Talking about mental illness
Sep. 26th, 2013 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettnaamah_darling's launched a new blog: "I want to show people what living with my mental illness is like. Visibility is a major factor in reducing the stigma that surrounds mental illness. For many people, though, it’s risky talking about these things, for having “crazy” be the first thing people know about you. People have to keep themselves safe, and many cannot speak out."And, you know, there's all sorts of reasons I think it's very important to talk - and talk publicly - about mental illness. So: hi. I have chronic depression with anxiety; I've been depressed at least since I was thirteen. I strongly suspect I also have undiagnosed PTSD.
I started medication when I was 21, because I couldn't put it off any longer. I'd delayed seeking diagnosis for so long because of the stigma: both medically, in that it would have been even harder to get my chronic pain diagnosed if doctors could happily dismiss it as somatisation, and socially/academically. As it is, I took a year out of my undergraduate degree, and every time someone asks about it I have to decide between the bland and anodyne "for health reasons" and the braver - and more informative - "I went very, very mad".
Crazy is a thing I am. It's a thing I can't hide, even if I want to: ask me, maybe, about the times I've suddenly realised, walking through a supermarket or shopping centre, that I've been muttering out loud for several minutes. Or, well, ask me about the way it impacts on my work.
But: "crazy", being crazy, isn't the bad thing here, particularly: it's hard, some days or weeks or months, but I am medicated and I have people and I have a counsellor and mostly, for the time being, I'm alright.
The bad thing is the way people react to "crazy": the way that in trivialising it they trivialise me, or that in fearing it or despising it, it is me they fear or despise, or that in being visibly crazy in public I put myself in danger - and in more than one sense this is not something I can control.
Here's another thing: it feels very strange to say "I am depressed" when my medication and support network are currently keeping me functionally not-depressed [most of the time]. But: I have endometriosis even when I'm not in pain; I have endometriosis even when my painkillers, or my GnRH agonists, or whatever, are working. And I am aware - and sometimes it is painfully, desperately aware - that the only things between me and my illness are my daylight lamp and 30mg a day - forty in winter - of citalopram hydrobromide. Like
jjhunter says: and 'history of depression' means there's no defense/perfect enough to keep it from coming back; like Onsind say: yeah it gets better / but it also could get worse / tainted blessing, stubborn curse / and all the same, you just take it day by day (by day by day).And that? That is why I am going to keep on talking.
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Date: 2013-09-26 02:27 pm (UTC)We are not alone. We've left bruises on everyone we've loved, but we're not alone.
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Date: 2013-09-26 03:40 pm (UTC)Not alone, indeed.
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Date: 2013-09-26 06:09 pm (UTC)I shouldn't be ashamed. But dammit, I am going to keep talking without trying to fake it this time.
P.S. I'm not on Facebook anymore, and the major reason is that I felt that couldn't let my real self spill all over the place, when I got unfriended by somebody every time I let that happen. :-/
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Date: 2013-09-27 03:39 pm (UTC)I use facebook very little, mostly so that I can keep in touch with people who don't exist elsewhere and for activism. But I realised, looking at the response this post was getting over there, that it was important enough to share here, too.
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Date: 2013-09-27 03:45 pm (UTC)I'm very glad you did share it here. :-)
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Date: 2013-09-26 10:56 pm (UTC)I'm fortunate enough not to have any major mental health issues to deal with, but I do have a few friends that do and my partner is a clinical psychologist. I agree that it is vitally important to speak out and I admire your courage in doing so. I very much hope to hear you speak further about it, when appropriate.
I do my best to be sensitive when discussing these issues but I know that my privilege can blind me from time to time. If I step on your toes in any way, I hope that you will gently let me know so that I can learn from my mistake.
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Date: 2013-09-26 11:12 pm (UTC)Tags with relevant content include Things I've Learned From Counselling, the winter of our discontent, phq-9, mad and brain rewiring.
Content notes for suicide, self harm, eating disorders, etc.
The short version is that I've spent most of my life being emotionally abused, was traumatised by attempting to reconcile being a massive queer with religion, briefly developed an eating disorder and still sometimes have difficulty with food; developed a serious chronic illness and nobody noticed for six years (and told me I was making it up, to boot); and my depression is massively progesterone-sensitive, so menstruating was awful even without the pain. Also, SAD. And then in November 2011 my Master's project was going to hell, a friend I seriously looked up to and was getting a lot of support from killed himself, a week later another friend died in a car crash, and I developed pneumonia. At which point I... went off the deep end, for reasons I suspect are obvious.
Obviously there's a lot I'm missing out there, but... that's the overview. :-p
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Date: 2013-09-27 01:51 am (UTC)<333
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Date: 2013-09-27 03:46 pm (UTC)Basically, lol yeah my life, and yet it is a thing I want, a thing I am grateful for, a thing I delight in. I sometimes find it hard to reconcile what has happened with who I am because, like I say, it's... seen through a glass, darkly, and yet here I am and I am glad to be alive.
Sometimes when I think about it I feel, yes, fragile, but - it is fragility that can be tender as well as brittle, per the poem, and like P!nk says: faced down all my demons, seen you do the same: pretty pretty please, don't you ever ever feel like you're less than fucking perfect to me. I am here and I am real and I have walked through the fire, and by the gods I am going to pay it forward.
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Date: 2013-09-27 05:57 am (UTC)Thank you for the tag links. I shall definitely check them out.
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Date: 2013-09-27 03:42 pm (UTC)The tags really aren't required reading, in any sense, but they're there if you're interested and want to know more. ♥ Some of the material contained in them is on the "I'm really fucking crazy right now" filter, which is opt-in so people who Just Don't Want To Know don't have to; it's incredibly low traffic (2 posts ever, I think? Both over 18 months ago?) but it's there if you want it.
Honestly part of what's weird about the whole thing is that in large part this... has been my normal. November 2011 was especially awful and is still something I'm edgy about, but - yeah. It... is very easy to look at it calmly, without horror, under glass, as I said.
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Date: 2013-09-28 01:23 am (UTC)I understand that the tags aren't required reading, but I like getting to know people. So far I've only made it through Things I've Learned From Counselling, but I really enjoyed it--so much there I still need to learn myself.
If you don't mind adding me to the "I'm really fucking crazy right now" filter, I'd be delighted. Having said that, I may not have much to say about those entries. Sometimes things like that are so far from my experience that I don't really know what to say, but I think it is important to keep exposing myself to different experiences. Maybe if I do, I'll one day find the words, even if they're only "I see you & your struggles and I hope for the best for you."
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Date: 2013-09-26 10:57 pm (UTC)I personally distinguish between "I have depression", which is a thing about me that is true, has been true since age 14 or before, and is likely remain true forever or as long as I'm alive (absent some really advanced medical science or a miracle), and "I am depressed", which when I say it about myself means "my depression is currently in active mode and has commenced fucking up my worldview and life, yet again, the fucker".
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Date: 2013-09-26 11:28 pm (UTC)Be my guest. Fucking depression.
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Date: 2013-09-27 12:51 am (UTC)But also keep talking, so that the institutions stop invisibling you or trying to make you into something you are not.
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Date: 2013-09-27 07:20 pm (UTC)Plus, you know, education is a thing. This is actually something we talk about a lot in Lashings, in terms of what our purpose is, and it's two-fold: one, to tell stories about people like us for people like us, to make a space where it's okay to say these things; and two, as education about what our lives are like for people who... just wouldn't otherwise know. So: thank you for listening, and I hope it helps both you & the people around you. ♥
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Date: 2013-09-27 01:42 am (UTC)(Also, citalopram can be a godsend sometimes...we use it too.)
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Date: 2013-09-27 01:49 am (UTC)Thanks for sharing!
ere's another thing: it feels very strange to say "I am depressed" when my medication and support network are currently keeping me functionally not-depressed [most of the time]. But: I have endometriosis even when I'm not in pain; I have endometriosis even when my painkillers, or my GnRH agonists, or whatever, are working. And I am aware - and sometimes it is painfully, desperately aware - that the only things between me and my illness are my daylight lamp and 30mg a day - forty in winter - of citalopram hydrobromide.
YES. I have Crohn's Disease even when i am (supposedly) in remission/not having a flare-up.
*goes to listen to the song*
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Date: 2013-09-27 07:22 pm (UTC)Thank you.
Date: 2013-09-28 01:15 am (UTC)So now I have talked to a doctor who put me on an antidepressant. I have started seeing a therapist. And since getting that antidepressant, I have had so many fewer thoughts of how it would be better if I didn't exist. I have been allowing myself to have actual feelings without having them destroy me. And I have been paying more attention to how I can accommodate me.
I had so much shame about this for most of my life, and I'm still not at the point where I will talk publicly about chronic depression and anxiety. I still sometimes default to "I should have been able to get over this without any help." So I really appreciate posts like this, where people say: look. It's okay to exist like this. Life is not over and we get through it with a team of support. Thank goodness.
Re: Thank you.
Date: 2013-09-28 01:17 am (UTC)Seriously, these things you have done, they are hard, and they can be very scary, and I am very impressed, and perhaps most of all: I am here, and I am listening.
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Date: 2013-09-29 10:34 am (UTC)Sometimes I think depression could almost be defined as the disease where we think it's "all just me", and where we're convinced we'd effortlessly surmount it if we had just a little more energy or grit or that intrinsic personal worth that we so abjectly and manifestly fail to have even the faintest vestige of (*inhale*) and therefore we're too insignificant even to be worthless and the world would be better off &c. &c.
And then one day we stick a hand up and gurgle out, "... drowning!". And the astonishing thing is that from time to time, someone does actually reach down, grab our worthless insignificant selves, and pull. A miracle, of the kind that makes screens turn blurry.
On shame: yes, me too. But little by little I accommodated it, and as I gingerly exposed it to the outside world, I found that the world accommodated it too. After seven years of taking the little brain sweeties, I now keep a strip of 'em on my desk at work and pop one at morning coffee.
So: for the most part, the neurochemically-normative sector of the population seems to be unflustered by those of us that need pharmacological fine-tuning. At least, that's my experience—if anyone has reservations, they sure haven't bothered me with them.
I rather suspect the citalopram will be on my desk forever. Once upon a time I railed against that. Now I accept it, with only a faint disgruntled sigh, as a vastly superior alternative to the alternative alternative.
What am I talking about? I don't know exactly; maybe I'm just savouring the relief of talking to people on a natural resonant wavelength, rather than forcing myself to the more hectic frequency that our society seems to favour. Or maybe I'm offering you a parable on how one rather second-hand human critter learned to stop worrying and wear its failings on its sleeve, and found that people didn't actually ostracise it (Before And After! This Too Could Be You!). Or maybe I'm just wittering. Or venting some of my own grievedness. Or offering vacuous talk as phatic support.
No; actually I'm doing all of the above.
Do look after yourself. And us. As we you. I hope.
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Date: 2013-09-29 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-03-04 05:22 pm (UTC)Sometimes the Universe knows what it's doing when it puts people on a website. I am so glad that I'd been checking the Latest Things options to see your posts.
Visibility is SO IMPORTANT. It's like, all I ever hear about other bipolar people, or PTSD, is that "they're crazy." And I'm like "Yeah. I'm crazy. So let's talk about that."
Keep talking. Please. Always, keep talking.