Tag: schizophrenia

Posted in Community, psychology, science

mental health month: trauma

Posted on by alidware

Welcome back! Let’s talk about Truama and Stressor related disorders. Read more for a great book recommendation for emotional trauma and CPTSD.

What is Trauma?

This can be any event or events which leave lasting psychological distress. This ranges from emotional abuse influencing your world view to the vicious physical flashbacks veterans face after war. A car crash can be a trauma that makes you anxious or avoidant about cars. Divorce is a trauma. Children of alcoholics, such as yours truly, have a specific set of common trauma responses. Sexual abuse, the death of a loved one, a gun to your head are all specific traumas that can cause specific perspectives and responses from people.

Sometimes trauma can cause a person to lash out suddenly, aggressively, or present the opposite characteristics; some will shut down, avoid, and become stagnant or submissive. There’s research supporting the hypothesis that traumatic events can heavily influence the wiring in our brain. This has a lot of implications in all mental health conditions, not just Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But for the sake of honoring Trauma today, we will talk about that only in the context of trauma.

What Are Trauma Disorders?

I had a similar question. The DSM-5 has somewhat of an answer. Here are the diagnoses they list:

  1. Reactive attachment disorder: This is in early childhood or infancy where the child does not look toward their caregiver for “comfort, support, protection, and nurturance.” If you’re anything like me, psychopathy might pop into your head. There isn’t a lot of research supporting Reactive attachment disorder as a precursor to psychopathy. But if you’re interested, here’s a random presentation I found on the subject.
  2. Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder: This is basically the opposite of the above disorder. These children will approach strangers and act overly familiar with them, also breaking cultural boundaries. Often they have experienced some kind of pattern of severe neglect from their caregivers. They must be at least 9 months of age to receive this diagnosis. Don’t ask me how that works.
  3. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: This has some of the longest criteria to meet and is often diagnosed very quickly. Major symptoms can be obvious. However, for those of us who have struggled with emotional abuse, it takes a keen eye to recognize the signs. PTSD is an emotional response to one or more traumatic events. This includes “fear-based re-experiencing, emotional and behavioral symptoms. Experiences range from explosive “reactive-externalizing”, to dissociation.
  4. Acute Stress Disorder: This would be caused by a gun to your head, or anything else that threatens death, serious injury, or sexual violation. This also applies if you witness one of these events, such as someone being shot in the head, threatened to be shot in the head, someone being raped or beaten. If you had a conscience and were the person filming Ahmaud Arbery‘s death, you may develop this disorder. Evidently that person has not. This can happen to police officers or detectives, or any emergency responders who are repeatedly exposed to violent/disturbing/fatal cases. Keep our COVID front-line medical staff in mind.
  5. Adjustment disorders: This is marked by emotional or behavioral symptoms that appear within three months of a stressor. For example, the changes a person may experience after the death of a loved one or sudden death of a close friend.
  6. Other-specified Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorder and Unspecified Trauma and Stressor Related Disorder: These both carry criteria of a person exhibiting trauma like responses that cause significant distress but don’t fit in the categories of the other disorders.

How do People Manage?

Writing this hasn’t been easy. My chest is tight, my hands are shaking, and I keep having to remind myself to breath. My senses are become more sensitive by the minute and I’ve had to change my music to something softer and easy to ignore. My stomach is in knots. I’m not thinking about any incident in particular, but the body has an amazing memory. It encodes emotions, sensations, feelings. That’s why dissociation is such a common respond to trauma: escape your body and the feelings are void. It’s a mistake to think only the mind holds the capacity for feeling.

Therapy is a common go-to for trauma. EMDR has stormed popular psychology but according to my research professor last year, it’s unclear whether the lights/wands used in EMDR are causing an effect or if it’s the CBT you’re doing during the session. After all, CBT is the leading therapeutic treatment for trauma. There are no studies with participants using CBT, EMDR (that includes CBT), EMDR without CBT (which would basically be flickering lights or waving wands with you sitting there awkwardly staring at them) and no treatment which would put you on a “waiting list”, you unknowingly part of the control group.

Much of my own trauma is rooted in emotional events. Being threatened, bad mouthed (an eleven year old being called a bold little motherfucker for expressing distress about something is kind of how that went constantly), and intimated taught me to be suspicious, distrusting, and defensively aggressive. Being homeless created a lot of insecurity, confusion, and depression; the first day I wanted to kill myself I was eleven, sitting outside of the house we stayed in where the owner drank a bottle of Jack Daniels each night followed by a plate of Xanax. Her daughter had sex orgies loud enough to permeate the street and the other went to work and school. I have many more stories about many wild people I’ve encountered. Maybe I’ll tell it sometime.

But the alcoholism and drugs in my own house, coupled with our 3 year homelessness, and my terror of school I’d experienced since I was five in day care, made me closed, submissive, and withdrawn. When I hear certain words today–for example, in a team meeting at work, if I hear the word “activity”, my body flashes cold, my heart races more than it already was, my hands shake, my muscles twitch. This is an example of an encoded emotion from my days in school. There are studies going into this.

I didn’t ever talk. I fainted if I was asked in front of the class, and was so nervous to raise my hand that I often peed on myself in elementary; I couldn’t ask to use the bathroom. By middle school I’d developed a ritualistic routine to avoid asking for anything in class: use the bathroom before school, five minutes before the bell ended break, five minutes before the bell ended lunch. That’s continued through college; I’ve never got up and walked out of a class before the class ended. By high school, my dissociation got so severe I experienced fugue states (only lasting at most a day), one that caused me to walk into four lanes of traffic against the light, with my friends apparently screaming. They eventually caught up to me but I only remember walking through my door at home. I don’t remember the rest of the day or what made me so terribly distressed that I left my body.

There are some medications offered, usually SSRIs but sometimes heavier medications like Seroquel for a knock-out sleep. Sleeping can be hard with trauma. Your body is constantly in high alert.

Meditation helps some. This can be any activity that helps you focus on your breath and rooting your thoughts in your body. We get so used to ignoring, avoiding, or giving in completely to the distress our body and mind feels that we lose sight of reconnecting our system, which is so essential to wellness.

Support groups and other outlets to express the physical and emotional experiences are key. Just typing my physical experiences above helped relieve a lot of the tension; it’s important to acknowledge what your body feels, and get specific about it–write it down, call a friend or support force, schedule a therapy appointment. Resort to emergency medication if the experience doesn’t abate after trying everything, including sitting with yourself. I’ve had panic attacks related to body-trauma flashbacks push through Seroquel, Ativan, Klonopin, Valium.

Drugs aren’t always what you need. Sometimes it’s just your body screaming for you to offer understanding, consolation, and acknowledgment of its distress; it’s been through the same things you have, on a cellular level.

Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving has been on my read list for a while. It covers “Complex-PTSD” which is not a DSM diagnosis no matter how many psychologists push for it, but references the emotional markers left over from childhood trauma.

Today, we are greatful to hear from Caz again, over at mentalhealthfromtheotherside.com. Read about her experiences with childhood sexual abuse here.

Thank you to everyone who has been messaging me on Instagram. Sharing your story is difficult and I appreciate those of you just reaching out with words of encouragement, thankfulness, and those of you asking about my own experience with psychosis. We will continue with Mental Health Month NEXT WEEK.

Thursday May 14th: Schizophrenia

Friday May 15h: Bipolar

Saturday May 16th: Dissociative disorders.

These posts may be a little later than usual as I am on a hiring panel at my job on Thursday and Friday. Finals are also coming up. I will keep everyone updated. If you would like to submit a paragraph, quote, or personal story with any of those listed experiences, please reach out through my CONTACT PAGE, or message me on:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @philopsychotic.

If you enjoyed this post, please share, like, and follow ThePhilosophicalPsychotic. I appreciate every reader and commentator. You give me more reason to continue reporting poorly executed science.

Posted in advocacy, psychology, science

Mental Health Month: OCD and Related conditions

Posted on by alidware

We’re in day two of our Mental Health Month series where we discuss different DSM-5 diagnoses and the research behind them. Today we’re talking about Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders, including Body Dsymorphic Disorder.

What is Obsession?

Let’s distinguish the difference between being obsessed with something and obsession ruling your life.

If you have an obsession with Michael Kors, you probably don’t have a condition.

If you have an obsession with, like, that one show that, like, you stream on Netflix, you probably don’t have a condition.

If you had to touch all of the buttons, one by one, on the television, the remotes, the kitchen appliances, the computer, before you leave the house to prevent a house fire, and this becomes so disruptive you leave the house only twice a week for essentials (even when NOT in a pandemic), then you might think about searching for some support.

But OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) is not the only condition that exists under this category. There is also:

1.Body Dysmorphic Disorder

2.Hoarding Disorders

3.Trichotillomania (hair pulling)

4. Excoriation (skin-picking)

5. Substance/medication-induced obsessive compulsive and related

6.Obsessive-compulsive and related disorder due to another medical condition.

7. unspecified obsessive-compulsive and related disorder (like obsessional jealousy).

Is Hoarding Like That T.V Show?

Hoarding gained a lot of popularity after A&E came out with their show HOARDERS, which follows the lives of extreme hoarders, often living in squalor beneath their belongings. The people featured are often reluctant to get rid of their material items because of an obsessive emotional attachment to them. This doesn’t just extend into beautiful or valuable items, like a porcelain doll or an antique speaker; most people will be hard-pressed to give away something that has some semblance of importance or function. For the people on hoarders, even garbage or blankets covered in rat droppings and urine are part of their livelihood, either because of memories or because of the simple fact that that item, along with all the other items in the house, fills a void.

Indeed, those with Hoarding Disorder have “persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value”, per the criteria of the diagnosis. That difficulty leads to an “accumulation of possessions that congest and clutter active living areas”, much like what you see on Hoarders. This causes “distress or impairment” in all areas of functioning.

We also see a variety of personalities on Hoarders. Some people have what the DSM calls “good or fair insight”. They recognize their hoarding has been causing problems, but feel both trapped and safe among their things. Some people have “poor insight”, in that the clutter isn’t viewed as problematic. As we see in the television show, some people with this level of insight will accept help but fight against losing too much stuff. Some revert back into their old ways after the trauma of losing things all over again. Those with “absent insight/delusional beliefs”, are absolutely convinced nothing is wrong–yes, to the extent of delusion. These are the people you see who halt the process in the show, and the house or yard is cleaned only in a hundred square feet or so.

These behaviors may be related to the temperament of the person, indecisiveness being a leading trait, and also related to some traumatic or stressful event that exacerbates the behavior. Let me give a personal example.

When I was 11, we lived in a two story, two bedroom apartment next to a registered sex offender and across from a drunken, drug-addled manager. My dad, a musician, also spent most of his free time drinking or working on cars, and it was only a matter of time before him and the manager got into an irreparable fight. The problem is, she was the manager and we were the tenants; her words against ours to property management meant nothing. We were evicted.

My parents’ credit was in the tank, and we were not rich, so no other apartments in town would take us and we bounced around from hotels, to a tent, to rooms in houses of family friends—that doesn’t sound terrible, but three years of much more drugs, alcohol, and uncertainty (in every place we stayed) isn’t all that fun.

A two-story, two bedroom apartment can hold a lot of stuff. Everything in my room except important papers and one hand-me-down banana republic plastic shelf went in the dump–bed included. We didn’t have enough space for all my stuff and my parent’s stuff in the small storage locker we rented, so we sacrificed most of our belongings.

I noticed I started clinging to things later when we finally got another apartment. I picked up stuff from the street I didn’t need–like broken street signs, discarded car review mirrors, desks, and even a bent reflector. I kept that bent reflector for ten years. In fact, I kept all of it for ten years. My closet is still full of junk I picked up from the street or things I thought were valuable from the dump. My room itself is cluttered, disorganized, and it took three years of picking through invaluable things with perceived value to keep at least two feet of walk space from my bed to the door. I still haven’t learned how to organize.

This example doesn’t mean I have Hoarding Disorder. I only share this to show that obsessions with material items don’t make people vain or stupid or rude. Loss and grief of any kind can make us cling to whatever solid, certain, undying thing we can find.

I don’t know how much of A&E’s Hoarders is dramatized for television. Sometimes it seems the film is edited to make the people look disgusting and defeated, and then a sob story told to make us feel pity. At the end we’re supposed to feel amazed the house is clean or disappointed in the person if it’s not, without recognizing the uniqueness of each individual’s process. All in all, the people are real. I don’t know about the show, though.

Is Body Dysmorphic Disorder Real?

Yes.

In fact, it’s the first disorder listed in the category. People struggling with this perceive a defect or flaw in their appearance that seems slight to every one else but causes severe preoccupation for the sufferer. This could cause people to go to drastic measures to fix this flaw–which may include several cosmetic plastic surgery interventions, or cause them to remain indoors, trapped behind the fear that everyone will see, ridicule, and be disgusted by their flaw. This is not the same as being preoccupied with ones weight, and it cannot be Body Dysmorphia if the symptoms of an eating disorder are present.

This is linked to people who have relatives with OCD, and has been seen correlated with high rates of childhood neglect and abuse. Females are more likely to have a co-morbid (occuring at the same time) eating disorder and males are more likely to be preoccupied with their genital region. What does all of this mean?

It means life is a living hell. Being in the view of others causes such distress there are people who hide behind their curtains, in their house, for years. And this is, again, not a vain “omg nobody look at me”. This is such a level of heightened anxiety that an entire life is disrupted. I feel that many obsessive conditions get looked at as people being selfish: the person living with OCD can’t take care of their child because the compulsions take up most of the day–that means they don’t care about their kid enough. Or the people with Trichotillomania has pulled a bald spot on their head, but then complains about being nervous of others seeing the bald spot–they need to just stop pulling their hair. And things just aren’t that simple. None of this is vanity or selfishness, it’s anxiety, it’s stress, it’s trauma response.

Here is a great Ted Talk by Meredith Leston that highlights how body image is spread in the world and how troublesome views can lead to great distress and disruptive conditions for some people. Let’s remember: our environment plays a huge role in dictating which genes turn on and off. Everyone has the potential to develop a mental condition at some pointing their life. Why it happens to some and doesn’t to others not only depends on environment, but social factors and genetic make up too. Not so much brain chemistry.

If anyone watched Barcroft on Youtube, you might like this clip on Body Dysmorphia and OCD. I tend not to watch them too often, but sometimes they have okay material. Let me know how real or not real this is.

What Kind of Treatment is Available?

For some of these conditions, like Trichotillomania, there are no drugs that reduce symptoms. Even in cases of severe OCD, psychotropic medications fail miserable. This is a testament to how much we still don’t know and why some researchers are putting more weight on alternative treatments and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the only psychotherapy which has been tested (with high reliability AND validity) and proven to change the course of people’s thoughts.

This Double-blind, placebo controlled, Cross-over study examined the possibility for Milk Thistle as a treatment for Trichotillomania. They concluded their sample size too small to yield any confident results, and that their evidence only weakly supported the use for Milk Thistle.

This placebo study with Trichotillomania only further showed that 1) change is possible depending on expectations of the participant and 2) easy access, simple treatments for this condition remain elusive and the condition reminds misunderstood on a clinical level.

I will say that OCD itself gets a lot of research while these other disorders fall short of people interested in finding treatments. For OCD there is a long list of possible SSRI treatment, ECT treatment (if you don’t mind losing your memory), different therapies, stimulants, and even EMDR. This is why I speak on the disorders we don’t hear much about. Because for the rest of these unknown, quiet, hidden disorders, sloppy therapy and hopeful medication are thrown at patients. Many suffer in silence.

For a condition like Body Dysmorphic Disorder, other alternatives are being studied too. This experiment examines whether an intranasal dose of Oxytocin could cue a helpful response for BDD. This too failed. It increased self-blame and “other-directed blame”, and the researchers “advise against the use of Oxytocin in BDD patients”. Glad science kept us from THAT mistake.

But, for those diagnosed with BDD and Social Anxiety disorder, this study found that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and attention retaining significantly improved the Body Dysmorphic aspect of the participants life.

There is some progress.

What can we do?

If someone comes to you and tells you they have been struggling with one of these conditions, withhold whatever your initial reaction is. Remind yourself that many who struggle with these types of conditions blame themselves enough. Even those who don’t blame themselves may still feel guilty for the disruption it causes their lives. I feel guilty sometimes for the disruptions my anxiety and Schizoaffective-ness has caused in my life and others lives.

Remember that they are not disgusting or vain or weird. Remember that there may be a whole list of trauma you’ve never learned about. Remember that even clinicians don’t understand this, probably because they’re trying to understand it on a biological level too much–some things need a different perspective in life.

So, this Mental Health Month, let’s keep in mind that there is a lot of suffering going on right now. Let’s not compare our pain to others, but instead use that energy to remind each other we’re not as alone as we feel. If you are suffering in silence, may this space give you the extreme–almost inhumane it feels sometimes– courage it takes to send a text, or call to someone you can trust. You can comment on this blog even, or contact me on my home page; eventually the burden of silence will hurt your back. It’s damn near broke mine before.

I write these posts in this format because I’m tired of articles listing symptoms, bland, over-used, understudied treatments, and urging people to talk to their doctor. It’s a good idea sometimes to seek professional help, but to do so uneducated and so desperate for relief that you’re unable to look at things critically will only trap you in the quantum loop that is the mental health system, especially if you’re in America. Mental Health Month is about education and reducing stigma. We can’t do that if we don’t preach from the side of lived experience AND scientific research.

Tomorrow we cover: Trauma and Stressor related DIsorders.

Next week, we cover: Schizophrenia, Bipolar, and Dissociative disorders. If you’d like to submit your story for any of these, please contact me HERE, or on my social media handles below:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @philopsychotic

If you enjoyed this post, please share, like, and follow ThePhilosophicalPsychotic. I appreciate every reader and commentator. You give me more reason to continue reporting poorly executed science.

Posted in advocacy, Community, Peer Support, Supporting Friends/Family, Voices

The Line Up for Sharing Your Story this Mental Health Month.

Posted on by alidware

Hello friends!

I have some time before work to put out the writing schedule of this months posts, all dedicated to learning more about DSM diagnoses and the research that backs them up (or doesn’t). I’m also asking for people’s experiences so that we may add a personal aspect to all of the clinical madness.

If you want to submit your story (200 words or more), you can find my contact information on my HOME page (click here) or you can reach me on my social media handles (below).

Each post will go live on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday each week of May. The Line Up is as follows:

Week of May 4th: Anxiety Disorders, Obsessive/compulsive and related disorders, and Trauma and Stressor related disorders.

Week of May 11th: Schizophrenia, Bipolar, and Dissociative disorders.

Week of May 18th: Somatic disorders, Eating disorders, and Depressive disorders.

Week of May 25: Gender Dysphoria, Neurodevelopmental disorders, and Personality Disorders.

On Monday, May 31st, we will give a quick summary, explore feelings that may come up, and find ways we can celebrate and inform people about mental health every day, not just one month out of the year.

For submitting your story:

If you would like to present something 200 words or more, your story will be posted separately from the main article, but on the SAME DAY as your topic. For example, if you want to submit your story about anxiety, it will be posted within an hour of the main post this Thursday.

If you would like to provide a quote or small paragraph (less than 200 words) it will be included in the main post at relevant points.

For both types of submissions, I can link your blog, social media, name, or anything else that you’d like. For longer stories, if you want to write a bio, I will put it at the end of your post.

Please share this information with friends, family, and anyone you feel would want to participate. If you yourself wants to participate, please contact me.

Social Media:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @philopsychotic

Let’s empower each other and remind the world why we matter.

Posted in advocacy, Community, Peer Support, Voices

Share Your Story

Posted on by alidware

In honor of May being Mental Heath Month, I’ve decided to do something consistent, informative, and fun on this blog.

During the course of May, starting this week, every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I will be doing one or two posts dedicated to a diagnostic category. This means we will be covering stuff like anxiety disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, ADHD, Autism, and more.

I notice when people give information about disorders, they limit what they share to symptoms, medications, and the everlasting advice of self-care. This will be covered as well, my sources being my DSM-5 copy. But we will expand on this, address the most recent research articles I can find (and gain access to), and talk about supportive options that vary beyond just medication and doctors. We will address mental health as whole-person health.

I would also like to include personal experiences or quotes from those of you willing to share. This could be a direct quote or small paragraph from YOU that expresses what it feels like to experience living with mental health conditions, or it could be as simple as a list of words describing your experience.

If you would like to do a longer piece (anything above 200 words), I will post that separately, the same day as the other article, and link the two to each other. For example, if your story is about your experience with anxiety, I will link that up with the article talking about anxiety disorders.

You can reach me from my contact page (listed on the home screen of my blog) or you can reach me at my social media accounts listed below. I will also be including some of my own experiences if there aren’t enough people who feel comfortable sharing.

Please share this with someone who you feel might want to participate, or with someone who you feel would like to follow this series throughout this month. We will be learning a lot and challenging the current perspective of mental health.

The goal of this little project is to show the world that we are capable, determined, literate, and worthy human beings, just as everyone else. This is also a way to empower each other and remind ourselves that we are so much more than we give ourselves credit for sometimes. Especially during these times, its important to remember the good about ourselves, about others, and sharing our stories can support us in that.

If you’d like to participate, you can reach me at my social media handles here:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @thephilopsychotic

Or click at this link to be taken to my contact page.

Give me an idea of what you’d like to contribute and we can work together in getting your voice out there. Feel free to also contact me if you have a particular category you’d like this series to focus on this coming Thursday, Friday, Or Saturday.

I will also include your blog, social media handle, and/or name (if you’d like) at the end of each article. All articles will be promoted on my twitter handle and Instagram handle.

Thank you everyone. Please share this so we can have multiple voices. Mental Health month is about togetherness, erasing stigma, and uniting as a positive force in the word. Stay healthy, be well, and I’ll see you all on Thursday.

Posted in Community, Emotions

mindful tips

Posted on by alidware

It’s another day in global crisis, my friends, and this has afforded many of us with much more time on our hands than we’re used to. For some of us with mental health problems, the loss of our routine and the possibility of even more financial hardship means certain destabilization.

While reading the Tao Te Ching today, I came across a beautiful quote I wanted to share with my internet community.

In olden times, the ones who were considered worthy to be called masters were subtle, spiritual, profound, wise. Their thoughts could not be easily understood. Since they were hard to understand, I will try to make them clear. They were cautious like men wading a river in winter. They were reluctant like men who feared their neighbors. They were reserved like guests in the presence of their host. They were elusive like ice at the point of melting. They were like unseasoned wood. They were like a valley between high mountains. They were obscure like troubled waters. . . we can clarify troubled waters by slowly quieting them. We can bring the unconscious to life by slowly moving them. But he who has the secret of the Tao does not desire for more. Being content, he is able to mature without desire to be newly fashioned.”

Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

We are in the middle of raging rapids. Waves crash, destroy, but they also whisper. We are bound by this eternal gravitation between the Earth, the moon, and the rate of our spin. We can hold water behind a dam, we can melt ice and let sea levels rise, we can trap it in a pool, we can let it evaporate, but inevitably it falls back to earth. We can manipulate its form, but never erase it.

Let’s think of distress in a similar fashion.

I don’t know how you’ve been during this pandemic. I don’t know how your anxiety is, your depression, your voices, your self-esteem, your confidence, your happiness, your family, your pets. (I’d love to know though, leave comments below if you’d like to share, or meet me on Instagram). I know that I personally have braved waves of panic attacks, nights of voices telling me I’m dying and that I don’t exist, trying to trick me into separating from the panic of today. I’ve faced a sense of hopelessness, financial burden, and fear for my parents, one of which has several serious physical underlying health conditions. There’s been days I switch between so many states of emotion that I didn’t have the strength to walk four feet to the bathroom.

Whether you’ve experienced similar things or you haven’t, I urge you to practice yielding judgement of this moment, this very second, as you read this. Let’s not avoid the anxiety, the stress, or the pain we may be in. Let’s not fill ourselves with meaningless distraction. Lets not cling too desperately to the sparks of happiness or joy as if we’ll never experience them again, or as if we’re uncertain when we will experience them again. Let’s instead acknowledge the importance of all states, unified, and accept this moment for what it is.

In this moment, I feel the pain of my back injury radiating down my right thigh. I feel my head resting against the soggy cushion of this couch. I feel the stress of bills tightening my shoulders, where I hold a lot of my tension. Anxiety is cold in my feet. There is also contentment and acceptance. With all these things, I let them be. I don’t seek ways to eradicate the physical pain. I don’t fluff the couch cushions, I don’t scramble to straighten out finances. I’m not warming my feet. I’m not questioning my contentment or acceptance.

It’s not irresponsible to breathe in the moment and accept horribleness for its unique horribleness, or euphoria for its lack of insight. This is not a time to tear yourself apart. This is a time to remind your mind and body that they are a stronger force together than separate.

This moment is one among trillions. Celebrate that. There will never be another like it.

Be well, friends. Practice good information hygiene, and take advantage of as many resources as you can. Volunteer what you can, donate what you can. You’re only as healthy as your sickest community member.

For conversation, support, updates on research and posts, follow me:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @philopsychotic

If you enjoyed this post, please share, like, and follow ThePhilosophicalPsychotic. I appreciate every reader and commentator. You give me more reason to continue this joyous hobby.

Posted in advocacy, Late Night Thoughts

Psychoanalysis, The Locked Ward, and Entropy

Posted on by alidware

Some more thoughts to share, friends. Let’s talk psychoanalysis, the locked ward, and entropy.

No, we will not spend countless paragraphs discrediting psychodynamics and psychoanalysis. The facts are there: Freud’s systematic hypotheses were circular, full of confirmation bias, and untestable. This makes his ideas of Psychoanalysis quite useless, inherently flawed, and simply unscientific. However, modern psychodynamics has come a long way, and if you’ve ever read The Center Cannot Hold, by Elyn Saks (if you haven’t, READ IT!) you know that one of therapists which helped her through her cognitive dysfunction pre-hospitalization was indeed a psychoanalyst. Her therapist often took Elyn’s discombobulated words and reflected them, unbiased, nonjudgmental, back to Elyn. This doesn’t happen often anymore, especially not in hospitals, and we lose this understanding that psychosis is not necessarily meaningless. This idea that it may have meaning is derived from psychoanalysis itself, which is rooted in Psychic Determinism: every thought, action, personality quirk, is there for a reason; nothing is ever accidental.

Anyone who says it’s impossible to communicate with someone in psychosis hasn’t really tried. There was a time I did a regular outreach group at the local psychiatric hospital, in which i’d been as a patient before, and there were often people in my group who were by clinical definition incomprehensible. Sometimes people would wander from the group or I’d end early and someone would want to keep talking. To the average person, and I’m sure many of the workers there, the babble was pointless, but there was one particular man who sought me out every time he saw me. And when he said something like “There isn’t anyway to know the ticking and I don’t know where my home is but I know there’s some fact in that”, I’d say something like “it’s hard when we feel lost and can’t find home” or “there’s a lot we can know in the world, and not know”.

This wasn’t easy. I stumbled a lot over my words, trying to keep up with his thoughts, and maybe nothing I said ever resonated as clearly as these words are registering to you as a reader. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had someone approach me in this way during my worst moments. But it did something. Sometimes the group was just us, and we’d talk like that, back and forth, for fifty minutes. He’d always shake my hand before I left, and this was one of the people the staff “warned” me about, said he could get unruly, loud, disruptive, and although I can never confirm the way I spoke with him as a clear reason why he never appeared aggressive with me, I can say that our conversations were always even tempered, relaxed, human.

I do not advocate for this as the ONLY form of treatment. Acute episodes are terrifying, traumatic, confusing, they require many things. But staff shouting, tackling people, and being argumentative doesn’t reduce the terror, the trauma, or the confusion. I CAN say that.

So, there are positive things to come out of the idea and possibly the practice of modern psychoanalysis and psychodynamics. Let’s be clear though: Freud was wildly inept as a scientist. All of his hypotheses were derived from case studies and never tested with experiments or even standardized self-report data.

Scrolling along some text in my personality book, some reading for classes during COVID, this author caught my attention when he compared the natural course of entropy in the universe to the entropy of our thoughts. Essentially, entropy focuses on how ordered systems, over long periods of time and inevitably, tend toward disorder. Freud had a similar sense about the mind, says this author, and insisted that we attempt to order our thoughts and lives for the sake of our own creativity and growth. Entropy dooms these efforts.

Freud describes his philosophical understanding of his own hypotheses in terms of libido (NOT just sex drive, but a life energy) and thanatos, (not Thanos as I had read, but a drive toward “death”). Libido described one part of the brain designating energy for a process, and in that time such energy could not be used anywhere else in the brain. We know this not to the be the entire story now. Thanatos was not a wish for death, or a fear of it, but was this very recognizable, a very EASTERN idea that everything contains its opposite.

This is essentially a less developed, disorganized form of YinYang. It’s presented in the textbook as quite a novel idea. But Eastern cultures and indigenous cultures across the globe, have held this collective understanding for centuries. Reading philosophy on the duality of life is what helped me come to terms with my psychosis. Freud didn’t do it first, I promise. If anything, he was super late to the party.

He called his version of YinYang the “doctrine of opposites”. While I refrained from rolling my eyes at this, his “doctrine” maintains that everything requires and implies its opposite. That is, life needs death, sadness needs happiness, and one cannot exist without the other. If you’re curious how this really lines up with YinYang, I’d recommend getting in touch with someone who knows this philosophy well, or reading the basics in this post here.

Why is any of this relevant?

I think what I learned, and am still learning, is that pain is not as simple as we want it to be. There cannot be pain without no pain, and there cannot be no pain without pain. You can’t fix your thoughts with medication, therapy, electric shocks, substance abuse. You can’t be broken without also being together. Unifying the good and the bad, not separating them, not fighting with one over the other, has been the key to many of our successes.

You cannot be ill without also being well. That is the message here. If you identify with mental illness, then you identify, also, with mental wellness; there is harmony in the illness, and disharmony in the wellness. We see this often: there are advantages to being anxious sometimes. For me, I know my anxiety makes me more prepared during stressful events. Because i’m panicking all the time, I don’t panic when others do. I’m often a voice of reason. There are disadvantages to being happy: for me, I get wary of this gentle contentment I’ve come to over the years, because of the imminent threat of not being happy again.

A lot of people view that latter statement as a struggle particularly of clinical depression or bipolar. I don’t see it that way anymore. I recognize that is the duality of things: there is inherent unhappiness in happiness. That’s the nature of things.

Labeling the thoughts as defective is the result of the depression, and part of the struggle. Accepting the truth in pain and the dissatisfaction in wellness is recovery.

What do you think?

Curious about research, news, and a community dedicated to “Eliminating Barriers to the Treatment of Mental Illness”? Check out TreatmentAdvocacyCenter.org for more information, as well as support for COVID-19. This post isn’t sponsored by them, I just stumbled across their site and found it highly useful.

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Posted in advocacy, Community, psychology

Friends, Let’s read

Posted on by alidware

Hello friends, it has been some time.

Writing has been difficult. I hope everyone is staying healthy, safe, and inside their homes.

For those of us with mental health issues, all the panic, the uncertain information and unpredictable future can exacerbate our mind-states. If you are feeling effects from the global death, the misinformation and poor leadership (in some places), know that you are not alone. Many of us are feeling this. We are experiencing a collective trauma. Think of this as beautiful: we are stuck getting through this together as the economy flip-flops, healthcare becomes a war zone, and our sick family members and friends fight for their lives.

It’s obvious we lack some scientific understanding, as I mentioned in my last post, and that becomes scarily evident with the orange, diseased walrus in office (here in the U.S) barking empty threats to pull U.S funding from the WHO, lying about the amount of PPE and testing kits available, and tossing around ideas of re-opening public spaces against medical advice.

In the mean time, though, I browse mental health support pages on Instagram because they are recommended in my feed or I find them through other mental health connections I have on the app. It still baffles me that those of us who advocate for each other aren’t educated in the science of the brain. It’s great that we are experts in our own experience. It’s great that we leave space for others to be experts in their own, and don’t push drugs or not-drugs as an agenda. But how can we do that if we aren’t pulling from both sides?

Science and personal experience are how we exist in the world: our brains react to biology and environment, and both influence each other. Genes play an almost negligible role when it comes to the deciding factors of someone developing mental health symptoms, and yet we still push this idea that things like schizophrenia are inherited. They are not: schizophrenia in particular has a high level of heritability, meaning it swims around in the general population’s gene pool, and you are more likely to develop symptoms as a result of genetic chance than you are receiving it from your parents.

Now, before you say “well, I know that my mom. . .” or “well, my friend’s dad had schizophrenia and he does too . . .”, remember that your personal experience, or your friends’, are not common enough to generalize. Please stop.

As for environment, genes turn on and off in reaction to what the body experiences in this physical world. Brain structure changes. Trauma reroutes cells, wilts some, builds some in different, non-beneficial places. At the end of this pandemic, we will see noticeable changes in society and in the people living in areas hit the hardest. In the United States, New York healthcare works in particular may not be the same. In Italy, those who have been quarantined with the dead bodies of their relatives will not be the same. Trauma will change how they see the world, politics, life, friendship, and in their healing process they will learn new things, understand new things. Some will be okay. Others will not. And this variety of reaction is a testament to the way environment shapes us.

When we, as advocates, focus on spreading this disingenuous positivity, this overly positive positivity, as I call it, and we forfeit spreading facts, we are only harming our own cause. So, in light of that, I’ve been reading some research. Sleep is one thing I struggle with, and in my three-am database search for an interesting read, I came across this article here.

I had had access to a full text version, but right now can only link the abstract. If you have access to pubmed, or found it somewhere else, let me know.

But this article states they’ve found a consistent decrease in melatonin across those diagnosed with schizophrenia. Their participants had already been diagnosed and were not on antipsychotic medication (YES that is a possibility for some). Antipsychotics did not increase melatonin levels when introduced.

Nine people is a poor amount, and not very indicative of the population of us, but I assume a bulk of participants were just not available: how many do you know diagnosed with schizophrenia have the ability to take on their journey without meds? Not many.

This study however, has implications for how sleeplessness could be treated in patients with schizophrenia. What this also reveals is that the sleep you get from your antipsychotics (and I remember mine fondly, because I got LOTS of sleep, and I hadn’t had much in a very long time) is not restful. It’s more like a heroin knock-out, and less of your body’s choice.

Assessing those who were not on antipsychotics allowed these researchers to see a natural reduction in melatonin, not linked to the psych-drug usage, and although we could never say for certain that schizophrenia is the cause, the implication is there. What could be other reasons for the melatonin decrease? Perhaps large doses of antipsychotics when hospitalized had rerouted these patient’s melatonin years before, although unlikely considering doses of these antipsychotics int he experiment did not decrease levels of melatonin further. Perhaps their bodies adapted over the years as they got less and less restful sleep because of their symptoms. Perhaps their pineal glands had always secreted a low level of melatonin and THAT contributed to the development of their symptoms. We could hypothesize for years. We have been.

If you have something on the spectrum of schizophrenia, how would you rate your sleep? I rate mine poorly, particularly in times of stress. It takes me longer to fall asleep and it’s harder to wake up. I also attribute some of this to screens and my incessant need to play video games.

That study was from 1997: there may be updated research on this, or conflicting research. If you’re feeling lazy during quarantine, sad, anxious, scared, whatever your emotion, maybe some good old boring, informational research on schizophrenia could pull you out of your funk. It’d help your advocacy, too.

Also, welcome to the load of new followers I’ve received over the last few weeks. I promise I am much more consistent with my writing than I have been these last two months. Feel free to browse the blog for great past posts like this one about positive thinking and this one about supporting your loved one.

Be healthy, be safe, be mindful.

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Posted in Peer Support, science, Supporting Friends/Family, Therapy

How To (Gently) Encourage Your Friend to Get On Medication.

Posted on by alidware

Step 1:

Don’t.

It’s that simple.

Why Are We Talking About This?

There are too many questions on social media of people asking Pop-Advocacy sites and people with lived experience how they should convince their friend to get back on medication. Let’s be clear that this is often out of love, concern, pain, and desperation. If you are reading this and have a friend or loved one you believe should be on medication, don’t give up on reading this just yet. This article is not here to bash you, punish you, or guilt you. It’s here for guidance.

We’re talking about this because mental health conditions strike unexpectedly at times, roll in and out of our lives in episodes, and put stress on everyone effected. We’re talking about this because often healthy boundaries get left in the dark when we’re all under so much stress. Those of us struggling can become dependent and feel helpless, while those of us who feel responsible for the well-being of our loved-one feel guilt that we can’t make this pain go away.

We’re talking about this to make it easier on everyone.

Objective Conversation About Medication

One of the reasons pestering your loved one to get on medication is often a losing battle is because there is absolutely zero objective conversation when it comes to medication. Often it is “take this because it’s good for you” instead of “What are the benefits of you taking this? What are the consequences? What can I/we do that can help you with whatever your decision is?”

The “take it because I know what’s good for you” argument is given subtly (or sometimes overtly) in the professional setting. To come home and hear it again, aggressively or compassionately, is all it takes to send someone over the edge, or push them farther away from pharmaceuticals.

There is no consideration of what the person who actually has to take the medication feels. If they feel stable enough off the medication and people constantly tell them they should get back on to avoid the ups and down or voices or anxiety, it creates a lot of self-doubt, a lot of fear, and another sense of helplessness. That can feed depression, it can feed anxiety, it can egg on voices.

If they don’t appear stable, if they lost their job or can’t maintain one, if they are having suicidal thoughts or talking to themselves often, and they still don’t want medication, telling them they should get on some can be seen as forceful and power-hungry. When we’re in the throws of an episode or just having a bad day–those exist for everyone, you know, not necessarily indicative of a mental breakdown–anyone who approaches with concern in the form of demands or a “hero” mentality will seem like an enemy. Rather than feeling the love you have for us, we’ll only feel your disapproval. We’ll feel like something is wrong with us or we’ll feel attacked. That could feed depression, anxiety, and could exacerbate delusions.

Boundaries

This is where having boundaries comes in super handy.

The thing about watching a loved one struggle is that we put a lot of their wellness on our shoulders. The thing about their wellness is that it’s not our responsibility.

That is not meant harshly.

People have choice. They are allowed to struggle. In fact, struggle can result in life transformation. Sometimes if we’re blocked from feeling, if we’re blocked from experiencing what we should, we may not come across that one moment in our lives that tells us: “I need to make some changes“.

You are not that voice for your loved one.

And so a boundary would be limiting your involvement. Resist the urge to help them at any time, particularly if they aren’t doing much to work on themselves.

But, give them space. Make statements like “You’re doing well/unwell today. What’s changed?” and when they answer, listen objectively. Avoid judging statements like “well, if you got back on your medication this wouldn’t be such a big deal” or “look, it’s not my fault you don’t want to do anything to feel better”. Arguing will increase cortisol levels in both of you.

If you feel bullied into helping your loved one, or they often use their condition as a means to exploit your help, stop blaming this behavior on the condition. Most often this is a learned behavior and a result of learned helplessness. Being angry is often a result of feeling like a burden, feeling helpless and out of control, but that doesn’t mean you deserve to be verbally or physically attacked, nor does it mean you need to accept that treatment. Medication will often not stop this behavior.

Louder Now: MEDICATION WILL NOT STOP THIS BEHAVIOR.

And if it does, it’s only because of the sedative seffects.

And so regardless, the behavior is never addressed. Your trauma is never addressed. Your loved one can continue to be angry, feel misunderstood and undervalued, and you will continue to feel like a doormat and blame their “sickness”. It’s quite a cycle, huh?

So what DO you do?

You listen.

Understand that this is not your responsibility, nor is it your struggle.

You’re concerned, you’re worried, fearful, angry, confused. So is your loved one.

Maybe they don’t need a solution right now. Maybe they just want to feel supported and understood and heard. And it’s time to consider if you’re willing to be more of a supportive force and less of a hero.

This isn’t debate class. Having a stellar argument won’t result in discussion, it’ll result in fallout. You want discussion. Go in objectively. Go in with the conception that this is not your mind nor your body, but it is the mind and body of someone you care deeply for. Go in understanding that they have the right to choose and you have the right to your beliefs and discuss both. You may have to agree to disagree and just enjoy each other’s point of view.

If you’re really invested, research all the advantages and disadvantages of medication. Read stories of people who have been helped and hurt by medication, read stories of those who have successfully lived off of medication. Read psychology research papers (not secondary sources). If this part is confusing to you, read this.

Think of a time in your life when you made a decision or something happened which transformed your perception of yourself, the world, and the people around you. Now imagine that never happened.

Controlling someone’s choices can block transformative experiences. Life isn’t debate class.

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Posted in Emotions, Late Night Thoughts, Therapy

February’s Scheduled Mental Breakdown

Posted on by alidware

I like that I’ve already failed in keeping up with my scheduled posts. If I’m actually consistent with a goal I set, someone call 911 because my identity has been stolen.

This will be a short post and not research based. I’ll try and do these once a month. Again, if I *actually* do this once a month, call 911, stolen identity, yada yada.

I preach a lot about the benefits of self-care and ways to manage different experiences/symptoms. A lot of the time the information is helpful and the tips are ones I use myself. And so I wonder, because this happens to me at times: when none of your coping strategies work, what do you do?

I’ll write a more formal post on this idea later, with actual, helpful ideas, but at the moment I have no conception of supportive thought.

I suppose being aware of what your body and mind are feeling and why is important here. My possible reasons for this scheduled mental breakdown include:

  1. Family stress.
  2. Missing deadlines for an online class because of exhaustion from family stress.
  3. Impending death
  4. Health anxiety
  5. Re-activated PTSD symptoms, related to health.
  6. Loud thoughts/quiet voices
  7. Not believing my life is real
  8. Being trapped between school and work and unable to take a break from either.
  9. Believing my therapist, doctors, and friends believe I am a liar about my mental health. *Side note: anyone else ever felt this? That people think you’re just some fake person creating lies for attention? Anyone start thinking about it so much that you think maybe you are a fake and the last 6 years haven’t actually happened, you’re just confused? But then wouldn’t that actually make you crazy? Anyone? This is really fucking with me today.
  10. Physical health frustrations, including forcing my doctor to give me an EKG because I’m terrified of dying suddenly from Cardiac Arrest because of palpitations I’m not even sure are real (I have a history of feeling things in my body that aren’t happening–biofeedback proved it.)
  11. Feeling blank thoughts.
  12. Wanting to withdraw from people but knowing I shouldn’t and also that I can’t, given I must finish these courses and also go to work like a good citizen.
  13. I’ll never get serious mental health assistance because I live at home, in America, can handle working three days a week (barely), am enrolled in college, and have never been outwardly violent, disruptive, combative, or otherwise non-compliant (other than stopping medication). Instead, I spent months in my room, showering only if I went to work (had been on-call); I dropped my classes, spent all of my time playing Minecraft, did rituals to call the god Thoth for help/wisdom, listened to voices and loud thoughts, slept, had nightmares, didn’t sleep, and held maybe one or two short conversations with my parents who figured I was just “going through a phase”–but because none of this caused me to talk to myself or be disconnected in the way you’re expected to be, I don’t get taken seriously.
  14. Anxiety. Just. Anxiety.
  15. Drinking on the weekends.
  16. Not exercising like I was.
  17. Falling short on responsibilities.
  18. Forget *actually* being sandwiched between school and work. Just the feeling of being trapped.
  19. Falling short on personal expectations.
  20. The potential of wasting my potential.
  21. Financial issues

I think that’s a pretty solid list. The healthy thing would be to work through each issue one by one and identify things which can be easily changed and things which may just need to be felt and moved through. Accept that it could take weeks and that this is a rough patch.

But today I just feel like laying on the couch and being unhealthy. So maybe that’s what I will do. My cat seems to feel it; she’s never this cuddly.

Until next time.

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Posted in Community, science, Therapy

A Broken System: What We Can Do.

Posted on by alidware

I cited an alarming statistic in my post Is Psychology A Science Part 1 (which you can read at the given link) that one of my research professors cited: there are about 40,000 psychological research papers published each year, and, on average, clinical psychologists read about 1 a month. That’s .03% of all research papers. I unfortunately don’t have a statistic for psychiatrists. I’ll work on getting one.

If our doctors are not keeping up with current successful treatments, it means they are also not keeping up with current unsuccessful treatments, which get weeded out in research as well. Remember, the whole point of science is to prove ourselves wrong so we may find what is right. But if we go around thinking we know what’s right (i.e, relying solely on intuition and clinical arrogance), we’ll never investigate what’s wrong. And that’s so backward.

And so the question becomes what can we do to make up for this deficit?

Possible Options:

Educate Ourselves:

This requires us to think differently. Many of us are deep in our pain, and that’s okay. It’s okay to hurt, it’s okay to lack the ability (right now) to do everything you need for yourself. Your goal, at this very moment, is to be kind and compassion to your needs.

Part of being compassionate to your needs is caring for your health. And in order to do that, we often rely on the knowledge of our doctors. This can be more unhealthy behavior however, because it’s giving up our sense of independence and ability to navigate our mind by ourselves.

Some of us don’t have any other option at the moment and I recognize this. When I got released from the hospital, I needed my doctors to listen and manage my medication. They at least managed my medication. This was productive for a crisis. But not sustainable as long-term treatment. It’s not studied for long-term treatment.

Educating ourselves and participating in our treatment can enhance our wellness. If you have access to a college student, or are a college student, primary sources are the best form of knowledge. If this is unfamiliar territory to you, take a quick glance at one of my other posts How To Read A Psychological Research Paper.

If you are not a student and don’t know a student or professional with access to journals, contact me if you want articles on a specific topic. I can provide some.

Secondary sources like textbooks and articles online (including mine) can be okay as long as you take careful note of their references and click on the primary sources they’ve cited. If they haven’t cited primary sources or don’t include references, there’s a good chance the information isn’t reliable.

Any researched information you can present to your doctors and psychologists as ways to participate in your treatment.

Social Media:

This is a strange option because there’s a lot of unreal, invalid information on Social Media. But there’s quite a large mental health community on social media, particularly Twitter and Instagram. Facebook, I’m sure, has one as well. There are researchers who post relevant articles and information which you can investigate.

I don’t suggest spending a lot of time on social media if you are prone to depression. There has been lively debate on whether people spend more time online because they are depressed or if being online too much makes people depressed. Studies are showing more and more that feelings of isolation are increased by online use, not the other way around. Here’s one study. I’m sure there are many more.

If you can balance your health and internet usage, I’d suggest finding people online who model wellness. Not only can you find people who have experienced what you experience, but you can find people who have tried different avenues of treatment and have other perspectives. One of the worst things we can do for ourselves is allow our mindset to be fixed on one perspective.

On social media, there are advocacy groups and pages. You can find programs near you, conventions near you (if that’s something you’re into you), and you can get involved. Giving back can restore a sense of purpose for us, and that is a step in renewing self-esteem.

Think Outside of The Box:

Investigate different perspectives. Build the courage to try new things, not only in treatment but in your everyday experience. For example, my hair was always long, curly, frizzy, and a nice shield between me and the world. I hid behind it in grade school, along with bundling in thick sweaters and baggy jeans, even in the summer. I needed to protect myself because I felt unsafe everywhere and around everyone. When I started shedding sweaters for T-Shirts, I gained a sliver of confidence from it; I was more open and people could sense that. Because people sensed that, they were more likely to smile and/or talk to me.

This month, I chopped off all my hair. The sides are shaved, and the top is a cute, curl-hawk. For me, it symbolized my need to stop hiding. I have to put myself out there, experience new things, make rash decisions, make planned decisions, and enjoy my life. It took 8 solid years of mental health work, psychosis, depression, and deep pain to reach a point in life where I had enough confidence to do this.

And so I encourage all of us to remember if something isn’t working, don’t keep doing. If you are someone who wants to stay on medication and your current medication isn’t working, the next logical step is to try a new one, correct? Treat other therapeutic options the same way. If one type of therapy or therapist or psychiatrist isn’t working, try a different one. If no medication has ever worked, try another option. If you’re tired of living one way, live another.

There is nothing that says we must stay stagnant. There is nothing that says we must endure the same pain over and over again. The only people placing limitations on us is us.

These are only a few things we can do as consumers to promote our own wellness while navigating a system filled with cracks. Feel free to post your own ideas in the comments bellow, or contact me on social media/email. People seem to like DMs on Instagram the best.

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If you enjoyed this post, please share, like, and follow ThePhilosophicalPsychotic. I appreciate every reader and commentator. You give me more reason to continue this joyous hobby.