Do you catch yourself thinking that somebody with bipolar who is really successful at something must not REALLY be bipolar?
It's funny, but then again, not so much.
I don't like admitting to it, but I think this sometimes. From pure envy. Goddamn. Look what she did! I always wanted to do that! My bipolar has stood in the way of my doing it. So if she did it, she couldn't REALLY be bipolar. Right? Wait a minute .....
If I had cancer myself, I wouldn't think a person with cancer who was in remission, or managing to live well with the disease, must not REALLY have cancer!
But with bipolar - it makes me feel like shit when someone else accomplishes something. Because, deep down, I still think I'm doing this to myself. I'm making myself bipolar. It's my fault. I could "overcome" it if I tried hard enough.
Bullshit. Bullshit, brain!
Showing posts with label stigma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stigma. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Sign My Petition to Stop the Horrific Abuse of Prisoners in SC
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Happy Halloween From "The Dangerous Mentally Ill"!
Well, hello there! I am a member of that infamous tribe, "the dangerous
mentally ill." The one politicians have been beating the drums about so often and so menacingly lately, leading up to the election. My heart skips a beat too when it booms out of my television. I'm a
little scared, just like you. They sound pretty fucking alarming, "the
dangerous mentally ill."
Apparently they are buying guns in bulk, which they will use to kill senselessly, but that other politician has done nothing to stop them! He wouldn't even vote for criminal background checks to disqualify "the dangerous mentally ill" (who aren't technically criminals but hey, might as well be, right?) from owning guns! (And yes, there are so many guns in this country, it'd be easy for those mentally ill to get their dangerous little hands on them anyway. But, don't interrupt! We're trying to terrify the electorate here.)
The phrase doesn't refer to a subgroup of "the mentally ill" anymore -- to that small group who are "dangerous" despite, um, never having posed a danger to anyone. (Let's see...They're dangerous because in hindsight, some killer or other was probably mentally ill, and someone should have noticed he was dangerous before he ever became dangerous, so that he wouldn't become dangerous....Wait, is that logical? .... Oh, logic doesn't matter? All rightey then.) Now it means everybody: All "the mentally ill" are "the dangerous mentally ill." They've all morphed into monsters overnight! That's how sneaky and insidious they are! Round them up: anyone you see going to a psychiatrist's office, or filling a prescription for one of those drugs they take, or talking to himself in public (but be sure he's not wearing earphones first). They're all coming to get us. We must be vigilant!
But [SPOILER ALERT] guess what? They're just bogeymen. And like all good bogeymen, they're trotted out to scare and distract people -- so that politicians can do what they've always done: get themselves elected no matter what, by demonizing no matter who, so they can do nothing whatsoever about the things that are truly dangerous: unemployment, poverty, hunger, the disappearance of the middle class, climate disaster, lack of health care, women losing their rights to their own bodies...and, well, we could go on for quite a while. But it's easier to throw a sheet over thousands of human beings and yell BOO!! They're "the dangerous mentally ill!" Scared yet?
Apparently they are buying guns in bulk, which they will use to kill senselessly, but that other politician has done nothing to stop them! He wouldn't even vote for criminal background checks to disqualify "the dangerous mentally ill" (who aren't technically criminals but hey, might as well be, right?) from owning guns! (And yes, there are so many guns in this country, it'd be easy for those mentally ill to get their dangerous little hands on them anyway. But, don't interrupt! We're trying to terrify the electorate here.)
The phrase doesn't refer to a subgroup of "the mentally ill" anymore -- to that small group who are "dangerous" despite, um, never having posed a danger to anyone. (Let's see...They're dangerous because in hindsight, some killer or other was probably mentally ill, and someone should have noticed he was dangerous before he ever became dangerous, so that he wouldn't become dangerous....Wait, is that logical? .... Oh, logic doesn't matter? All rightey then.) Now it means everybody: All "the mentally ill" are "the dangerous mentally ill." They've all morphed into monsters overnight! That's how sneaky and insidious they are! Round them up: anyone you see going to a psychiatrist's office, or filling a prescription for one of those drugs they take, or talking to himself in public (but be sure he's not wearing earphones first). They're all coming to get us. We must be vigilant!
But [SPOILER ALERT] guess what? They're just bogeymen. And like all good bogeymen, they're trotted out to scare and distract people -- so that politicians can do what they've always done: get themselves elected no matter what, by demonizing no matter who, so they can do nothing whatsoever about the things that are truly dangerous: unemployment, poverty, hunger, the disappearance of the middle class, climate disaster, lack of health care, women losing their rights to their own bodies...and, well, we could go on for quite a while. But it's easier to throw a sheet over thousands of human beings and yell BOO!! They're "the dangerous mentally ill!" Scared yet?
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Mass Murder and the Mentally Ill: 60 Minutes Gets it Wrong
This psychcentral commentary summarizes my own opinion and perspective on gun violence and the mentally ill, an opinion shared by many professionals as well as people with a mental illness themselves, and ordinary people who want the truth. It does so by stating the facts as we know them, not speculations or lazy assumptions. The comment comes in response to a recent 60 Minutes piece which relied on loose correlations, unfounded assumptions and untested conclusions to call for some ill-advised measures to contain and "prevent" this kind of violence.
Ill-advised because based on little to no data. Ill-advised because no one can foresee the future. Ill-advised because they isolate and target a group of people who need and seek treatment -- making them more likely to forgo any treatment.
Suggesting we initiate mental health screening and vastly increase treatment access is all well and good -- but how would they be funded and carried out? There is no screening tool that can foresee the future of any individual -- how will we develop one? Increasing treatment is a sound goal, a desperately needed goal, but it would cost a fortune. Are we ready to pay for it?
60 Minutes, ignoring these hard questions, accomplished little more than demonizing the mentally ill, relying on "experts" like by Dr. E. Fuller Torey and his Treatment Advocacy Center, who has been pushing for forced treatment of schizophrenics for years, claiming they pose a unique threat to society but failing to back it up with any scientific data.
And that's what we need. Scientific data and research on gun violence, mental illness, schizophrenia, and if it is possible to prevent horrible crimes before they are even conceived of. Scientific research, furthermore, on better treatments that would actually work and be more tolerable so that people would stay on them. As it is now, our first-line treatment -- drugs -- often carries with it such unpleasant and even debilitating side effects that it's little wonder so many give up on them.
But we won't get it, because it seems that when it comes to mental illness and gun violence, data is irrelevant. We go with the easy conclusion, out of fear of threats to our safety and well-being, however ill-founded and misdirected. We focus on identifying the very tiny needle that is the "dangerous mentally ill" in the vast haystack that is our population -- and that is ridiculous.
Targeting everyone with a severe mental illness, in particular schizophrenia, may make the public feel better, but it is a straw man that needs to be knocked down.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/09/30/60-minutes-connecting-mental-illness-to-violence-with-little-data-facts/
Read viewer comments here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8601-500251_162-50155990.html?assetTypeId=58
Ill-advised because based on little to no data. Ill-advised because no one can foresee the future. Ill-advised because they isolate and target a group of people who need and seek treatment -- making them more likely to forgo any treatment.
Suggesting we initiate mental health screening and vastly increase treatment access is all well and good -- but how would they be funded and carried out? There is no screening tool that can foresee the future of any individual -- how will we develop one? Increasing treatment is a sound goal, a desperately needed goal, but it would cost a fortune. Are we ready to pay for it?
60 Minutes, ignoring these hard questions, accomplished little more than demonizing the mentally ill, relying on "experts" like by Dr. E. Fuller Torey and his Treatment Advocacy Center, who has been pushing for forced treatment of schizophrenics for years, claiming they pose a unique threat to society but failing to back it up with any scientific data.
And that's what we need. Scientific data and research on gun violence, mental illness, schizophrenia, and if it is possible to prevent horrible crimes before they are even conceived of. Scientific research, furthermore, on better treatments that would actually work and be more tolerable so that people would stay on them. As it is now, our first-line treatment -- drugs -- often carries with it such unpleasant and even debilitating side effects that it's little wonder so many give up on them.
But we won't get it, because it seems that when it comes to mental illness and gun violence, data is irrelevant. We go with the easy conclusion, out of fear of threats to our safety and well-being, however ill-founded and misdirected. We focus on identifying the very tiny needle that is the "dangerous mentally ill" in the vast haystack that is our population -- and that is ridiculous.
Targeting everyone with a severe mental illness, in particular schizophrenia, may make the public feel better, but it is a straw man that needs to be knocked down.
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/09/30/60-minutes-connecting-mental-illness-to-violence-with-little-data-facts/
Read viewer comments here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8601-500251_162-50155990.html?assetTypeId=58
Thursday, September 26, 2013
A Class of My Peers, Part 2
Bipolar Memoirs
Taking a Class with Those Mentally Ill People
Part 2: What I'm Really Afraid Of
So I went to the first Peer-to-Peer class. I described in an earlier post my reluctance to take this class due to my expectations that the other people would be unlike me -- sicker, less functional, or something like that. Of course those expectations were completely unfounded. Everybody's just themselves, three-dimensional. Duh.
I now realize my real difficulty is not with them but with me. I am so afraid of sharing my mental illness with real people that I can't even do it when they have a mental illness themselves! I've become so anxious over so many years of having to hide it, deny it, gloss over it -- or avoid the problem altogether by never leaving my house -- that it feels almost impossible to break the habit and just be myself. No environment has ever felt "safe" enough for me to let down my guard, not even other NAMI programs.
That's a big reason I started the Facebook page (Bipolar Over 30). Like all of us, I need friends I can be myself with, who understand and support me -- and for me the best way to do that is with online friends. We have formed our own community, and that is a life saver for me.
But perhaps it's time for me to dip my toe into the "offline" world and test the waters. So I'm making it my goal for myself in this class to learn to be myself with other people I know are not going to judge me. To relax enough to take off the mask. And perhaps make a friend or two in the process.
Thanks for listening.
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
A Class of My Peers
Bipolar Memoirs:
Taking a Class with Those Mentally People
I'm starting a new class on Wednesday, called Peer-to-Peer. It's a NAMI class for people with serious mental illnesses who are working on their "recovery" process. I've signed up for it twice before and bailed both times -- because the location gave me panic attacks when I drove to it, but mostly because at the first class I looked around (at a circle of perfectly normal if weary looking people) and said to myself: I don't belong here! These people have sad narrow little lives shadowed by their huge mental illnesses planted in the middle like an oak tree! They are what stigma says they are! They're not like ME. They don't run Facebook groups, write letters to the editor, blog about their lives, research everything online, have a sense of humor, love someone and are loved in return! If they're taking this class, they've been ground down and reduced to just surviving. They don't already know it all, like me. They don't even try to pretend they're normal. They are essentially and always just "the mentally ill."
But I am different from them. Right? I must be different from them. I absolutely have to be different from them.
But I'm not. I am exactly like them. I am them. Because they are not one-dimensional "mental patients." They are not thoughtless sheep being herded toward "recovery" with no personal resources to draw on. They are not like the people I knew in institutions 35 years ago. They are not like I was 35 years ago, medicated to the point of mindlessness and dumb acceptance. That was a different time. Severe mental illness itself was different. It is not the grim life sentence it was then. It does not rob people of their personalities, possibilities and adventures, their joys and amusements and empathy -- of their futures. It is merely one of their many dimensions. It's normal now to be different.
Yet I cling to the idea that one day I could be "cured." A deus ex machina could descend and wipe out my past. I could be the person I always dreamed of being, moving through the world lightly and gracefully, leaving poetry in her wake, not knowing what she had narrowly escaped. My whole life with a mental illness could be lifted from me and I could walk proudly toward the future with nothing to weigh me down. I would not need this "Peer-to-Peer" class because I would be in "discovery" not "recovery."
But that's all bullshit. It's a dream. And it eats up the time I have left in my life with fear and fantasy. It prevents me from knowing and befriending people who are just like me, just like anyone but with the depth of character this illness bestows -- one of its few gifts.
I want to cling to the fantasy anyway because it's comforting. It lets me sustain my denial. And denial is one of the few sources of peace I know personally I am like my 80 year old mother, outraged by the suggestion that she consider moving to a retirement home. "Those people are all OLD! They look old and they act old! They're going to DIE soon!"
But, you know, she is still old , just like them. And I'm still a person with a serious mental illness, just like my "peers."
And we're all just people, we're all still alive, and there is always hope.
Taking a Class with Those Mentally People
I'm starting a new class on Wednesday, called Peer-to-Peer. It's a NAMI class for people with serious mental illnesses who are working on their "recovery" process. I've signed up for it twice before and bailed both times -- because the location gave me panic attacks when I drove to it, but mostly because at the first class I looked around (at a circle of perfectly normal if weary looking people) and said to myself: I don't belong here! These people have sad narrow little lives shadowed by their huge mental illnesses planted in the middle like an oak tree! They are what stigma says they are! They're not like ME. They don't run Facebook groups, write letters to the editor, blog about their lives, research everything online, have a sense of humor, love someone and are loved in return! If they're taking this class, they've been ground down and reduced to just surviving. They don't already know it all, like me. They don't even try to pretend they're normal. They are essentially and always just "the mentally ill."
But I am different from them. Right? I must be different from them. I absolutely have to be different from them.
But I'm not. I am exactly like them. I am them. Because they are not one-dimensional "mental patients." They are not thoughtless sheep being herded toward "recovery" with no personal resources to draw on. They are not like the people I knew in institutions 35 years ago. They are not like I was 35 years ago, medicated to the point of mindlessness and dumb acceptance. That was a different time. Severe mental illness itself was different. It is not the grim life sentence it was then. It does not rob people of their personalities, possibilities and adventures, their joys and amusements and empathy -- of their futures. It is merely one of their many dimensions. It's normal now to be different.
Yet I cling to the idea that one day I could be "cured." A deus ex machina could descend and wipe out my past. I could be the person I always dreamed of being, moving through the world lightly and gracefully, leaving poetry in her wake, not knowing what she had narrowly escaped. My whole life with a mental illness could be lifted from me and I could walk proudly toward the future with nothing to weigh me down. I would not need this "Peer-to-Peer" class because I would be in "discovery" not "recovery."
But that's all bullshit. It's a dream. And it eats up the time I have left in my life with fear and fantasy. It prevents me from knowing and befriending people who are just like me, just like anyone but with the depth of character this illness bestows -- one of its few gifts.
I want to cling to the fantasy anyway because it's comforting. It lets me sustain my denial. And denial is one of the few sources of peace I know personally I am like my 80 year old mother, outraged by the suggestion that she consider moving to a retirement home. "Those people are all OLD! They look old and they act old! They're going to DIE soon!"
But, you know, she is still old , just like them. And I'm still a person with a serious mental illness, just like my "peers."
And we're all just people, we're all still alive, and there is always hope.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Take it Back! What Are the Worst Things Said to You as a Person with Bipolar?
Many insensitive, cruel, ignorant and/or infuriating things have been said to me over the years about my bipolar disorder and mental illness in general. They hurt. They make me angry. They need to be corrected. And I can't seem to forget them, try as I might. My brain holds onto pain. I want to but I can't seem to "forgive and forget," "move on," be "positive" -- all those things we're advised to do. I thought it would help if we had a place to put them out there where people who've heard them too will understand, empathize, offer support -- and share their own experiences.
So I'm starting a new thread on this blog where people can post the worst things people have said to them in connection with their bipolar or other mental illness (like borderline personality disorder, depression, self-harm, eating disorders, etc.) -- or just mental illness in general. Please only post the things said (with background like who, where, when, context, etc. if you like), but no rants, editorials, extended commentary, etc.. I’m hoping these quotes will stand alone as indictments of people’s ignorance and insensitivity. Nothing but text please, and you can post anonymously or give your name or some name, as you choose.
I hope this will be cathartic, self-affirming, anger-resolving, educational and a strike against stigma.
Get if off your chest and out of your head!
So I'm starting a new thread on this blog where people can post the worst things people have said to them in connection with their bipolar or other mental illness (like borderline personality disorder, depression, self-harm, eating disorders, etc.) -- or just mental illness in general. Please only post the things said (with background like who, where, when, context, etc. if you like), but no rants, editorials, extended commentary, etc.. I’m hoping these quotes will stand alone as indictments of people’s ignorance and insensitivity. Nothing but text please, and you can post anonymously or give your name or some name, as you choose.
I hope this will be cathartic, self-affirming, anger-resolving, educational and a strike against stigma.
Get if off your chest and out of your head!
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