Putting Stigma to Shame
The hardest thing about Second Stage Healing is believing that you are better on a morning when you wake up feeling like a pile of garbage. (That was yesterday. Today I am feeling fine, thank you!) Psychiatric patients or those who have decided to opt out being one, know that every little thing can be attributed to ‘your mood disorder’ once you have been labelled with a disorder. It has taken me better than half of my 16 years of ...
I would never have signed up for that either, Grandpa.
I am the third generation of a mood swing mess, peppered with paranoia and salted with a stigma so smothering that it killed my mother and grandfather. When Grandpa was diagnosable, in his early twenties, America was in the shameful throws of sterilizing ‘mental deficients’ and performing frontal lobe lobotomies for mood swing resolution. I would never have signed up for that either, Grandpa. Grandpa kept his illness a not-so-well-kept secret until he finally, in an act of shame and ...
Bipolar, Panic and Anxiety…What is the Difference?
Take a minute to look at the DSM-IV – the manual that your physician used to determine the criteria for your diagnosis. Psychiatric diagnoses are complicated things. That’s why many of our diagnoses have changed over the years. Mine changed from depression to BipolarI, to BipolarI with rapid cycles, to a final and extra comforting label of BipolarI with rapid cycles and schizophrenic tendencies. Did you know that I was so sick – even while diligently following my specialist’s order ...
Save My Marriage!
Not everyone will cheer you on when you decide to move from medications to a normal healthy life. Sometimes our closest friends are the greatest skeptics. Fact is, if you have been diagnosed with bipolar, it is because you have done something that scared the living daylights out of your family. Whatever you did before is tough to forget. What you did makes them question your judgement now, especially if it was your idea to transition from medications to the ...
Raising James
My son is not a problem child. He just needed help. James was sick too. He was diagnosed with ADHD and Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) when he was three and a half. His doctor said meds were too dangerous at that age, so he told me to wrap my boy up in a restraint when he had ‘fits’. Rolling James in a long carpet like a straightjacket and laying beside him, both of us crying, only happened once. I remember ...
Can you really die of embarrassment?
When you use micronutrient formulations like EMPowerplus to balance your mood, you’ll discover that there is no magic pill effect. No sedation, no warm fuzzy feelings in your face or chest. (There are also no side effects worth mentioning either.) After days or weeks or months, once the old medications are safely eliminated, you are left with only yourself, a predictable mood, and some crystal clear memories of where you have been and what you did during the course of ...
Selling Yourself a Stigma
I am bipolar My Depression My symptoms My past My pain We are all like door-to-door salesmen, but knocking on our own doors… selling ourselves on owning something we don’t really want. You know how they hand you a catalogue, a knife or a pot or whatever and say your knife, your pot, your vacuum? Whatever it is becomes yours the minute you touch it. Tough to argue with ownership. It’s hard to let go of an identity you have ...
Follow Autumn: