Tag Archives: anxiety

Strong Emotions and Mental Illness

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I have always been one that’s had problems with hiding my emotions and feelings.  Even before I had mental illness problems I’ve always felt deeply, loved deeply, had strong opinions about things I cared about, etc.  This has often gotten me in trouble at school, in social situations, at jobs, and especially among family and friends.  I have no idea how many friends I have lost, how many jobs I’ve been fired from, how many teachers and potential allies I’ve alienated, and how many arguments I had with family members over the years.  This was all because I felt deeply, wasn’t afraid to go against popular opinions when I felt they made no sense, and was often too stubborn to back down from someone I felt was in the wrong.  Sadly, as a result of these strong feelings, I never really developed strong social skills, learned how the games of socializing and workplace politics were played, or learned until I was well into my early 30s that people would rather a person be polite and wrong than be less than tactful and in the right.  It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I learned that when dealing with groups of neurotypical individuals, it was better to have a good image and weak emotions than it was to have strong character, strong emotions, but a less than good image.  The smartest and most right man in the room is  ignored in favor of the one who acts and looks the best without upsetting people.  It is simply the way most humans are.

As a result of developing a mental illness, my emotions, feelings, and opinions are actually stronger than they were in my youth.  I have learned, despite these stronger emotions, to keep my mouth shut the vast majority of time when in groups larger than two or three people.  This is especially true when dealing with people I don’t know well.  I never could figure out why, but most neurotypical people greatly fear strong shows of emotions.  So I often find myself bottling up my emotions (whether its anger, anxiety, sadness, depression, or even happiness) for fear of upsetting others.  Some would argue that I am a stoic, unfeeling person just by watching my interactions with others.  This is far from the truth.  I feel very deeply, so deeply I try to not show emotion at all when around those I don’t know.  I imagine much of this comes from being raised in a family and rural farming community were strong displays of any emotions were strongly discouraged.

It is very tough for me to bottle up my emotions, especially with a mental illness.  It wasn’t until a few years ago I realized just how threatened and fearful of strong emotions most people (at least here in USA) really were.  I never considered myself a threat or intimidating to anyone.  I was actually a long running joke growing up because I couldn’t physically defend myself from bullies (I never won a fight in my life despite being the biggest kid in my school) or knew when to shut up on issues when I knew I was right and everyone else was wrong.  In my social interactions I am always picking my words and phrases very carefully so not to upset others.  This leads to even more social and work problems because most people assume I’m either not genuine or am a complete liar.  I’m not being a fraud, I’m just trying not to show emotion one way or another.  I often feel like it would be better to be an emotionless robot as opposed to having as strong of emotions I do.

I would love to hear from others who have problems with strong emotions, socializing, and mental illness.  Opinions and stories from readers are always welcomed.

Why I Blog The Way I Do and Reflections on Blogging, Part One

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I recently published my 50th blog entry on this site, alifeofmentalillness.wordpress.com.  It has been a series of interesting, and eye-opening experiences over the last eighteen months.  When I started this, I had no clue it would turn into anything semi-regular.  I guess I didn’t know I’d still be posting after one and a half years.  With that said, the fifty entries I have posted seem to have had a decent reception from the readers.  I hope that the next eighteen months will allow for more posts and more insights into the lives of mentally ill people trying to make a life in ‘a chronically sane world.’

I suppose now would be as good a time as any as to why I post the blog entries I do and use the style of writing I do.  I suppose just as important is why I don’t post the things I don’t. I’ll attempt to go into some details on both.

Why do I blog the way I do?  Many of my blog entries are essentially telling about the aspects, hangups, draw backs, victories, defeats, joys, and pains that I have personally experienced in my life as a mentally ill individual.  This blog doesn’t go too deep into the psychiatric and physiological research and terms simply because I didn’t study psychiatric medicine or physiology in college.  I had a hard enough time with organic chemistry and calculus while I was working through this illness when I was a pre-med major in my second year of college that I dropped calculus and failed organic chemistry.

This alone, at least in an academic sense, would lead some to imply I have no real background in psychiatric medicine or the physiology of the human brain or know about the effects and side effects of psychiatric medications.  For one, I have been an out patient of psychiatric medicine for over fourteen years.  Though I have never been a doctor giving the treatment to psych patients, do not believe for one minute that I don’t know more about psychiatric treatments than those who, in their misguidance, believe that mental illness is not real and thus the pain and anguish associated with the afflicted is not real.  I wish to God I was making up everything I perceived during the course of my mental illness.  To think that those of us with these problems are acting out because we want attention and sympathy is not only sadly naive, it is completely cruel and absolutely inhumane.  If I wanted attention, there are far easier and more effective ways to receive it than fake a malady that most neurotypicals can’t even relate to.

I suppose some would argue because I don’t present scientific facts, figures or use many complex sounding terms that most people can’t relate to, I am making invalid statements about mental illness and my experiences.  To suggest that because someone doesn’t present statistics, that person is not accurate is not in itself true.  First, if numbers are what a person wants, there are plenty of internet sites that provide the cold, hard, faceless facts. This site doesn’t provide just faceless and coldly sterile facts and information.  Anyone with access to any internet search engine can find far more facts, figures, statistics, and descriptions about mental health issues than they could easily sift through.  I am not a scientist by nature or training.  Science wasn’t even my favorite subject in school.  I am not condemning science at all by not providing ‘just the facts.’

If anything, this blog attempts to put at least faces, names, places, and circumstances on the facts and figures that scientists have already discovered.  I suppose I am one who adds the personal element to the mental illness discussion.  Once a face and name is placed on the particular ailments and numbers of an illness, that is when things really start resonating with people.  We hear every day in the news about natural disasters hitting far away places or people losing their jobs when factories close.  Those stories tell the facts, yes, but they often fail at rousing the compassion and actions of others because rarely are names of the afflicted or their life stories shared.  Sadly, we tend to become numb to hearing about these disasters and tragedies of the human existence and come to believe that the hardships and sufferings of other humans do not matter.

Yes, it is true, I as an individual may not have power to do much about floods in Bangladesh, typhoons in Japan, chronic poverty in Haiti, war in Syria and Ukraine, ebola in Liberia, the effects of human made climate change, or the closing of factories and chronic droughts in my own nation.  But I can at very least care about others enough in my small hometown to aide those I come across on a daily basis.  And I certainly can write about the hardships of having a mental illness in such a manner to offer compassion and support to those with mental illness, their loved ones, as well as articulate what is like to have a mental illness to others for those who are unable to articulate for themselves.

Being a voice for mental ill individuals who are unable to articulate for themselves, even if I am unable to speak exactly for every one of us, is the primary purpose of this blog.  I do this to offer support, compassion, and explain to others that the anguishes and pains are extremely real.  I don’t use this blog to be spiteful to others who don’t agree with my ideas. I don’t use this blog to badger and bully others into my line of thinking.  I have no moral grounds to force anyone to believe and think as I do.  All I can do is tell my story, tell the stories of others, and offer aide and support to the hurting and overwhelmed.  Hopefully through the telling of these stories and offering support to other mentally ill persons and their loved ones, compassion for the mentally ill can be achieved.  Even if it is convincing people one at a time.

This ends Part One of this posting.

Seasonal Aspects of Mental Illness

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It’s been awhile since I last posted anything of my own doing on this blog.  For that I apologize.  Sadly, it has been a rougher last few weeks than normal.  Yet this was expected as late summer, especially the month of August and early September, have traditionally been the toughest times of year for flare ups of my mental illness.  There is in my case seasonal aspects to my mental illness problems.  Both times I committed myself to a mental health facility have been early in September after weeks of buildups of problems that usually began about late July.  After having these mental illness problems and seasonal flareups for going on seventeen years now, I have come to see that there are times of the year when my illness is often far worse than normal.

Even though I know and acknowledge that there is a seasonal aspect of my mental illness, I still haven’t pinned down an exact why it is in late summer.  Often, people with seasonal aspects of mental health problems tend to have their problems in the winter or during times of the year when they experienced at least personal tragedy.  I doubt in my case that my seasonal aspects are due to personal tragedy as people who have died that were personally close to me have almost without exception died in the winter months.  It could be that my seasonal problems have to do with weather as late summers in my home state of Nebraska are typically very hot, occasionally humid, and often suddenly changing.  I personally always enjoyed cooler weather as my favorite times of year are autumn and spring.  I don’t really mind winters that much except that I personally don’t like driving on snow packed and ice covered roads that are the norm in my part of the USA.  Regardless of my appreciation for the change of seasons, don’t sign me up for summers in Texas or winters in Minnesota.  I have college friends from both places and I’ve heard their ‘horror’ stories about the weather.

I no doubt have times of the year when my mental illness is worse than others.  Unlike many people, my problems are often in the summers instead of the winters.  I still haven’t figured out the why as to this.  I simply know after having these problems for at least seventeen years that there are trouble times in the course of the year.  I’ve come to understand this and plan accordingly.

 

Loneliness and Delusions

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It’s been awhile since I last posted.  I’ve been going through some rough spots lately.  I’m only now pulling out of the spell of depression I’ve lately had.  When I have issues with being depressed, I often isolate myself a lot.  I won’t be very talkative to even my close friends and family.  I even somethings go for entire days without leaving my apartment.  I was doing this quite a bit this winter as I just didn’t want to deal with the depression and anxiety that often arrive with no rhyme or reason with schizophrenia.  I often would go entire days at a time where even going to the grocery store or pharmacy would seem like an ordeal.  Naturally this would lead to a lot of loneliness for me.  And I would get paranoid and begin wondering why no one would contact me or want to do anything with me.  I wasn’t contacting my friends, I wasn’t leaving my apartment, and my social activities were next to nonexistent.  This would generate depression because I was lonely.  The depression would lead to anxiety were I literally could not force myself to leave my apartment even when I wanted to.  From anxiety I would go into paranoid because my friends wouldn’t contact me because I wasn’t keeping up my end of the friendship and staying current with friends and family.  This cycle would perpetuate itself, sometimes for days or weeks on end.

One example of my anxiety was that I was getting paranoid that people (I couldn’t figure out who in my delusional state of mind) were going through my garbage.  So I would let it pile up in my apartment, sometimes for ten days to two weeks at a time before I’d finally work through my anxiety and force myself to throw it all out at once.  I was also afraid that I would receive a few odd looks from people seeing me taking three to four bags of trash out all at once, often late at night just so I could avoid contact with people.  Now that I’m passed that phase, I see how delusional that line of thinking was.  I mean, if someone is going to go through the dumpster at a large complex the night time would be perfect for someone dumpster diving.  At least it wasn’t as bad as when I was in college and taking my trash to the Wal-Mart half way across town because I thought that ‘people where going through my trash.’

The delusions that come along with schizophrenia no doubt seem very odd to the ‘chronically normal’ individuals that read this blog and/or have loved ones with schizophrenia.  But to those afflicted, it seems very real and very possible.  I sometimes even recently had delusional thoughts that I’m being watched and followed by people I don’t know (and don’t want to know).  It doesn’t make it any better when I’m driving my car and someone will be taking the same streets I do and are following real close.  This has been going on for as long as I’ve had problems with mental illness.  At least it’s not as bad as it once was because I’ve learned how to reason such things out most of the time.  It’s too bad I couldn’t reason out the stress and anxiety I have felt about working again.  I would love to return to work even at something as small as ten hours per week.  Anxiety and delusional thoughts playing over and over in my mind do make that prospect quite daunting.

Loneliness and delusions that go with mental illness are real serious problems for people with mental illness.  I can tell you for a fact I didn’t choose these delusions.  It would be great to be able to completely reason the delusions away.  But I’m still working on that.

Things You Can Do On Your Own For Your Mental Health

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This post is going to be about things you can do on your own to help alleviate stress, depression, and anxiety that goes along with mental health problems. There are times that, in spite of all the counseling, therapy,and medications involved, we still have problems. This is when we with mental health issues have to resort to our own resourcefulness. This post is going to be what you can do when you are primarily alone or in a private setting. The issue of avoiding problems in public will be the subject of another post later on.

For myself, there are at least three activities that I have found that help ward off stress, anxiety, and depression. One of these is writing out my frustrations. I have entire notebooks full of the writings I have done in efforts to alleviate stress, anxiety, and depression. I write in these even when I’m feeling well as a sort of preventative maintenance. I look back over these on occasion just to see if I notice patterns developing, especially over a period of weeks and months. From these writings alone I’ve noticed that my individual illness has a seasonal pattern to it, were I tend to do worse in late summer and around Christmas/end of year holidays than I normally do. My times I do best are in spring, early summer, most of autumn, and surprisingly late winter. I probably wouldn’t have figured out these patterns as soon as I did without my writing about what I was going through. An important factor in my journaling is that I do not censor what I write. I am honest with myself, even sometimes brutally. Of course I’m the only one who sees these writings. I also usually shred my writings after about two to three years as kind of a way to let the past go.

The second activity I do to alleviate stress is listen to music. I absolutely love almost all genres of music and the type I listen to varies even within a given day. Even though I have no musical talent myself, I appreciate those who can play instruments or sing and are not afraid to. To the end of listening to music I have an iPod, a subscription to Pandora internet radio service, and even look up music and music videos on youtube. A good session of listening to music can relax me even when I feel like telling someone off.

Finally, the third activity I do that helps to relax me is just silent time/meditation/prayer. While I’m not going to delve into any religious theology discussions as there are plenty of other blogs that do that, I do know that meditation, prayer, and just taking a few steps back have all worked well for me. As far as these go, I found they become even more effective once I stopped worrying if I was doing these ‘right.’ Even though I grew up in a devout Christian family, we were never required to memorize prayers when I was growing up. We just spoke what was on our hearts and minds at the time. In short, the only advice I give on this type of relaxation is don’t worry about doing it a right or wrong way.

There are plenty of things/activities you can do on your own to help alleviate your mental illness issues. While I have yet to find an activity that will cure all my problems at all times, I have at least found a few that work well for me. I’m interested in hearing from others as to what helps them to relax, calm down, etc.

Being Hospitalized For Mental Illness

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This entry is going to be about the two times I was hospitalized for my schizophrenia.  Even though I was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2000, I was never hospitalized for it until the fall of 2006.  I was not an Emergency Protective Custody (EPC) case as I self committed voluntarily.  I came to the conclusion I needed help because of severe anxiety and flare ups of my paranoia.  These were caused by job place problems and several stressful occurrences that happened throughout the year 2006.  To start the year 2006, I lost my job at the university and had to leave the MBA program.  I had also applied for Social Security Disability Insurance shortly afterward.  At the time it was a major blow to my ego and self confidence as I thought it was admitting defeat in my pursuit to be self-supportive.  I also had a few failed attempts to hold down employment through the spring and summer of 2006, adding to my already considerable anxiety.  Finally after several months of the anxiety, paranoia, and anger building for several months, I came to where I hadn’t slept in probably two and a half days.  By then I knew I had to do something to stop the deterioration I was going through.  That’s when I checked myself into the local mental health hospital.

With the fact I didn’t wait for the police to take me to the hospital, my stay as an inpatient lasted only one week.  Even though I wasn’t uncooperative and belligerent with the hospital staff and doctors, for the first three days I was confused and couldn’t focus at all.  I was also sleeping probably fourteen hours per day for those first three days as I was trying to regain my bearings.  One thing that I am absolutely convinced helped my recovery and allowed for my relatively short stay at the hospital was that I cooperated with the doctors and nurses even when I secretly didn’t want to.  Despite going through a breakdown, I knew I needed their help if I was going to recover and go home.  I think that I found favor with the doctors, nurses, and counselors because I was willing to cooperate, even if it was begrudgingly.  

Finally after a week in the hospital I was well enough to go home.  Even though I could have left probably any time I wanted as I was a voluntary commitment, I was sick and I knew I was not doing well at all.  After I left in early September 2006, it would be another seven years before I would go back to the hospital.

In September 2013, I went back to the hospital.  Once again I was a volunteer commitment.  I could tell that things were getting bad again like they were in 2006.  Because I took preventative measures to make sure things didn’t escalate completely out of control, I was in the hospital for only three and a half days this time.  This time I was still cooperative with the doctors, nurses, and counselors.  By this time I had been dealing with schizophrenia long enough that prolonged stress and anxiety over the course of weeks and months would ultimately lead to problems.  I also have a seasonal element to my schizophrenia as I tend to do better in winters and springs than I do in summers.  For some reason summers have always been a rough time for me.  Both of my hospitalizations took place in the month of September.

If I were to offer any advice to someone going to the hospital for the first time, it would simply be do what the doctors recommend, be as nice as you can with the nurses, be active in counseling, and at least attempt to get along with the other patients.  Believe me, your stay in the hospital will be much less troublesome.

 

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Stressing on Stress

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One of the problems that comes up for those of us with mental illness, myself included, is the issue of dealing with everyday stress and anxiety.  Stress about issues like work, money, taking care of family, community activities, running errands, routine housework and maintenance, etc. can be enough to tax even the most ‘normal’ of people at times.  Yet for those of us with mental illness, every day stress can be overwhelming at times, even crippling occasionally.

I have had to made adaptations to my life in order to reduce the amounts of stress in my life.  Over the years I have found the stress situations such as fast paced working environments, social environments where I’m expected to interact with many people I may not know well, and driving in fast paced heavy traffic areas have all been triggers for not only high levels of stress and anxiety, but also have triggered symptoms of my particular mental illness.  In my case, such instances have triggered paranoid thoughts, high levels of agitation and aggression, and even auditory hallucinations.  As a result, I have to be really careful about the jobs I apply for, the social activities I attend, and make it a point to find someone else to drive when I have to go to a major city and just offer to navigate.  I would not be any fun at all at a cocktail party with a hundred strangers I didn’t know.  Even though I scored really high on intelligence tests as both a kid and an adult, I probably couldn’t handle most office jobs simply due to the stress involved.

Stress is tough for even the most grounded people.  But it can be life altering and crippling for the mentally ill.  It can drag down even the most stabilized mental health consumers if left unchecked.  Sometimes even the stepping back and taking deep breaths isn’t going to be enough.  Sometimes a person just has to avoid certain circumstances altogether or even just know when to walk away.

Schizophrenia and What it Means

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In previous posts I have written about my life experiences as a mentally ill individual.  In this post I’m attempting to describe the symptoms of my particular illness, rather than just the results of the symptoms.  I have done this in a poetic form.  So here goes.

 

Schizophrenia and What it Means

 

Schizophrenia means a broken mind,

A mind broke off from the real world.

Unable to separate the delusional

from the factual truth.

It also means crippling depression,

Constant sadness,

And mourning for dead potential;

The loss of a life that never was.

Schizophrenia shattered mind unable to process

most kinds of stress or anxiety

without ghostly hallucinations chanting their condemnations,

Causing wave upon wave of unrelenting anxiety

to slam upon an already tormented, battle weary soul.

How do I explain to old friends,

family, and strangers I meet

I am not well, have trouble holding a job,

When on the surface I look normal and well?

Lurking in the depths of my mind

The monster schizophrenia causes havoc,

launching an all out assault on my mental senses.

My abilities to socialize, to handle stress, to live normal,

are crippled.

I’m not lazy, I’m not a freeloader.

I’d do anything to be rid of this silent monster.

What Mental Illness Means For Me

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I have occasionally been asked to describe what exactly what having a mental illness is like.  Now I don’t get as annoyed with such questions as I used to.  I mean, it is an honest question by people who, for the most part care.  Yet, I am still at a loss to describe my mental illness in a ten to fifteen second sound bite.  I haven’t always been mentally ill, so I can still remember from my childhood and teenage years what it was like not to have to deal with the crippling depression,chronic anxiety, delusions that seem so real (even when I try to convince myself they aren’t), hallucinations that, left unchecked, can be overwhelming by themselves, among other maladies that are associated with paranoid schizoprenia.

The crippling depression can, at times, leave me such that I literally don’t have the motivation to do much of anything.  During the times of depression, I will often alternate between times of intense sadness and intense anger.  I will usually try to isolate myself from physical contact with others during these times.  It’s nothing personal, I just don’t want to have the risk of a confrontation with anyone at these times.  I still can communicate with friends, family, counselors, support people, etc. by means of phone, e-mail, etc. but I don’t risk much personal contact with anyone during these times.  I certainly won’t be driving on the road during such episodes.  Far too risky.

Anxiety is another issue.  In my case, anxiety makes it impossible to hold most kinds of work.  I have tried and failed at several types of jobs, ranging from salesman to factory worker to maintenance man to graduate assistant.  I’ve really lost count of how many jobs I’ve held over the years.  I really have a hard time handling fast paced work where the public is involved.  So that alone eliminates many jobs.  The only job I held for longer than one year was a janitorial job where I primarily worked alone, could set my own priorities within limits, and I wasn’t bothered as long as the job was done well and on time.  Another issue about anxiety and mental illness is old fashioned office politics.  I never could figure those out.  Because of my anxiety, along with my paranoia, I often thought my coworkers and bosses were out to nail me.  Throw in depression about the whole deal and it meant for unpleasent work experiences all around.

The depression and anxiety doesn’t just effect my working life.  It also effects whatever social life I have.  My social life anymore consists of a few really close friends, some casual acquaintances, and my family.  I don’t have any friends from my previous jobs as I’ve lost contact with all of them (or wasn’t at the job long enough to make friends).  I haven’t dated in seven years.  The idea of going out on even a casual date scares me bad.  I just don’t know how to bring up the whole ‘I have a mental illness’ without scaring off a potential date.  There are times that complete solitude is overrated.

I have covered only part of what mental illness means to me.  I’ll have to cover the rest in a future post.