened to him and heard his pain, saw his grief.

Then she helped Nate to make meaning from this horrendous loss and honor his brothers memory by using his pain to fuel his passion for cooking.

Grief is a normal human emotion....

a normal human response to loss

not an illness.

Aaron missed the "magic bullet" and the drugs that would have changed him and his life forever.

Three cheers and a whole bunch of hurrahs for a doctor who listened and allowed this boy his tears instead of labeling him "disordered" and giving him that lifetime membership to "Club MI".

You can read the entire story here.

Psychiatrist blows the lid off the profession

I'm going to let this article speak for itself...

"Dr. Carlat mentions that he used to speak for the drug company Wyeth Pharmaceuticals until he realized he was “being paid to deceive other doctors.” Dr. Carlat wrote an article titled “Dr. Drug Rep” in the New York Times in November 2007, which recounted his experience as a hired hand for Wyeth...."

You can read the entire article here.

Thanks again to Gianna at Beyond Meds for the insightful resources she provides...

A recent post from "A Journey": The Pied Piper

From the archives: I needed to understand this paradigm...

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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I'm glad you stopped by today!

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.

Psychiatric medications?

What do you think?

DaveMSWRT: @staroversky: You are not a victim of your genes. Behavior can change brain structure, resulting in changes that overwrite genetic code.