FUNNY FRIDAYS

 

 

Be Proud

Be proud of who you are and everything you have overcome.

Not Asking for Help – A Mistake I Won’t Make Again

What is a mistake I will never make again?

I won’t ever not ask for help again.  I went for years not asking for help.  Hiding my depression, hiding my pain.  I didn’t want people to think I was weak.  I didn’t want people to not love me or care about me.  I wanted to be strong and competitive in this world.  I wanted to prove I could be somebody.

Depression, Bipolar, BPD, PTSD, Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective, OCD, Anxiety, Eating Disorders, Trauma, Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, Rape – whatever the mental illness  or Trauma/Past is though – it doesn’t mean you are weak.  It took me far to long to figure that out.

All I knew was that this world was about getting ahead.  That is all that was preached to me in school – you have to do this, you have to do that.  Learn this, learn that.  Get into the best school, earn the highest grades.  Take the ACT, the SAT. Apply, apply, apply.  I was miserable, but I didn’t want to disappoint anyone.

On top of that, I really didn’t believe I was going to be alive.  I really thought I was going to be dead, either by a natural death or by suicide.  I didn’t think I was actually going to have to live up to those expectations anyway.  So I never asked for help.

Then there was also the little fact that it was brought to people attention that I needed help, and no one seemed to care – so why would I ask for help when no one wanted to help me in the first place when others told them I needed it?

After being miserable for years though, and then seeing what my life has been like with the right medications and proper therapy — I would give so much to go back and get these things earlier in my life.  What a difference I think it would have made, how much easier my life would have been.

Even though people don’t always listen when we ask for help.  I still will always ask for it.  I still will always plead for it.  I won’t give up.  I will keep asking, I will keep begging, I will keep pleading for the help.  If I need help – I will get it – no matter what.  Because not asking for help, will just lead to my destruction.  I know that now.

Good Days and Bad Days, This Blog Has Helped and Will Help Me

I used to write all the time.  I had a journal on blogger and I wrote and wrote and wrote.  I wrote about my depression, my frustrations, how much I hated life.  I would write suicide notes and good bye letters.  I wrote about how I thought suicide was ok and how those who loved me should be happy I was gone because I wasn’t in pain anymore.  I had a physical, tangible journal too that my therapist gave me, and I wrote in that periodically as well – I would scribble down any thought that came to my head, over and over again, rambling on about everything – but it was always the bad stuff.  I never counteracted any of the negative thoughts with good things.  I never put any positive self talk in there or reminded myself about what was going on that was good.

I couldn’t see anything good around me – at all.  There was good stuff though.  My siblings cared a lot about me.  I live no where near them, we are all in different states.  We don’t even talk very much, but when we do, I can cry and let all my emotions out and they listen and understand.  Each day, I have food and an apartment to stay in.  Sure, I struggle to pay the bills and have food to eat — but I have it.  There was a time in my life, that I basically was kicked out of my apartment and had to move back home or be homeless, and I attempted suicide because of it.  I did not want to live with my mom.  Now, I have those things.  I have to think about that.  I have a mental health team, I am able to have my medicine.  I hate taking medicine, but it makes me stable.  There were times I couldn’t pay for my medicine – now I can and it is works fairly well.  I have struggled incredibly hard to find a good therapist and psychiatrist, but I have those now.  I have a team that wants me to get better.  There are good things in my life.  I may think that life is horrible and miserable, but not everything is working against me like it may seem.

I started this blog because I was so focused on the negatives in my other blog.  WordPress is a really active community and I wanted to be able to be involved with interacting with others.  I wanted to discuss mental health issues.  I wanted to be involved with reading about other interests of mine.  I wanted to focus on positives.

I still have horrible days.  Just two weeks ago (or something like that), I broke down.  I called the crisis line and then a day later called my dad and about went to the psych hospital.  I thought I was going to kill myself.  Life isn’t perfect for me.  My days can still get really shitty.  I still get super depressed.  But, I want to help people.  And writing on here has helped me feel better.  And talking with others on here has helped me feel better.  Connecting with others that are going through the same thing, knowing I am not alone.

I’m going to eventually have the posts where I am hating life again, but I am hoping that those are few and far between.  I’m sure starting grad school is going to make them happen a lot more frequently – bringing back memories related to my sexual abuse and rape.  My PTSD is going to be stirred up even more than it has been lately with therapy.   I hope to use this as a way to vent still, and get my frustration out, but in a more positive way than I was on my other online blog – which was quite negative as I was simply writing out my plans for death.  Here I can just write out my thoughts and even ask for advice.

I really think that writing on here and connecting with others on here and seeing this as a support has really helped though.  I hope that it continues to do that.

Daily Post – Writer’s Block? Nope, Writing Helps me Cope

Word Press Post A Day – When was the last time you experienced writer’s block? What do you think brought it about — and how did you dig your way out of it?

I just started doing these Post A Day things from Word Press – I thought it might help me expand on my topics – bring in new ideas to relate to mental health…which is what my blog is about.  For the most part, I think it has helped a bit.  I think most of them I have been able to relate to mental health/illness in some way, even if it has been a bit of a stretch at times.  Except Unlikely Pairing – that one, nope, I just couldn’t tie in.  I wrote about it anyway, just to write.

I am passionate about mental health though.  I have been affected with mental illness my whole life.  There is so much stigma associated with mental illness though.  You rarely hear about the great people that have mental illness, just the horrible stories related to it.  Everyone just gets a bad picture.

I created this blog to show my struggles, but also my triumphs over my disorders – my bipolar, my borderline personality disorder, and my PTSD.  All of which I struggle with daily.  I also overcome it everyday though.

Each day I get up, I write on here.  I write about what mental illness is, or how to cope with it,  quotes related to it, how it has affected me, how it might be affecting me that day, what I am going to do in the future to overcome a challenge that I faced because of it, suicide, sexual abuse, past traumas, therapy, etc.

I’m sure I had writers block in high school related to some silly essay my AP English teacher wanted me to write.  When it comes down to something that I am interested in though, something I am passionate about – no, I haven’t had it.  I am sure it might come eventually, but so far, it hasn’t hit me.  I hope it doesn’t because this is a topic that needs to be spoken up for and needs to be heard.

This is my coping skill.  It’s keeping me mentally healthy right now.  Or as much as it can anyway.

FUNNY FRIDAYS

 

 

 

FUNNY FRIDAYS

I am going to start a new weekly series called “FUNNY FRIDAYS”

I just want to clarify that in no way am I trying to make light or make fun of mental illness.  But humor is healthy and sometimes we just need to learn to laugh at ourselves and our situations.

 

When life gets you down —

 

 

You Don’t Make Me Pull My Hair Out, But Seriously, I Do Pull My Hair Out

“You are going to make me pull my hair out!”

Well, let’s be honest, you may get angry or frustrated, but you aren’t going to pull your hair out because of someone.

For some people though, they really do have an urge to pull their hair out.  They have a disorder called trichotillomania – or trich – for short.  The most common places they pull hair from are the scalp, eyebrows, and eyelashes.  This will leave noticeable bald patches.

Depending on who you talk to, there is a debate on how trich is classified.  Some say it is an impulse control disorder, some say it is related to OCD, others say it is a body focused repetitive behavior (BFRB). 

It can be found in all age groups, including infants!  However, most commonly it appears in the tween – teen years. 

According to the DSM V the symptoms of trichotillomania are:

1. Recurrent pulling out of one’s hair, resulting in hair loss.
2. Repeated attempts to decrease or stop hair pulling.
3. The hair pulling causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
4. The hair pulling or hair loss is not attributable to another medical condition (e.g., a dermatological condition).
5. The hair pulling is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder (e.g., attempts to improve a perceived defect or flaw in appearance in body dysmorphic disorder).

There really is no known cause of trich.  It is thought to have a neurologically predisposition.  It is also thought to occur as a coping mechanism during stressful events.  I personally tend to pull out my eyebrow hairs during times of stress when I get anxious.  I do not do it all the time though and have learned to cope with it better when I have something to do with my hands such as play with a stress ball.  I tend not to notice I am doing it though unless someone points it out.  Many people with trich cannot control their urges though. 

Some treatment options have been used.

1. Therapy is the most common one.  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is often used.  Other forms of therapy can also be used depending on your psychologist (or other type of therapist you see) and how you feel the best way of going about it is.  There are clinics around the US that specifically specialize in treating trich.
2. Some medications have been thought to help trich although none are officially approved for it at this time.  Naltrexone and Topomax are two that some people have tried. Others have also been prescribed SSRI’s. 
3. Support groups specific to trich are also important to gain connections with those that are dealing with the same problems you might be going through.

If you want more information on trichotillomania, a wonderful site to go to is http://www.trich.org/index.html

Some other sites that give general information about trich include:

• http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001517.htm
• http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/trichotillomania/basics/definition/con-20030043
• http://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/trichotillomania

 

***(There is also another disorder called dermatillomania – this is similar to trichotillomania.  It involves skin picking though, where a person will pick at there skin such as scabs until the skin is bleeding. If you would like more information about this, go to: http://www.skinpick.com/dermatillomania.)