Blogs
Did you read my last post (about keeping your head in the heat of the moment) and feel like telling me to shove it?
Yeah...me too.
April 8, 2008, around one in the afternoon, was one of the worst experiences of my life. My borderline personality disorder (BPD) and other mental illnesses basically derailed my life. I agreed to go to the state hospital voluntarily, and did not contest the court order.
The transfer began with 10 minutes notice. A Marion County Sheriff's Deputy put a chain around my waist, handcuffed me to the chain, and snapped shackles on my legs. She escorted me to a paddy wagon, and so began the longest 90-minute trip of my life.
Most days I feel like I'm breaking and entering -in search of a place I fit. A narcissistic fantasy? The inverse reflection of all the pain I've kept on ice... The parts of the story that are hoped for, soon forgotten, and incredibly unlikely to come true.
Living with anxiety: control?
One of the two most popular theories about the development of Dissociative Identity Disorder states that if you take a child with an intact identity and apply severe force for long enough, the child’s identity will splinter into pieces. I call it the Broken Vase Theory. I also call it wrong.
I talk to many people who want to help a person with a mental illness. Often the people they want to help are loved ones who have just been diagnosed with a mental illness and those who want to help feel powerless.
The “helpers” have a hard job, but let me just say, we love you for it.
I witnessed verbal and financial abuse at my first job after leaving my ex. When the abuser was not around, the shop was fun and I enjoyed working there. When the abuser was present, people acted differently and the atmosphere became oppressive. The air would lighten a little when she, the abuser, would enter the shop and appear happy, but darken the moment she stormed through the doors with a scowl. The shop doors were like a stage curtain opening - we really didn't know what to expect until the diva appeared in view.
Ed Chavez says he became addicted to pornography as a teenager. When he discovered, as an adult, how accessible pornography is on the Internet, his compulsion became unmanageable and he sought therapy. Ed says his pornography addiction almost cost him his marriage, but with sex addiction treatment, he was able to recover.
One thing I remember from high school science class is Newton's third law of motion--in a nutshell, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
As an adult, I've learned this is true--and not just for motion. A lot of things in life--actions--produce a responsive reaction of equal intensity. Particularly, the actions of a child living with a psychiatric illness.
I'm sitting in my apartment, my mind playing fast and loose with past and present, time and space. It's humid and muggy and I haven't slept properly in weeks.
What makes Nightmare on Elm Street seem like Annie?
Despite reminder tools and sheer determination, I keep forgetting to take my medication. I get up in the morning and think to myself, 'Now don’t forget to take your medication!' while heading to the bathroom where it’s waiting for me in a brightly colored container right there on the counter. And I repeatedly discover, much later in the day, those pills lying untouched in their little compartments. I have dissociative identity disorder and this is just one example of how my dissociative memory affects my everyday life. On its own it may not seem like a big deal. And if my memory problems were exclusive to forgetting medication or if they were irregular, here-and-there occurrences they probably wouldn’t be much of an issue. But what I just described is how my memory works all the time, with everything.