by Band Back Together | Jan 25, 2019 | Anxiety Disorders, Ask The Band, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Family, Fear, Feelings, How To Help A Parent With a Special Needs Child, Intracranial Hypertension, Mental Health, Parenting, Special Needs Parenting |
You know about my kids now here’s a little about me.
I am extremely stubborn.
I hate admitting I need help.
I have a ton of health problems: anxiety, depression, EDS, IIH, and fibromyalgia. All 3 of my kids have autism with other co-morbidities. My husband is my rock but he can be a pain in my ass.
I take on a lot with the boys because they’re mine it’s not up to someone else to do it and I do see a therapist.
She thinks in dealing with the latest with what I call my shitshow, I lost myself in there somewhere.
I think she’s right in a way, I’m so mentally tired I’m surprised I can form complete sentences.
I’m getting away next week for 10 days.
For the first time in 4.5 years, I’m going to visit my mom, my dad, and my sister. I haven’t been together with the three of them at the same time in a long time.
I’m actually really excited… but scared too.
Scared of having a good time.
Is that weird?
Scared I’m going to be in pain and they won’t understand. Scared of being away from my kids for so long.
Okay, I’m scared shitless.
Help!
by Band Back Together | Jan 15, 2019 | Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Resources, Loving Someone With Bipolar Disorder, Mental Health |
I’m a girl – check that – a lady. I married a fantastic man. I have a crappy job, but it’s okay. I hobby (yeah, hobby as a verb, got a problem with that?) – I read, embroider, write to pen pals, and water my dead plants.
I get panic attacks. I have Bipolar II Disorder. But it’s okay. I mean, I can’t cure it…so, I live with it, right?
Don’t get me wrong, it blows serious monkey balls most of the time. I’m currently untreated and once my insurance kicks in, I’ll still have to wait another six months to have it covered, “pre-existing condition” and all. (Wait, wait, I’m getting to something.) I’ve got a few problems – so what, right? I’m with the Band and “problems” is one tune we all sing.
So why do I feel like I’m the first person to bring up bed-wetting? I’m no expert. I don’t have any kids. I don’t know anyone who’s ever done it…sober. I never did it as a kid. I mean, well, since I got potty trained. I’m good at being potty trained.
Recently, though, I peed the bed. Not even in a drunken haze. Just while sleeping, like a normal person. That’s what you do, right, sleep? And then, a few weeks later, I did it again!
What. The. Hell.
Add that to the migraines when I’m around blinking lights, a nervous twitch when my sister visits, panic attacks when I, well, whenever – it just happens on the roller coaster of being untreated Bipolar. That’s not enough? Now this?
For fuck’s sake, I’m an adult. I’m married. I share a bed with a man and two dogs. I yell at my little dog for peeing on the kitchen floor, but at least she’s not doing it in the bed. (You should see the looks she gives me, by the way.)
The only two times it has happened – hopefully the only two times it will ever happen – the only commonality I can see is that I had nightmares. I get nightmares pretty frequently, especially when I’m shifting between ups and downs, so it’s not like I can say, “Oh, it was the nightmares which caused them!”
The first incident was in the early morning hours. I awoke to myself peeing and ran to the bathroom. I finished, showered, and continued on with my day. No sheets were wet, just my pj’s. I told the Hub and we passed it off as maybe I drank too much water before going to bed, and was in too deep a sleep to fully wake up. Or maybe I was getting an UTI.
But whatever, accidents happen. We never mentioned it again.
The second incident, a few weeks later, I happened to be sleeping on the couch. (So, maybe I lied. Maybe I peed the bed once and the couch once. Hah! So, I’ve only peed the bed once!) I woke up in a virtual puddle. Thank goodness we have dogs and my couch is stain-guarded so nothing really soaked in. I ran to the bathroom, but I had already drained everything; and it was a LOT.
There I was, soaked in pee, in my living room. I cleaned up myself and the couch, and change into something dry. This was 2:00 in the am. I hate being up at that time – we don’t have cable and nothing’s on. I just stood and stared at my couch, willing it to dry faster. The husband woke up and stumbled to the living room “Are you coming to bed?”
I had fallen asleep watching television (I heart The Nanny reruns).
I had to tell him what happened.
We talked about it.
Did I remember the nightmare? No.
Did I drink a lot of anything before I went to bed? No.
Is there pain? Could I be pregnant? Is that even a symptom?
Have I been feeling all right in the brain lately? Any issues maybe that are bothering me that weren’t before? No.
Nothing seems different. Panic attacks seem more frequent lately, and the migraines last longer. That could be because I’m shifting schedules – downs to ups, you know.
Nothing seems to be triggering this new symptom.
Maybe all my other symptoms increasing in number and intensity are just putting my body through hell. Maybe it’s a new thing. Maybe I’ll do it again. Maybe I won’t do it again until I can see a proper doctor (November 2nd). Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I just don’t know enough about bed-wetting to be sure about anything. (I’m not even sure it’s hyphenated.)
I do know something, though. I know I have someone special in my husband. I know that even after I had cleaned it all up, my husband cleaned the couch. He still waited a day or two to sit down on it. He was so nice about the whole situation, though. He worried about me, and what this new activity means for me. He said he was sorry my broken brain was making my body do crazy things.
To relieve the new anxiety I had facing bedtime, he even cracked a joke and offered to put me out with the dogs for a potty break before bed. No, really, I laughed. It’s all I could do. But I threatened I might pee on the couch again if he made me laugh too hard. And we laughed at that.
And then we went to bed, nervous about what the night might bring.
by Band Back Together | Dec 10, 2018 | Anxiety, Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Feelings, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Resources, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Mental Health, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Trauma |
No one person is exactly the same as another. Mental illness affects everyone differently.
PTSD is defined as a condition that occurs in some people who have suffered through traumatic experiences. These feelings of anxiety, discomfort, and being scared can happen to people in their normal everyday lives, and those who have PTSD learn that these symptoms doesn’t go away. We suffer from many different symptoms on a regular basis.
Medical professionals feel PSTD is when someone has these lingering feelings for “at least a month or so.”
I can’t remember a time in my life that was “before PTSD”.
I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when I was in my early 20’s. At the time, I didn’t really think too much of it, and I didn’t research it. I was diagnosed with some other issues at the same time and I thought they were the important things I should be dealing with. Looking back on my life, I realize how much PTSD has affected me when I had no idea what it was. Clearly the PTSD is what I should have been dealing with this whole time, as the others are all by-products.
One thing I’d like to touch on is that people without PTSD tend to think that the 30+ year old trauma is what is haunting me today – however I do not normally have flashbacks or nightmares of the very old traumatic experience. It’s like my brain got programmed when I had the first trauma to overreact to all trauma so now, many years later I experience a major reaction to trauma. What may seem small to a non-PTSD sufferer, can be major to the brain of someone with PTSD Your brain tells your entire body to react to this huge event.
Some of my friends could (and probably do) describe me as being a negative person. I’d describe myself as realistic; I try to see all sides of a situation, good and bad. When friends are being very optimistic and point out good things in a situation, I will point out everything – all sides. Pointing out the bad things is why I often get told I’m pessimistic. I try not to, but I live with a constant feeling of fear, worry, and anxiety so it can be difficult for me to feel like things are going my way and everything will be fine. While I try not to spill it, sometimes it still slips out.
Persistent instability to experience positive emotions is described as a symptom of PTSD.
I don’t watch horror movies, and yes I’ve been mocked because I was a “wuss” or a “baby.” Honestly, I just brush it off, because they don’t know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night to a flashback. It’s not a dream, it’s not a nightmare, it’s everything you’re afraid of. There are always things in the back of your mind percolating.
Dark closets and corners hiding things that you forgot about or didn’t see as a problem. Today is day when it becomes a problem, and you’re going to remember it in the most traumatic way (even if it didn’t happen that way). It’s going to scare the living shit out of you, and linger with you like a cloud following you around ready to suck you up at any moment.
Every time your mind starts to wander for the following days or weeks, it will go back there and BOOM.
Sweating, anxiety, heart is racing, your body is shaking. You calm yourself down and after a while you feel back to normal again. Just when you think it might have gone away and left you alone, you walk around the corner and see something, hear something or smell something that reminds you of it and BOOM.
Back into high adrenaline mode. You take some time to calm yourself down. You go back to work, or whatever you were doing. You go on with your day. You’re cleaning up dinner, the kids are in bed and you think “I’m tried, it’s been a long day, I’ll head off to bed now too”. You crawl into bed and drift off to sleep. Then when your guard is down and it’s the middle of the night.
BOOM.
You wake up crying and shaking and sweating and scared. I did not know that these feelings were part of my disorder until recently. Flash backs and re-experiencing the trauma including “what if” scenarios through nightmares is a common characteristic of PTSD.
Most of my early life (pre-20) I don’t remember. I have relied on others to tell me what happened, even though I was there. I generally tell people that I have a bad memory and can’t remember much from my childhood or adolescence. I can sometimes be reminded and recall a memory, but I often can’t remember much.
I had no idea that repression and “lost memory” was my brain trying to protect me from my traumatic events.
It is very well known in my circle of friends that I’m easily startled. Most of them find it quite hilarious.
I often find myself at work and round a corner or open a door that has no window to find someone on the other side. I will jump out of my skin and usually let out a high pitched shriek which will usually get a reaction from the other person (either startle them or they laugh or both). This is a characteristic related to the hyper vigilance aspect of PTSD because I’m often on edge or on alert. It is also common for PTSD sufferers to have an exaggerated response when startled.
When something traumatic happens in my life, I can have flashbacks or re-experience the trauma, or sometimes my brain will play out “what if” scenarios. This usually occurs with the newest trauma but sometimes can go back to something that happened many years ago. If the trauma is very fresh, I can’t get to sleep.
Every time I try to close my eyes the event will replay itself and I’m in a state of panic.
This will continue all night and when I finally feel like I’ve fallen asleep I’ll have to get up and go to work, which leaves me feeling exhausted and unable to cope with getting through the day. This as PTSD-induced insomnia.
Another characteristic of PTSD is self blame, feeling hopeless ,and may including having negative thoughts about yourself.
I’d like to let you know, if you’re reading this PTSD is not your fault. If you are feeling this way, I encourage you to seek medical attention and the support of your friends or family. If that is not an option, there are helplines and even chats you can speak with someone.
There are other things that are on the “common list of PTSD symptoms” that I have not listed. Some I didn’t want to talk about and some I don’t normally experience.
I know that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can affect people differently so I decided to write how it affects me.
by Band Back Together | Dec 5, 2018 | Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Depression, Feelings, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Resources, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Health, Postpartum Depression, Prenatal (Antenatal) Depression |
Depression and I have been dancing partners for more than a decade now. Sometimes it’s a slow waltz, sometimes a spinning reel, and sometimes I get to sit off to one side and take a nice relaxing break from my dark friend.
Over the years I’ve learned to observe my own triggers and put safety valves in place. For example, I go to therapy once a year, even if I’m not depressed, just to keep tabs on the way I’m feeling. As soon as I discovered I was pregnant in 2008, I knew I had to keep a watchful eye on myself. I was prepared – absolutely certain – that I would end up with postpartum depression, and I was terrified of feeling as low as I could go with a baby to look after. When I hit rock bottom, I can hardly care for myself. How was I supposed to look after this tiny new person as well?
So, I lined up a therapy session at 34 weeks of pregnancy, aiming to build myself a nice set of mental defenses against the coming storm.
I went to my first session, wanting to talk about my anxiety over going on maternity leave. I loved my job, and I didn’t know how I could stand to be at home all day every day with a baby. We talked about it. I cried a little.
No, I didn’t. I cried a lot. I cried so much that I couldn’t even talk. I just sat there on the couch, sobbing so hard that my unborn baby started squirming, and the psychologist had to go get a second box of tissues. I did that for a whole hour, all the while trying to gasp out explanations for my behaviour. Hormones, obviously. Stress. Fear of change, of the unknown. I knew all my triggers.
Didn’t I?
Later that night, I was at home when there was a knock at my front door. There was a lady standing there who I recognised, although she didn’t know me. She was the niece of a work colleague – and she was a drug addict who was mixed up in all kinds of bad things that I’d been hearing about for weeks at work. She asked me if I could give her a lift into town. Odd request from someone you don’t know and I blurted out the question, “What for?”
She informed me that she was out of her anti-psychotic medication, and if she didn’t get to the pharmacy as soon as possible she was going to end up really sick.
Yikes. I threw out the first excuse I could think of – I told her I was pregnant and tired, and I couldn’t do it.
Mistake. Her eyes shot to my belly, and she spent the next couple of minutes telling me how lucky I was, and how she wanted her own baby, and… And by that point, my other mental dance partner was knocking loudly on the door of my brain – anxiety. I got her to leave, to go ask a different random stranger for that lift, and then I stayed awake. All. Night.
Convinced, utterly convinced, that she was coming back with a knife, and she was going to try to take my child from me.
By the time my next therapy session came around a week later, I wasn’t just a bawling mess- I was a shaking, hysterical, terrified mess, convinced that some kind of evil was heading my way. No ifs or buts about it, something bad was going to happen – from this girl, random strangers, an accident – I was sure that either my baby or I was in trouble, and no amount of logic or reasoning could sway my reptilian brain centre from this fear response.
And at that point I realised that this time, my depression and my anxiety had snuck around that safety valve, and I was in the extremely intense grip of something they hadn’t talked about in any of my childbirth classes:
Antenatal depression.
Before the baby arrives, you’re supposed to be the glowing mother-to-be, fondly looking forward to the arrival of your new little one, taking it easy, enjoying your last days of freedom. Sure, you might get depressed once you’re sleep deprived, struggling to breastfeed and awash with postpartum hormones, but before the birth – no, that’s all supposed to be sunshine and moonbeams.
I was ever so glad I’d gone to that first therapy session, because otherwise I would have been running up against all these feelings with a baby in my arms. Or not, as the case so happened – it turns out I wasn’t wrong about my dire predictions, and everything did in fact go horribly wrong. But by that stage, despite a crash c-section, my baby being airlifted away from me, a month in the NICU, I found myself able to handle some of the greatest stress I’ve ever experienced without breaking down. By that stage, I was seven weeks into my therapy course, taking antidepressants, and acknowledging my fears.
From the simplest (fear of being bored) to the most complex (fearing that I’d end up being too much like my own mother and would turn my daughter into just this kind of wreck), I had faced down those issues, broken them into pieces, examined them, and found that they weren’t as scary as I thought. I’d come to understand some of the most important rules of becoming a mother; first, you can’t control what happens, so you just have to roll with it; second, your best is absolutely good enough; third, you can’t predict the future, so there’s no point guessing.
So, I guess this leads me to a few points about my experience of antenatal depression:
- It exists, and it’s not always the hormones. If you feel down, anxious or sad to a degree where it starts affecting your life or your enjoyment of life, go see someone about it. Your doctor, your therapist – it never hurts to talk, whether you conclude in the end that you’re depressed or not. You might end up with post-partum depression and be glad you put those defenses in place nice and early.
- I was terrified of taking antidepressant drugs during pregnancy for fear they might cause problems for my child. There are safe antidepressants you can take, and my personal experience was that the pregnancy hormones meant I had greater need for the medication than on previous occasions. My daughter’s problems, FWIW, were most certainly unrelated to the drugs, although when I weaned her from breastfeeding at 18 months, I was still taking the medication and as a result she went through a withdrawal process over about a week. She was a most unpleasant character during that week, but both before and after that, she was/is the same happy, delightful little person she’s always been.
- There’s no law saying you have to be delighted about everything baby-related. Birth? Bonding? Nappies? Cracked nipples? Pah! But in addition to those, of course, you get that milky new baby smell, smiles and cuddles, first words and steps and everything else that’s wonderful about kids. Taking a realistic view of the potential downers is important. Don’t expect it all to be utopia, but don’t expect it all to be terrible, either. Parenthood is, of course, a buffet that serves up a little awesome, a little awful, and you never know which you’re going to get.
by Band Back Together | Nov 27, 2018 | Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Depression, Depressive Disorder, Loving Someone With Bipolar Disorder, Mental Health, Parenting, Parenting Teens, Pediatric Bipolar Disorder, Pediatric Depression, Teen Bipolar Disorder |
How’s Gabriel?
I hear that all the time. There is no simple answer. But answering it is the focus of my daily life. Every day. The real answer is Gabriel’s not OK. Gabriel is Bipolar. His moods shift. Daily. Weekly. Yearly. He is never OK. I spend my days like a detective trying to sniff out any small clue of a mood change, charting, taking notes, observing him. Worrying about him.
He spent 10 months of the last 12 (literally, not figuratively) suicidal, dangerous, aggressive, and explosive. His meds are controlling that a little, but he is manic right now. Which is dangerous in other ways. And his meds aren’t holding that in. They aren’t ‘stabilizing’ him like they are supposed to. And without going into a tirade about doctors, I don’t have a ‘handle’ on this the way I PROMISED myself I would last October. And last May. And last July. You get the point.
The fact that mania seeps out now means that Gabriel is hyper (he isn’t normally at all), he is giddy, inappropriate (laughing, jokes, rude comments, butt jokes, pulling his pants down in front of a friend during a play date, etc), and more likely to jump off the roof (or trick his brothers into doing it) than anything else. Which is, in some ways, better than the dangerous depressive side. However, as October comes to a close, so will the mania, and the bipolar depression will replace my giddy-inappropriate child with one who hates the world. Who hates me. Who hates his brothers. One who is so negative and dangerous that he threatens to take knives to school and kill people. That kid is hard to live with. That kid is hard to keep safe. That kid threatens my sanity and the safety of my other two children.
We have to put him on another medication. A stronger medication. And although our ‘nurse practitioner’ is willing to give him a new medicine now, (they want to put him on Lamictal), my next appointment with his actual doctor, a real psychiatrist, isn’t until November 24.
Yes, the day before Thanksgiving.
Why wait? Because Lamictal has a 1 in 1000 chance of a deadly side effect. A deadly rash that may just start itself in the depth of my son’s mouth where I am less likely to see it. Less likely to be able to get him the immediate medical attention required. That scares me.
And scares my husband. So much so, that he refuses to give our son this drug until we see our psychiatrist. Who we can see the day before Thanksgiving.
So, I will bake pies early this year. And spend the that glorious Wednesday afternoon admiring the artwork on the walls of Children’s Hospital, nervously wondering if I will be rushing Gabriel to the ER with a rash on Thanksgiving day, and trying to hold down all those bites of pie I shoved in my throat in the anticipation of this moment where we are forced to make, yet another, hard decision about our son’s care.
But I have no choice. So we wait.
But the cycling won’t wait.
Depression is nipping at his heels and I am not sure we can out run it.
by Band Back Together | Nov 15, 2018 | Abuse, Addiction Recovery, Adult Children of Addicts, Adult Children of Mentally Ill Parents, Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Anxiety Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Body Image, Bullying, Child Abuse, Child Grooming, Child Neglect, Child Sexual Abuse, Coping With Anxiety Disorders, Coping With Domestic Abuse, Date/Acquaintance Rape, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement, Family, Fear, Foster Care, Healing From A Rape or Sexual Asault, How To Cope With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, How To Help With Low Self-Esteem, Incest, Loneliness, Major Depressive Disorder, Mental Health, Mental Illness Stigma, Mood Disorder, Parental Alienation, Parentification, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Preventing Child Abuse, Psychological Manipulation, Psychological Manipulation, Rape/Sexual Assault, Sadness, Schizophrenia, Self Loathing, Self-Esteem, Stalking, Stress, Trauma, Trust |
At the age of 3, my father began sexually molesting me.
At the age of 5, the sexual abuse was replaced by physical abuse from my father and my mother.
At the age of 9, both my mother and father went to rehab for alcoholism.
At the age of 10, I finally knew what it was like to have a home after living in over 200 houses, more than 100 cities, fifteen states, and two countries.
At the age of 14, I was raped by a classmate my freshman year of high school.
At the age of 15, I started working two full-time jobs and single-handedly supporting my family because my parents flat-out refused to work.
At the age of 16, my parents decided to start drinking again. I took on a third job to support their alcoholism.
At the age of 18 I graduated high school at nearly the top of my class.
After my first year of college, I was told that I was not allowed to continue even though I had scholarships because “I wasn’t raised to think I was better than anyone else.”
At the age of 21, I was raped again … by the man who had betrayed me seven years before. My parents told me I deserved it, and was lucky that a man had paid that much attention to me since I was worth nothing. I was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
My birth certificate says that I was born on April 2nd, 1987 at 1:25 p.m.
I was born on March 30th, 2009 at roughly 9:45 p.m. when, at nearly 22 years old, I decided I had been through enough.
I am the adult daughter of two alcoholics who have been diagnosed by multiple mental health professionals as suffering from a variety of mental disorders.
My father suffers from Bipolar Disorder and severe Anxiety. My mother is a Paranoid Schizophrenic. Neither one has any sense of reality beyond their immediate perception of the world, and both are Compulsive Liars.
The man who raped me intimidated and frightened me into a silence I would not break for almost ten years. When I ran into him again, he introduced me to his wife and child as if we were old high school friends.
He contacted me after getting my information through old mutual friends and asked if we could meet to reconcile and so that he could apologize for what he had done. He never had any intention of doing so and in my own foolishness, I met with him and he forced me into the back of a car and raped me … again.
My parents told me I had to be lying, and that if I had been raped then I should consider myself lucky because that was more than I deserved from anyone. When I insisted that I was not lying and needed their help, my father smacked me across the face and broke a chair over my back.
I was almost twenty-two years old at the time and the only thing I remember after that was my youngest sister’s face. She was staring in horror and fear trying to figure out what to do.
I was the only one who stood up to the two of them. I defended everyone. I fought everyone’s battles and kept everyone safe. The thoughts in her mind were clear on her face: Who was supposed to protect me? How could they help me?
I had stayed for years thinking that I was protecting them. In that moment, I realized that if I showed them that all you could do was take the abuse and not actually do anything about it … then one day my little sister was going to be in my position … and no one would be around to help her either.
I didn’t have anywhere to go. I had nowhere to stay that night. I called up a friend and grabbed a ride, and crashed on a couch while struggling to find somewhere to live.
I went through months of endless torture and doubt while going through the trail that put my rapist in jail for what will be a very long time. I changed my address, my phone number, and all of my information so that I could cut ties with the life I didn’t deserve and start living a life that was not filled with fear, or doubt, or regret, or abuse.
Today, I am 23 years old.
I have a home of my own for the very first time.
I have sought counseling for the traumas I have been through in my life.
I have struggled with body image, self-esteem, guilt, and an intense lack of trust in people I care about.
I have cut all ties with my family, stopped supporting them financially, and moved on to start a life of my own.
I have found love in a man who is the best thing to ever happen to me. A man who would never raise a hand to me, who loves me in spite of my demons, and who has already supported and seen me at my absolute worst.
I have found peace.
I am not sharing my story to shock, horrify, or scare people. I am not sharing my story seeking sympathy although it is graciously received.
I am sharing my story because somewhere out there is a man, woman, or child who has faced demons that linger in shadows all around them. They may not feel that they are able to overcome them and they are utterly alone.
I am telling you my story to tell you this:
You are not alone. Ever.
No one is ever alone. There were moments when I wanted to give up and give in. Just tune out and wait for the worst to come so that nothing else as bad could happen. I figured there was nothing that could help or save me. I have been there.
I made it out and I am waiting for you with open arms on the other side. There’s plenty of room here.
