Trauma and Bipolar Recovery
Trauma is a dangerous thing. In a fragile or undernourished brain, the stress of big life trauma can crack you and send you reeling into psychosis, paranoia, panic, and terrifying mood swings. Healing the trauma associated with mental illness is the focus of Second Stage healing. (In spite of the anonymity in the telling of this story, I need all of my readers to know that I tell this with express permission from my friend. Owning our experiences and telling ...
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 ...
A Happy Sort of Panic
When I’m back from traveling, I can always count on three things. A mountain of laundry, a big hug from Dana, and at least three days filled with story-telling, excited, and somewhat needy children. When I get back from a trip, I can always count on a visit from my old friend ‘Panic’. This morning, I woke a little later than planned, dressed, grabbed a banana, a swallow of coconut milk, and a dose of the EMPowerplus micronutrient formulation, then ...
A Child with Anxiety and Obsession
I’m not a doctor. If I were a doctor, a brilliant, healthy little girl would be heavily medicated right now. Obsession is one of the toughest set of symptoms for me to write about. A young girl who holds a very special place in my heart has had a crippling and painful go-round with obsessive thoughts and compulsions. Who we once saw as a worried child quickly turned into a child so wrought with anxiety that it left her vomiting, ...
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 ...
Defining Second Stage Healing
What is “Second Stage” Healing? I was using three prescription drugs to treat Bipolar 1 at the time my mother committed suicide. I was sick, but functional enough to care for family needs, dress her body, help plan her burial, heck, I even offered the prayer at the funeral. I went through all the motions of mourning, but on some level, I was incredibly numb to the experience. Years later, after the medications were eliminated and my mood was super stable ...
Ready…Set…Heal!
Ready…Set…Heal! So, I’m wondering about this notion of speed healing. Where did anyone get the idea that you can be sick and then sicker for years; medicated and then even more medicated for far too long and then drop it all in a week? “Drop the drugs and the habits and the hurts…Right Now!” yeah. right. I get fast-food mentality, the magic pill philosophy of sedatives and uppers and downers and SSRIs … but that expectation for instant sedation simply cannot apply to a groundbreaking, micronutrient ...
On The Other Side Of Truehope
Plenty of people who find their balance using the Truehope Program are let down when they discover that there is no magic pill for the aftermath of bipolar. That’s not entirely true. There was, for me, a combo of medications that was pure magic. I swallowed the five prescription cocktail and slept non-stop for days, and thus, remembered nothing about my life, my mother, or the number on the bathroom scale. And my panic was cured. But that’s not living after all. ...
Reality is Always Kind
Reality Is Always Kind Fifteen years into my recovery from Bipolar I hit a wall. Too many triggers from too much trauma were creating too many panic attacks leaving me vulnerable and compromising my health and robbing me of my happiness as a mom. I had to retrain my memory. None of my memories were kind. What is reality and what is kind about it? In “A Promise of Hope” I wrote about the day my mother loaded my ...
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