by Band Back Together | Aug 20, 2016 | Anger, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Feelings, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Resources, Loving Someone With Bipolar Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Teen Sexuality |
“Teenage hormones”
“Depression”
“Chemical imbalance”
“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”
“Postpartum Depression”
“Seasonal Affective Disorder”
“Bipolar”
“Generalized Anxiety Disorder”
Since I was 15 years old, I’ve been diagnosed with one thing after another.
It’s like a revolving door. Or a carousel of diagnoses. Like a really bad carnival ride, where you just want off, but it seems like it won’t end. Ever.
Usually I get a new label because we’ve run through the gamut of medication that is supposed to “solve” one problem, only to find that none of them work.
Or I have changed providers.
So I fill out another 500 question sheet of paper, which of course has answers that are completely dependent on what day of the week it is, what time of the day it is and whether or not I got any sleep the night before.
Then after this highly scientific deduction process, I’m given a new prescription to go with my new label and sent on my merry way.
Only to fall flat on my ass at some point (and I do mean fall, like rock-bottom), and have to start all over again.
This is why I’m a big fan of saying that medicine alone is not enough. I fully believe medicine is a hugely helpful tool. But I also think that it needs to be in conjunction with some form of therapy.
Of course, that doesn’t explain why I haven’t managed to make it to my appointments with my therapist in the last couple months…
by Band Back Together | Jul 22, 2016 | Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Emotional Regulation, Feelings, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Resources, Happiness, Hope, Loneliness, Mental Health, Stress, Trust |
Anxiety and panic can strike us out of nowhere.
This is his story:
As my work day began to wind down on Friday, I got antsy as I looked forward to Saturday’s big duck hunt with my son, Bryan. My excitement level was high as it’s always a great time getting my boy into the woods and watching him learn the ways of the wild. We also have the opportunity to put some tasty treats in the freezer.
I called Bryan into school on Friday and took him to work with me as we were hunting just a few miles from work. I work fifty miles from home and it’s senseless to make the the long drive home just to come right back Saturday. We decided to stay with my in-laws -the best a man could ask for- instead, which is only twenty miles away.
Around 10 PM, after a bit of good conversation and some TV at my in-laws, my father in-law hit the sack. My son and I figured it was probably a good idea too, as our 3:30 am wake up call would be upon us shortly. Bryan was out in no time, but no sooner had my head hit the pillow, my mind started reeling. I have no idea why, but it was going into overdrive at an alarming rate, even as I did my best to fight it.
I thought it was just the excitement of the next day’s events and would wear off soon, but wow, was I wrong.
In a matter of minutes I was up pacing through the house, my mouth dry, my breaths rapid. My mind could not concentrate on any one thing.
I was having a panic attack and my medications were 75 miles away. That’s right, I forgot them at home. I had been doing great lately, and it never really crossed my mind to bring them along just in case.
Well here I was in the midst of a full-blown panic and had no idea what to do. I picked up the phone and called my wife, knowing full well that she would be asleep because it was now approaching 11:30 and she never stays up that late.
She was so wonderful and gave me time to chat and tried to relieve my tensions a bit. I didn’t keep her on the phone long but was so appreciative of her willingness to even allow me to call that late without getting pissed off. Her talk and encouragement was a bit helpful, but I was still contemplating making the hour-plus drive home in the middle of the night just to get my medication.
Then it dawned on me. My friend Luke was probably going out somewhere for the evening since his wife was out of town, so maybe I could get in touch with him.
I called Luke’s cell phone but there was no answer. I left a brief message explaining my dilemma and asked him to call me back. About ten minutes later the phone rang. I figured it was my wife just checking up on me, but it was Luke.
He was almost back in town from a night out and would be more than happy to have me over for awhile, even though it was midnight and he had to work the next day. I was in such panicked state that it took me two tries to get into the car and drive the three miles to his house.
Every time I’d get into the car, I’d think: I will never make it over there and I couldn’t breathe. The world felt like it was going to collapse around me if I sat in that drivers seat too long, so I’d pull back into the in-law’s driveway. I would get out, walk back into the house, then turn right back around and get into the car.
Finally, I made it to Luke’s house, but he wasn’t there. I tried to get out of the car and wait for him but my head wouldn’t leave me alone. My throat was tightening and it seemed like my airway was going to close any minute if I didn’t do something drastic. I knew this was all in my mind at the time and yet I had no control.
That thought alone made it worse. I jumped back in my car to head back to the in-laws. Just as I got to the first stop at the end of Luke’s road, he pulled into the road and waved me back.
I followed him to his house and we sat outside for awhile before I worked up the nerve to go inside without feeling caged in. A few minutes was all I could handle indoors…the heat, the lack of oxygen, the walls…I had to get out.
Luke was more than willing to follow. I’m not much of a drinker, but a 22oz hard lemonade seemed like it might help slow me down a bit. I slammed that while Luke sipped on one himself. Usually one of those is enough to put me on the couch for the evening! But this was no ordinary evening and no ordinary panic attack.
I have only had an attack this severe a couple of times and I hated it. Before I knew it, I had Luke out waking down the dirt drive at 2:00 am, and he did it with no complaints. We wandered back to the house and went inside for a little more chit-chat.
It was now close to 3:00 am and I could see that Luke was fading fast. The good thing was that it would soon be time to wake my son for his duck hunt, and my mind was starting to shift into a lower gear in preparation for the day of hunting. I needed to keep myself in check for the safety of my son.
The fog in my head slowly began to lift as I pulled into my in-laws driveway at 3:10 am. I was actually able to chill long enough to take a shower. When I came out of the shower, I felt as if the world had been lifted from my shoulders. My wonderful son was sleeping peacefully on a futon mattress on Grandma’s floor, oblivious to the hell I’d been through over the past 4 hours. I was tired but rejuvenated with a clear mind.
I took my son on the hunt. It was a wonderful morning. Warm, calm, and the mosquitoes didn’t even bother me. Ducks were flying and my son was doing pretty good hitting them. I had a wonderful day, and I must say that it was due to the patience and understanding of my wonderful wife and my friend Luke.
Luke is the true definition of a friend. I have known Luke for the better part of thirty years and I would do anything for him. He is more like a brother to me than a friend. I would be hard pressed to find another person on this planet that would be willing to sacrifice a night of sleep just to help a guy through a hard time.
Luke is a true friend, and true friends are hard to come by. He helped me through a night of turmoil that could have led to tragedy if I had not had him to talk to and keep my mind off the senseless ramblings. He was there for me and I am eternally grateful.
I am always here for you if you need me, brother!
by Band Back Together | Jul 15, 2016 | Anxiety, Fear, Rape/Sexual Assault |
I had my meeting today with the university, to go through with the complaint. I went in thinking, “Yeah, I’m not going to believed. He works here, of course I’m not going to be. ”
I didn’t think this would become a reality. I sat down at the table with my best friend on my right and some strange old woman who is apparently “unbiased” and high up within the university.
She just went straight into saying how the university cannot do anything, saying there is no proof. Oh I’m sorry. Did you even give me a chance, or did you even try and find evidence? I am still suffering with bleeding after it, is that not proof enough for you? I’ve had to see the counselor for the past five months for my anxiety …No. It’s still not enough for you. Why? Oh yeah because, as you begin to tell me, he is a close friend and you’ve worked with him for years! …unbiased ..what bull shit.
She told me, plainly and simply, “get over it.” Come back next year and have a fresh start. Does the bitch not think that I have been trying to put it past me? I’ve barely slept! Because of the fear of this meeting coming up and having to explain what happened, I probably only got, at most five hours of sleep, for the past eight days.
But this is the end of it, apparently. I can’t do anything else because he works there. I knew this would give him an advantage, but didn’t think it would get to the point where I was being questioned if I truly think it even happened…
Life is down the drain.
by Band Back Together | Jul 14, 2016 | Abuse, Adult Children of Mentally Ill Parents, Anxiety, Bullying, Depression, Poverty, Economic Struggles and Hardship |
Not sure why I’m posting this …hoping someone out there will have an answer? Or maybe I just need to vent or find out if there are others like me? Maybe someone out there can explain why these things keep happening to me?
Anyhow, in a nutshell, I’ve had a really bad life and I’ve come full circle with it. Seems that no matter how hard I work, no matter how “positive” I try to be, bad things just happen to me. Things go wrong for no reason. People try to pump me up with positive thinking and then are surprised when the bad things I think might happen actually do happen. While things will just go wrong for me for no apparent reason, nothing really “right” seems to happen. I mean, I have no good luck. If an unexpected tragedy can happen out nowhere then why can’t something wonderful and lucky happen out of nowhere, like magic? Yet I have to work extremely hard to make things happen, and even then things seem to go wrong.
I guess I’m trying to figure out why my life is the way it is and whether there’s a way I can turn things around. I’ve begun to believe I’ve been cursed, or there’s a dark spirit following me around, preventing anything good from entering my sphere. I’m wondering how I can stop this dark spirit, karma, or whatever it is and bring positive energy into my life. I’ve gone to churches to have people pray over me, gone to Reiki shares to have the energy of the universe sent to me, seen therapists, career counselors (for my money problems), gone to Debtor’s Anonymous meetings (hated them!) Still, the bad luck continues.
I also thought that maybe I’d done something wrong to cause all this, so I’ve volunteered to help people in need, but that hasn’t changed my luck.
Okay, let me try to be brief and give a few examples. Both my parents had mental health issues when I was a child, and I spent my early years transported from friends’ or family members’ houses until my parents were ready to take care of me. Then, a housekeeper took care of me while one parent went to work to support me. Meanwhile, the other parent was hospitalized with severe mental illness. My extended family was very unloving and I never see them now, as they are toxic people. I was close to one parent who died a few years ago. Now I’m the guardian for my other parent. So I’m really my parent’s parent and always have been since “childhood.”
In addition to the psychological abuse I experienced from my family once they were ready to take care of me, I was bullied mercilessly as a child, to the point of near insanity. I became painfully shy and anxious as a result, but I put myself into therapy and have practiced meditation techniques that helped me a lot.
But even the therapy was not too helpful, as most psychologists don’t understand social anxiety or shyness. One therapist accused me of imagining I was being bullied at school. She couldn’t believe I was really being bullied and acted as though I was just being paranoid. Consequently, she couldn’t help me to stop the bullying or to learn assertiveness techniques as I’d requested. I couldn’t find a therapist who would teach me ways to defend myself as they were too focused on trying to convince me that no one wanted to hurt me, that I was just being negative, paranoid or whatever. It seemed they were just reading from psychology textbooks and not really listening to me or taking me seriously.
As an adult, I get bullied at work a lot, am told I’m “too nice,” have trouble setting limits and boundaries and being assertive. Even though I’m a well-educated person, I can’t find a decent job, so I am working at a job for which I am well overqualified. Employers and coworkers are often threatened by my intelligence and I find myself holding myself back, trying to hide who I am. Also I get very bored doing data entry or office work. I only seem to fit into creative environments but creativity seems to be only available to the very rich these days.
I learned as an adult that I have an artistic personality and am very, very creative, so I began pursuing my artistic endeavors – playing music, writing poetry, making films, etc. I’ve also found I get along better with creative people and feel happy and free when I am creative. But this self-knowledge has only caused more problems for me as I’m now living in poverty because of it. In spite of great accomplishments as an artist I haven’t found a way to make money as an artist and I haven’t found a “day job” that enables me to adequately pursue my art.
In fact, I don’t fit into today’s job market at all. I ended up homeless a few years ago, and that was a real eye opener. I found that I have no friends. The people I thought were friends really didn’t care about me at all.
I also have chronic pain which, in time, is getting worse. I don’t have the money to get the health care I need.
Anyhow, as I’m writing this, I’m losing some of my sadness. It’s good to vent. But at the same time, I’m in a situation where I’m an adult, not considered to be young anymore, and I don’t meet people who are similar to me, so I feel pretty isolated.
Now, I’m staying in a situation where an acquaintance has been helping me a great deal but this isn’t a sustainable situation. I might end up homeless again soon unless I can find some way to start my own business, as there really aren’t any jobs out there for me.
I just don’t know what to do anymore.
Please don’t anyone respond with platitudes, i.e., “Think positive, things will get better…blah…blah…blah.” Look, I’ve been there and done that. I’m really a very intelligent person who overcame and extremely painful childhood. I’ve gone into therapy. I’ve been to self-help groups. I’ve gone to college, graduated with good grades, but now I have huge student loan debt and the jobs just aren’t out there. So what to do?
Anyhow, I know it’s a terrible thing to say, but it really would have been better if I’d never been born. My parents weren’t able to take care of me, my extended family didn’t want me, I’m not aggressive enough for this society, and I can’t earn a living. I cringe when I hear people try to talk other people out of committing suicide by telling them they’re suffering from “depression” and that things will get better. First of all, “depression” is not an illness but a natural reaction to things that happen to you that you can’t control. I can’t control this economy. I can’t control the fact that other people don’t appreciate my talents and skills. I know I’m capable of doing great things but I can’t get other people to appreciate what I have to offer.
by Band Back Together | May 19, 2016 | Anxiety, Borderline Personality Disorder, Depression, Divorce, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder |
I have mentioned before on this blog that I’m a writer. Sure, an amateur certainly. I decided the other day that perhaps it would be useful to write a memoir of some kind, documenting the conditions of my childhood. In a way, I suppose I would like to see my own progression to this state on paper. If I ever complete it, I suppose it would help someone understand the nature of mental illness and how it can be one big event or many tiny ones that really trigger depression, anxiety, borderline personality, PTSD, etc.
The thing is that I’ve been remembering things that I hadn’t thought of in a long while. Like how much I loved the Dukes of Hazard when I was a kid. I would call my dad Boss Hog and make him buy a cigar to smoke. The thing is, I have always had this tendency to see the worst in everything. It’s not new, and it would be easy to place the blame on my ex wife.
Truth be told, I have always had this sense of not belonging. Whatever my condition is, I have always had it. To be sure, it hasn’t ever been so intense and difficult to deal with. But it’s been, to borrow a phrase, a death of a thousand cuts. Sure, there were some really bad incidents that went down. By and large though, I think it was isolation that really irritated this condition I bear.
Why are so many authors or artists also burdened with this malaise? Does the disease of the mind inspire the art, in an artist’s effort to express themselves, or are the traits of an artist a combination that is vulnerable to mental illness?
All I know is that for me, it seems to be a combination of these reasons. I suffer from insufferably high standards. This is why I am so pessimistic. Eastern thought cautions us against the formation of expectations, and boy do I ever have a knack for letting myself down. My standards are so high that I defeat myself. I realized this while I was playing fetch with my dog the other evening. I expect everything to be awesome and perfect the first time. Always have. And I am crushed by the letdown. Either because others didn’t perform to what I expected or because I failed in some way. Not that my dog wasn’t fetching, but only because my damn brain never stops thinking.
But both of these conditions arise from my expectations of perfection. It doesn’t really reflect on my capability nor that of those around me. Perfection is impossible. I cannot remember who the author was, but it was a book about recording music. He said that the pursuit of perfection is self-defeating, because the moment we get close to perfection, we realize how it could still be better. Perfection is an endless climb.
Idealism has been somewhat of a plague to me. For this reason, I have two books, several dozen short stories complete with another book in the works along side of a memoir. I know I will probably never submit them for editing with intent to publish because of my own expectations. They won’t ever meet my own standards, so why would I expect them to meet the standards of others? I need to kick that. I’m actually kind of a good writer and nothing ventured, nothing gained after all. Perhaps, if tamed, my sense of idealism can be an ally.
By-DigitalTreant
by Band Back Together | May 18, 2016 | Anxiety, Guilt, Psychological Manipulation |
Dear Jealous Person Who I Trusted To Be My Friend,
I have had to call in sick from work for the last two days because I have been feeling dizzy. My anxiety tricks my body like this, especially when I have been obsessing over how I have to defend myself to you. I realize I can’t, and am grateful that I did not let you get too close to my true friends, as I might have lost them as well. I am trying to see the positive, and I am grateful that spending more time at the gym means I have some new friends.
I used to feel guilty for falling for someone younger than me, but am grateful I asked him out. At least I could mend my broken heart. I have been out of your clutches for six months, and as I go over the friendship in my head, I realize the jealousy was there from Day 1.
I wonder what comments you made that triggered the end to my place in our group of friends. I now see how you manipulated people and put them down. I sometimes think I am crazy, but as I look back on the friendship we had, I hear the criticisms you made. I see how many times when I was happy you chose that moment to decide you wanted to go home, making me leave with you. I left at the same time as you because I was your friend, but now as I look back, I realize you couldn’t handle it when I was getting more attention than you were.
My headache is already disappearing and I feel like a weight has lifted off my shoulders as I write this.
Part of me wishes that our mutual friends believed me, but you have done your manipulating too well and have played the victim. I wish you well, but not at my expense. I am relieved to have escaped your clutches and can see my life is changing, and I am moving on. Part of me wishes you could see me now and how I have progressed, but that means I am still seeking your approval. I no longer need to do that. I am writing this, hopefully, as a final closure. Good luck in your future, and I hope the next pretty girl who crosses your path is treated more kindly than I was.
Your Former Friend
