Bipolar 2 From Inside and Out

Archive for August, 2018

Inspiration and Mental Illness

high angle view of pencils on table

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I was manicky this week and it affected my blog writing. I had a post all ready to go this morning, but last night I thought about it and realized it was crap. It meandered, without focus. The ideas were confused. It sucked. So I got up this morning to write something different instead.

Many of you may recognize this aspect of mania or hypomania. You do something that you think is fantastic  while in the grip of mania and when you come down, you can’t see what you ever saw in it. Or you begin an ambitious project that you work on and work on but never can complete.

I was toying with the idea of “inspiration porn” – the sort of post or story or TV show that holds someone up as an ideal, usually because they’ve lost a bunch of weight and gotten themselves into shape, or have an illness or disability and managed to do – whatever – again. Think “The Biggest Loser.” Or amputees who’ve learned to eat with their feet. It’s put out there for entertainment and to make everyone feel good that whoever it is conquered whatever it was. It takes a regular person out of the context of their lives and reduces them to their condition. And the subtext is that if this brave person can become able to do or be whatever again, so can everyone else with the same problem.

It happened to a friend of mine who was at a gym on a treadmill. A woman came up to her and said how inspiring it was to see her working so hard to lose all that weight. “Excuse me?” was my friend’s reaction. She was doing it for herself, not for anyone else, and especially not to inspire some random stranger.

The thing is, there really isn’t any mental health inspiration porn. For one thing, it would make lousy TV. Oh, they’d get advertisers – all those purveyors of psychotropics that clog the airwaves. But who would watch a depressed person finally getting out of bed and taking a shower, unless she had a coach yelling at her?

Inspiration for those of us with mental health problems takes other forms. Celebrities who speak about their struggles with mental illness are one. They are inspiring because they break the taboo about talking about mental illness in public and because they have done so to help other people.

Then there are the superstars of mental health inspiration. Carrie Fisher, Glenn Close, and Jenny Lawson, to name a few. These are people who focus light on the difficulties and struggles of mental illness. Their communications don’t stop with the announcement that they have a condition and encouraging people to get treatment, though those are also good things. But the real inspirations are those who open their lives, take others with them through the journey of symptoms, treatments, relapses, small triumphs, and bigger successes. They speak and keep speaking and keep speaking their message. They don’t make the process sound easy, because it isn’t. And they speak with authenticity and authority because we know they’ve been there.

They do inspire us because they are honest and open, and they clearly care about helping others in the same proverbial boat.

We lost a true inspiration when we lost Mama Carrie. No one will ever really take her place. But you can tell that she was an inspiration by the many people whose life she touched and how they remember her. If someday they make a movie of her life, I hope it features not only her personal struggles, but all that she did for others. Her speaking and continuing to speak despite – or because – of her ongoing struggles.

We can carry on her work by doing the same, by shedding the stigma, by talking to others, even family and friends. Recently a friend “came out” to me that she takes an antidepressant and an anti-anxiety med (the same ones I take). I was proud of her, but I didn’t make a big deal of it. But I was impressed and pleased that she was able and willing to share even that much. She was saying that she was part of our tribe.

As Jenny Lawson reminds us, in this we are alone together. And that’s inspiring. 

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Mental Health

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Three Types of Anxiety

Sometimes I know what I’m anxious about. Can we make the mortgage payment? Did I forget to refill my meds? Is the cat sick and does she need to see a vet? Will I ever be able to finish my novel?

Those are fairly normal anxieties, the sort that everyone has. They keep us up at night.

Then there are irrational anxieties. When did my passport expire? Did my husband leave the keys in the doorknob? Will that fan in the living room catch on fire if we leave it on all night? Will I find out when I start that new job tomorrow that they really hired someone else? (That’s not completely irrational. It happened to me once.)

People with many types of mental illnesses have these. Even some people without mental illnesses have these too. I knew a woman who worried herself awake one night over whether she had given her sons a proper religious education. Many of them – the passport, the keys, the fan – we can get up and check on, if we’re unable to put them aside and sleep.

But there’s another kind of anxiety that I sometimes get and it’s the hardest of all to deal with.

Free-floating anxiety.

PscyhCentral defines free-floating anxiety as “a generalized, debilitating apprehensive mood which, unlike a phobia, is not triggered by any specific object or occurrence.” It is also referred to as “generalized anxiety disorder,” though my doctor just wrote “anxiety disorder” on my chart.

Or in other words, it happens when you don’t really have anything to be anxious about, but you are anyway. Anxiety.org helpfully adds, “GAD usually first presents itself in the years between childhood and middle age.”

One tricky thing about free-floating anxiety is that it can lead you to believe you’re anxious about things you really aren’t. If you have an anxiety attack in the cereal aisle at the grocery store, you might assume that the cereal aisle causes the anxiety and avoid it thereafter. Which would be a shame, because dry cereal is a great food to eat, right out of the box, when you just can’t get out of bed that day.

PsyWeb.com notes that “GAD is generally treated by combining psychotherapy and prescribed medication. Drugs that effectively treat free-floating anxiety are benzodiazepines, antidepressants, beta-blockers and buspirone. The patient is prescribed a certain medication based on potential side effects and treatment effectiveness.” But sometimes even that isn’t enough.

I used to get anxiety attacks in the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep anyway. My whole body would tense up and my skin felt like there were electric wires running through it. I started breathing hard or even panting, gasping to get enough air. That kind of anxiety can leave you exhausted but without sleep, sometimes for the next day as well. It’s like having an anxiety hangover.

If my husband was home when an anxiety attack struck (he works third shift now) he knew enough to, first, ask me what I was panicky about, and if I didn’t know, then to wrap me in a hug, coach me to breathe slowly and deeply, and stroke my hair until I relaxed enough to fall asleep.

When my husband wasn’t there, I would just have to hug my pillow and tough it out. Try to remember the breathing.  Pet a cat.

Nowadays I don’t have the nighttime anxiety attacks. My psychiatrist has prescribed a sleeping aid and an antianxiety med to be taken at bedtime. If I do have middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks, he has allowed me an extra antianxiety pill to take, which usually does the trick.

Personally, I prefer my husband’s nonmedical approach.

Category:

Mental Health

Healing From Gaslighting

Apparently, gaslighting has become the new “thing” in pop psych circles. We see article after article warning of the dangers of gaslighting and how to spot a gaslighter. I have written a few such articles myself:

Who’s Crazy Now? A Guide to Gaslighting (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-pm)

Gaslighting and Bipolar Disorder (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-C2)

When Men Aren’t the Gaslighters (https://wp.me/p4e9Hv-Cu)

Is it time for another? I think so. Now that more people know about gaslighting, they need to know how to heal after the experience, as they would after any kind of emotional abuse.

Because that’s what gaslighting is – emotional abuse. But it’s a specific kind of emotional abuse. In gaslighting, one person in a relationship (romantic or familial) denies the other’s perception of reality and works to convince the gaslightee that he or she is the crazy one in the relationship. As in other forms of emotional abuse, the gaslighter may try to isolate the victim from friends and relatives, give intermittent reinforcement (insincere apologies) that draw the victim back into the relationship, or denigrate the person with insults.

But the heart of gaslighting is that denial of the other person’s reality. The abuser says, in effect: You can’t trust your own feelings. My view of the world is accurate and yours isn’t. You’re crazy. (Of course, the gaslighter may also use the familiar techniques of emotional abuse as well: isolation, insults, projection, and belittling.) But gaslighting is unique because the perpetrator distorts a person’s world view, sense of self-worth, and belief in him- or herself.

Healing from gaslighting is not easy, but it can be done. Here is some advice from me, a person who was a victim of gaslighting but is now healing.

Get as far away from the gaslighter as you can. Yes, this may mean cutting off contact with a family member, if that’s who is doing the gaslighting. It may mean leaving town. It does mean making a sincere and lasting emotional break.

Do not maintain contact with the gaslighter. You may think that once you have broken free from the gaslighter, he or she can do no further harm. This is just an invitation to more emotional battering.

Name the abuse. Say to yourself – and possibly to a trusted person – this was gaslighting. I was emotionally abused and tricked into thinking I was crazy. My worldview was denied and my thoughts and emotions were said to be invalid.

Feel the feelings. It may be some time before you can admit to or even experience the emotions that gaslighting brings. Your first reaction may be relief (at least I’m out of that!), but there may be years of anger, frustration, fear, and rage lurking behind that. It may take work to surface those feelings and feel them and recognize that they are valid.

Get some help. This can be a therapist who specializes in treating victims of emotional abuse or it can be a supportive friend, family member, or religious counselor. It should be someone who can listen nonjudgmentally, validate your perceptions of reality, and sympathize with your situation.

Do not try to get revenge. This is just another way of reconnecting with your gaslighter. It gives the person another opportunity to “prove” that you are crazy.

Develop new relationships. It may seem like there is no one in your world who will understand and be supportive. For a while, you may not be able to trust enough to have another close friend or lover. You may have a lot of healing to do first. But remember that gaslighters are in the minority; most people don’t do that to people they profess to care about.

Give it time. It may take years to fully get over the experience. (I know it did for me.) Maybe don’t go directly into a rebound relationship. You need time and space to work through your feelings and rebuild your perception of reality.

Just know that gaslighting doesn’t have to be a way of life. It can end when you gather the strength to break away from it. You can heal and take back what you know to be true – that you are a person who is worthy of love. That your perceptions and feelings are valid. That you don’t have to live by someone else’s view of what is real. That you are not crazy.

 

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Mental Health

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Low-Jacked Pills and High-Tech Mental Health

I’m a known geek and ordinarily a fan of technology – though not technology for its own sake. It has to do something useful and needed.

Imagine my surprise to learn that tech companies are now doing what so many of our public institutions aren’t, and devising possible solutions to assorted mental health problems. Stat reported (in their Business section) that now:

with an influx of funding, companies are revamping pills with digital sensors, designing virtual reality worlds to treat addiction and other conditions, and building chatbots for interactive therapy.

But are these techno-wonders likely to be any help? Let’s take the innovations in reverse order, shall we?

Chatbots. We already have remote counselors, which may be a godsend for people with no access to mental health clinics (although they charge a fee, which may be prohibitive for some). I’ve never investigated this service, so maybe some of you who have can tell me how they work and how well.

Remote counselors rely on already existing technology, however, and are therefore not of interest to tech innovators (or potential funders). Chatbots are something else. They are, essentially, computers that respond to human input with output that is supposed to simulate human responses.

To my knowledge, no computer has ever passed the “Turing Test,” which means that a person has no idea whether they’re chatting with a real person or a computer. A psych computer is likely to respond with generic responses such as, “Why do you feel angry with your sister?” “What do you mean when you say anxiety?” “Explain how depression affects you,” and “Tell me more about your mother.” The supposed AI is in no way trained in psychology or any therapeutic techniques.

One company that received funding for “telepsychiatry” (called Regroup Therapy and Woebot Labs) brands their idea as “Your charming robot friend who is ready to listen, 24/7.” Admittedly, many persons with mental health issues need someone who’ll listen, but that’s far from all they need.

Virtual reality for addiction (and other conditions). Startup Limbix wants to sell its programs to therapists and clinics. According to Stat,

Among the company’s VR programs is an exposure therapy for patients with phobias or trauma associated with driving. While patients strap on the headset, clinicians can work with them to introduce different conditions (a clear or rainy day) or different road situations (a bridge or a tunnel or blind left turns).

This sounds promising, though the cost of VR headsets and the programming for various conditions again might be prohibitive for your average community or campus or rural mental health clinic. I’m not clear on how it would work for addiction, unless combined with aversion therapy, which is generally brutal.

Pills with digital sensors. Aren’t psychotropic medications already too expensive, especially for people who have no insurance? Now we need technological pills that must make a profit for both drug and tech companies?

And what a pill they’re talking about. Basically, it’s a pill that rats you out if you don’t take it, or rather alerts your doctor when you do take it. Presumably, your doctor has enough staff to monitor whether clients take the pills and record it if they don’t. Then what? A robocall telling you to take your meds? A visit from a social worker?

Admittedly, such low-jacked pills might have a place in situations where schizophrenics are court-ordered to take their medication, but again there is the problem of what to do about non-compliance.

Another company plans to sell “a cardiac drug meant to be popped like a mint to people anxious about public speaking and first dates.” Would people need prescriptions for those, or will they be dispensed like Tic-Tacs? Even anti-anxiety drugs aren’t meant to be “popped like a mint.” And a cardiac drug? I can’t see any possible downside there.

If only the ingenuity and investment that goes into these products were instead available to fund and repair the shaky mental health system instead. What we need are more psychiatrists and therapists, more hospital beds for psych patients, less expensive drugs, better insurance, more education for the public about mental illness, and an end to stigma.

But those would require systemic reform and political backing, not just some new-fangled gadget. And good luck getting investors for those.

Reference

https://www.statnews.com/2018/07/20/tech-developers-tackle-mental-health/

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Mental Health

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