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I was a depressed teen. Well, that's sort of putting it lightly. I had thoughts of suicide from a very young age and much of my time in high school was spent either contemplating suicide, or experimenting with the slow suicide of dangerous drugs.
My son Ben, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 20 after five years of confusing onset symptoms, has often seemed "frozen in time" in this phase of recovery; emotionally and cognitively stuck at the age he had been when the symptoms began during high school.
Despite three relapses during this near decade of stabilization (all due to instances of refusing meds), Ben has been in recovery most of those years and has progressed in many ways, as I wrote in an earlier post, Mental Illness Frozen in Time Can Thaw.
But, until recently, Ben had few friends and I wondered if he would ever get that particular joy back in his life, or when he might reach the stage of self-acceptance that is crucial to healthy friendships.
Would he ever again regain what he had before schizophrenia set in; the simple joy of having people with whom he could share a meal, see a movie, laugh and talk, or just hang out?
I came up with this topic when I was in a state of serious depression--less than a month ago. I was certain I would never become well. Those of you who live with a mental illness understand this on a very deep and personal level.
While I was glued to the couch I started thinking about how much time I spend exhausted--some days less and some more. Mental exhaustion and physical (or both) can define a large part of our lives.
Without further explanation (coffee in hand) let's explore this topic.
When I took over this eating disorder blog, I did so with two purposes in mind. First, to offer support to those who are also in recovery from their own eating disorders and educate them on how to make their recovery stronger. Second, to help the friends and family of those with eating disorders better understand what their loved one is going through. I think to this point, I have done a decent job on the first purpose. However, my own fear of "too much" self-disclosure has kept me from accomplishing the second.
To be honest, it's hard to put into words just what kind of hell living with an eating disorder is. Especially in the midst of it, when your head is spinning and words seem difficult to grasp. As a result, most of my writings from my worst days of my eating disorder seem to ramble and go off on tangents and almost always ended with the conclusion that I wasn't really sick, I was just crazy and I should just kill myself for being such an attention-seeker.
OK, maybe it seems like I’m being a bit hard on commenters. I swear I’m not. I like people who comment and express their opinion, but sometimes their opinion spurs one of my own. This is one such comment:
I’m bipolar, and I think we ALL should have to take a Dialectal Behavior Therapy course. The DBT course helps with coping skills, year class, and helps . . . these skills work if you want them too.
Here’s someone singing the praises of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). She would certainly not be alone as many people find DBT to be helpful. The problem I have with this comment is the last bit, “these skills work if you want them too [sic].”
So, this means that if the skills learned in DBT don’t work for someone it’s because they didn’t want them to?
I don’t think so.
When you have negative thoughts and beliefs, have you tried distracting yourself in order to feel better rather than examining them? Research and experience suggest that disengaging from your negative thoughts gives the ego's negative self-talk less power. It allows us to chill out and gain control over these intrusive thoughts and belief systems, not letting them lower your self-esteem.
Last week I wrote about how possible it is for the brain to change after trauma. This week I want to share with you one of the ways you can do that. It's all about creating positive experiences that last for long enough that your brain can record the experience through neural activity.
Whew, sounds like a lot of science and hard work, doesn't it? Actually, it's as easy as eating a ripe strawberry. Here's what I mean...
For the last few weeks, I have invited readers to say goodbye to their problems in my post Dear Fear: A "Dear John" Letter To Anxiety. I shared one reader's letter to fear last week: "Fear, You Are Not Welcome Here!"
Today, I am sharing a Goodbye letter from another one of my readers. Ken from Redeker's Travels wrote a Goodbye Letter to his OCD. His powerful words remind us that we can all change our relationship to our fears. Here, I read Goodbye OCD for you on video. Please watch.
Most professions develop technical jargon so rarified as to be virtually incomprehensible to outsiders. However, their impenetrability is simply an unintended consequence of the function served. Other enterprises deliberately employ coded slang so that insiders can secretly communicate with one another in the presence of clueless outsiders.
Many of you are familiar with “Cockney rhyming slang” – an amusing grab bag of odd phrases used by English shopkeepers when they want to discuss matters of concern in the presence of customers without letting on what they’re saying. Entertaining snippets include “plates of meat” for “feet” – “trouble and strife” for “wife” - and “boils and blisters” for “sister”. I know what you’re thinking, something like that could never happen in the United States where people are direct, open, and honest all the time.
There was one flaw in my plan to wake up screaming--I wasn't asleep.
This was not a nightmare, at least not in the literal sense. Although surreal, this was real—I was really pinned to my apartment floor, three people from Antioch Community Church in Waco, Texas, really were yelling at Satan, said people really were attempting to perform an exorcism without my consent. My illness had finally caused a conflict so severe it drove me out of that church and almost out of Christianity. Sad, because spirituality can be a powerful aid to healing from borderline personality disorder (BPD).
When living with severe depression, it is so difficult to see any positivity about ourselves or the world we live in. I have been in very similar shoes as you. However, nothing will change until we initiate a change, even if it means taking our cognitative distortions and untwisting them. Healing/recovery takes a lot of time and practice - it is a lifelong journey. Unfortunately, there's no magic wand out there to make everything better about ourselves and the world (if only...).
One thing that keeps me going is taking life ONE DAY AT A TIME. I wear a bracelet with those exact words to remind me when I start down a dark road. One day at a time... because that is all I can expect of myself, and it's all that others can expect of me. I know it sounds cliche, but you genuinely are not alone or alone in how you feel.
Also, check out the resources and assistance at https://www.healthyplace.com/other-info/suicide/suicide-suicidal-thoughts-and-behaviors-toc
We continued talking and I learned a lot more. His husband had cheated on him and he was heartbroken. They live in the same condo in separate bedrooms and were basically married on paper only. Since I was already developing feelings for him, I allowed our relationship to continue. We’ve since spent a lot of time together on dates, he met my family at Christmas, etc.
In January, we chatted and I said, “Ok, what’s the plan?” and he freaked out. While he says he loves me, and does not love his husband, he’s stuck and doesn’t know how to move forward. His therapist says he needs to go to the doctor for new meds and hasn’t. And now it’s been three months of basic texting good morning and good night, and we don’t see each other and don’t talk on the phone.
Do I just move on at this point? Every time I try to talk about us and our relationship, he just shuts down or doesn’t respond.
Help! Thanks.