Mental Health Pet Peeves

In the mental health community, we face a lot of stigma. Some of it is overt. People calling us crazy or mental or insane. People saying we're dangerous, violent. These people, while they frustrate the hell out of me, are sometimes easier for me to deal with. I pull out statistics about how those with mental health conditions are ten times more likely to be victims of a violent crime than perpetrators. I tell people how I run a business and work a part time job, have recently written a novel in my "spare time", and have served on numerous boards of directors, to name a few accomplishments. This tends to make people realize perhaps I'm not as "crazy" as they would like to think. Or they do, and I tell them where to shove and move along because they've decided to be closed minded and nothing I can say will change that, so they aren't worth my time. But the people that don't get what they're doing are the ones who really get to me. Because that is how stigma and ignorance disguises itself in a pretty little helpful bow, and continues to be perpetuated. Here are a few of my top mental health pet peeves.

•  "Just pray about it." Ok, first off, I've been black listed by the Catholic church for living in sin for the last umteen years (divorced, not annulled,etc etc) and quite frankly it pisses me off that I'm counted as much of a sinner as a murderer or a rapist simply because I left an unhealthy relationship. But all of this is besides the point BECAUSE MY ILLNESS IS NOT A SIN OR A PENANCE! I jokingly call it the gremlin in my head, but that's a joke. Because it's so ridiculous that a separate being would be actually possessing my brain that I can joke about it. Praying, if I were religious, might calm me. It might give me some sort of comfort. If I were religious. Which I am not. Now, to be clear, if you are religious and want to pray that I'm feeling better, by all means, go ahead. It's how you feel you can help, and I truly appreciate that you want to help in some way. I'm not telling you not to pray or believe, and I appreciate you doing what you can to help. Who knows, maybe it'll work and I'll become a believer again.  But please, don't tell me the only thing that I can do to help is pray. I respect that it's your thing, but it's not my thing. And I'm not looking for a miracle. 

• You're a pawn of the pharmaceutical/doctor industry. They're making you sicker so you buy the drugs and they get rich.  Ok first of all, did you witness the first 30 years of my life? Did you watch me at 2 years old in hypomanic episodes begging my parents "make it stop, make it stop." But I'm just fine off my meds?  How exactly do you, who is not in my head or my body, know that?  Let me set you straight: my meds, and the meds of so many others, are life-saving. When you have a potentially fatal cancer and choose not to take medication, please, come to me and show me how you've magically healed on your own. Then we can talk. 

• Oh I don't need medication, I've cured myself with these herbal supplements and exercise. Well hoody hoo for you. You are not me. You're not inside my brain. I have a bachelors in kineseology, worked in corporate fitness for five years, and am a certified personal trainer and fitness instructor. If exercise could cure me, I think I'd be fine and dandy by now. I'm honestly glad that works for you. You're lucky. Me, not so much. It does help me at times, but it doesn't cure me. Nothing does. I have a chronic illness that currently has no cure. 

• Just relax/chill out/calm down (during anxiety/hypomania). *%&$&*$%&#$%*$% You. If I could, I would. And here's a tip: never, in the history of telling people to calm down, has telling someone to calm down actually made them do so. In fact, it does the reverse. 

• Just focus on the positive more. Be more grateful.  I'm not ungrateful. I know I have "no reason" (as you put it) to feel so awful, worthless, terrible, hopeless. I know there are starving children in Africa and that so many people are more sick, or have it worse. But I do, actually, have a reason. It's called a medical illness that screws with my brain. And now, thanks to you, I simply feel guilty about having this illness, and more like a giant piece of shit than I already felt. 

• Why are you depressed? You have a good life. If I asked you why you couldn't just stop having cancer because you have a good life and *should* be healthy, I'd look like the biggest asshat on the planet. When you ask this, so do you. 

• I  avoid people who are emotional/dramatic. Every time I see this in anyone's status/profile/etc I run like the wind. Because this makes me feel like I can't be myself if I'm having an overly emotional day, and like it's my fault if I am. Like it's not an illness that makes me this emotional but a choice. It makes me feel like a burden. And I don't want to be a burden to anyone. I'd rather be alone. 

• Happiness is a choice. Ah, well, no shit?! If only I'd known! All this time, I've been suffering from a lifelong illness when I could have just decided not to be depressed! I hope you can sense the sarcasm. If happiness was a choice, approximately 16 million Americans would not be living with Major Depressive Disorder (source here). Trust me, we don't want to be depressed, and we certainly never chose this on purpose. 

• You can't control what happens to you but you can control your reactions to it. Clarification: in a perfect world, I agree. But in a perfect world, 16 million Americans would battle major depression either. By nature of my disorder, my brain makes it increasingly difficult to control my reactions, and sometimes nearly impossible. If it helps make this a bit more clear, my meds are actually used primarily for seizures. Basically, I'm having a seizure- like reaction in my brain that manifests itself emotionally/mentally instead of physically. And if you've ever witnessed someone having a seizure, you understand the lack of control. If I could not have an anxiety attack or panic attack in public, I would.  Because nobody likes being stared at and steered clear of in public. Nobody likes collapsing in a pile of tears in the middle of a crowd. And if I could not sink into a depression, I would. Trust me, even through a depression, I'm trying to keep to react as best as possible. I'm trying not to let it drag me under into an abyss of nothingness. I don't always win. Please believe me, if I can't control it, I really can't.

Fellow mental health battlers, have more? I'm sure there are plenty. I try to laugh at them, to brush these things off. It helps keep me from isolating myself, feeling like nobody understands me. So I joke and use colorful language to make them lighter. But honestly, these things aren't funny. They're annoying at best, and ignorant and stigmatizing at worst. 

Why Do I Blog About My Illness?

Happy November! November, for those who don't know, is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which every year I say I'm going to participate in and every year I sadly do not. But lucky for me, there's another writing challenge this month that I'm much more likely to stick to, at least on a somewhat regular basis, and that is the Health Activists Writers Month Challenge (HAWMC), hosted by WEGO Health.  I'll be blogging daily based on daily prompts, so posts will probably be nice and random - just like I like them.

Day 1:  Why do you blog? 

For nearly the first almost three decades of my life, I thought that I was allergic to red food dye. That was my diagnosis, at the age of two, when I started having "episodes".  The doctor told my parents that the red food dye in the cereal I'd eaten (I want to say Captain Crunch but I may be wrong here) made me "hyper", and I was to avoid red food dye. I spent the next 28 years doing just that - admittedly, not a tough feat, unless you count the cherries in Old Fashioneds and Manhattans. But though the "episodes" calmed down for a long stretch of time, in part due to intense gymnastics training that helped with a lot of the extra "energy", in part writing them off as just being an aspect of my general personality, they didn't stop. They started back noticeably when I was in my early twenties and got increasingly worse, to the point that I'd have someone (my then-husband) hold my arms and legs so I could punch and kick the air to release all of the pent up "energy", for lack of a better word. In between these episodes, went through periods of feeling lost to myself, which grew in frequency. Finally, weeks before my thirtieth birthday, I was admitted to the ER with what I thought were horrendous panic attacks that wouldn't go away. Long story short, I was hospitalized, and upon going back to my therapist afterwards, was diagnosed with rapid cycling cyclothymia, a rare mood cycling disorder.  It was this that had actually sent me to the ER.

I had never heard of cyclothymia, and as it turns out, neither have a lot of people - even medical professionals. It's that rare - something like 0.04% of the population is diagnosed. I noticed that there was very little information accessible to the general public about my condition, yet there seems to be a massive amount of stigma. I realized that people don't have to know anything about your condition in order to begin stigmatizing, especially when it comes to mental health. To so many people, it's all the same. In fact, it's the lack of information, and the education, that feeds so much stigma. And so I set out to do my part in righting that. To tell my story, so that others have first hand accounts of what my illness is like, and to offer support to those who also battle, or feel that they may.

What do I want people to know about my condition?

• It is not bipolar disorder. Often I have to choose that from the little drop-down box of illnesses on online forms with health history, but it is a distinct condition of its own, that shares many similarities with Bipolar Disorder. 

• I cycle between hypomania and depressive episodes, sometimes as often as several times a day. While many people battle more depression, I battle more hypomania - which is not as fun as it sounds. Hypomania, I often tell people, feels like drinking an entire pot of coffee at once on an empty stomach and then trying to go about your average daily routine. You feel jittery, irritated, unable to focus or concentrate. It's in fact very frustrating. 

• I'm not always cycling. Sometimes I'm neither hypomanic or depressed - many times, in fact. Nor do I cycle mid-sentence, like the media would have you believe. I slowly begin to feel the warning signs, which generally only I can feel, and it begins to gradually transition. Again, using the coffee example, the first cup is probably ok, the second cup may make you a bit extra energized, by the time you've finished the pot, the effects are full-fledged. 

• I battle anxiety because of my condition. I've developed social anxiety, phone anxiety. This is not uncommon. 

• I can do "normal" things and have a "normal" life. I run my own business, work part time at a conference center, own a home and a dog, am in a committed relationship, and have been on several volunteer board of directors. I've also traveled to six continents and over 40 countries. 

• Not everything I do or say or react to is because of my condition. Sometimes, I'm happy or sad or emotional or annoyed or angry at something just as anyone else would be. 

• My condition does not make me weak. Just because I'm depressed or crying or feeling worthless or hopeless does not make me weak. I, and others with similar conditions, have to be incredibly strong just to get through some days. 

• I will always have this illness. It is genetic.  I was born with it, and I will have it for the rest of my life. I can't "get over it".  It just gets better or worse. I've accepted this. Please do so as well and stop waiting for me to "snap out of it." 

• I'm not lazy or over-reactive or not trying to hard or dramatic. I can't just relax or calm down. I can't just think positive thoughts or smile or be grateful. 

• Sometimes the best thing I can do is rest. I need that time mentally and physically. Sleep is critical for mood cycling, and my condition is very draining. Doing every day tasks can feel insurmountable at times. 

In addition to Cyclothymia, I also battle Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, "severe" (doctor description) IBS, vertigo, and various forms of frequent migraines. While I don't discuss these often, I do occassionally post about them, especially as they intertwine with my mental health. 

Get In My Belly: Food, Drink, and Mental Health

#HAWMC Day 7: April 7th is World Health Day – so let’s talk about daily nutrition and diet. After your diagnosis, did you alter your diet or health routine? If so, how? How do you maintain a healthy regiment?

Happy World Health Day! I LOVE this prompt. I have a Bachelor's in Kinesiology, worked in corporate fitness for five years, am a certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor, and am a mental health blogger and activist. Health is, in all senses of the word, kind of my thing. 

Perhaps I'm luckier than some in that I came into my condition with some training in the body systems and how diet and exercise can affect virtually all of our organs, including the brain. Still, I'ave had a lot to learn. While my background has always made me a bit conscious of my health routine, I've had to become hyper-aware since my diagnosis, and much of it has come through trial and error. 

First off, I have to take medication three times a day. This medication must be taken with food. If not, I incur severe nausea, dizziness, disorientation, occasional vision blurriness (as if I was about to pass out), and numbness in my tongue and lips. These symptoms can last for hours, and often are temporarily debilitating. It can't just be any food either. It has to be a large enough quantity and the right kind of food. There must be enough carbs to quickly get into my bloodstream (they are broken down the quickest) and absorb the meds. I can have a buffet full of proteins and fats, but if there aren't enough carbs, I'll be ill for hours. The more meds I cumulatively take, the more I have to have eaten throughout the days, so if I miss a meal, I have to adjust my whole medication schedule, and this can affect my routine for the day. While I won't have a massive mood cycle from taking my meds an hour late, or even missing one at all, I can't do this on a regular basis.  I can sometimes start to feel the effects of a missed dose after just an hour or two, especially on a day where I'm already cycling. I'll be out doing something fun and social with friends and suddenly say, "have to get something to eat, medication time!", and it well may not be at a normal dining time (one of my doses has to be taken around 2 PM). Thankfully, if they're embarrassed, they never say it. I'm certainly not. To me it's just daily life. 

In addition to the fact that I feel I now eat like a horse in order to take meds, there are foods that bother me. Dairy, for instance, seems to make my depression worse. I don't know if this is an across the board thing with mood cycling, or just me. It may also be in part that I have a slight lactose issue and what a GI doctor once called severe IBS, and feeling like shit (no pun intended! OK, maybe a little...) generally makes people feel worse. I think it's probably a combination. Either way, I try to stay away from much dairy when in a depressive cycle. There have been studies on potential links between gluten and mood cycling as well, and though I've not read all of the research, I do keep an eye on this. I'm a vegetarian, so gluten-filled foods like seiten, for instance, are a regular part of my diet. When I can, I choose corn-based items (i.e. corn tortillas and chips) instead of flour/wheat based, but I do consume probably too much gluten. I've considered experimenting with low-gluten or gluten-free eating, but as a vegetarian with severe IBS and lactose issues, my diet is limited enough, and I'd rather not add to it if I don't need to. Going out to eat with me can already be a pain in the ass, and I'd rather not make it more so. Still, it's something I do keep an eye on. 

Coffee and alcohol are two other biggies. Coffee is amazing! I need several cups every day to function properly, and when I'm depressed and can barely pull myself from bed, it's pretty much nectar from the gods. But, and there's always a but with mood cycling, it's a slippery slope. One cup, no problem, I'm practically immune. Two, usually no biggie. But there's become a fine line between coffee-alert and hypomnia, and while I try to catch it before it's too late, I sometimes don't. Alcohol... well, it's alcohol. We have all loved our friends excessively at 1 AM, and woed our lives and ourselves an hour later when the "high" drops off.  But with mood cycling, it's not just socially enabling/embarrassing, it can bring on serious depression. I can't tell you the number of times I've thought I had a fun night out, only to wake up battling a severe depressive cycle. I have to chastise myself for thinking I can have a night of fun the way my friends do. I can't. It's not just that I can't  over-indulgence. Sometimes, it can be only a drink or two. I always have to be mindful. 

Of course, there's also the whole "my meds can cause hyponatremia (low blood sodium) and send me into seizures" thing. I experience hyponatremia on a regular basis. Luckily, I've managed to avoid the seizures so far, though I did once almost pass out at the gym in my housing complex and some old man had to carry me back to my apartment, which would be moderately embarrassing if I had any shame. Luckily, I don't. I have to ingest more sodium than the average person, though to be honest, that's not really a sacrifice. I love salt and have a palate that seemingly notices saltiness significantly less than the average person, so it's not hard to salt-load. Still, I do have to watch daily for signs of low blood sodium - and get my blood checked for this every six weeks. I'm supposed to always have tomato juice with me in case I need a quick salt fix, and I've slacked on this. I have learned to enjoy large quantities of powerade zero, though, which has a decent amount of sodium in it. I should probably just buy a diaper bag (spill proof for drinks) to fill with all the snacks and drinks and meds I need and carry it around, but I've yet to adopt this habit. 

With all of this said, I honestly don't feel like my health and wellness sacrifices are too bad. I get to eat more salty foods when most people have to buy low-sodium. I have low blood pressure naturally, so this increased sodium diet doesn't, at least yet, seem to be a heart concern for me. I have to eat more, and occasionally exercise less - increased adrenaline can worsen hypomania for me - which does make me feel a bit blah and has added to some minor weight gain, but I'm trying to adjust that with some creative healthy eating techniques. I still get to drink my coffee, I just have to watch it, and at 35, having to drink less alcohol isn't really too big of a deal - in fact, it's sometimes a nice excuse to stay home from a party when I'm feeling socially anxious, and instead do something I really want to do like read, or sleep. So really, all in all, I feel pretty lucky. I truly could have it a lot worse.