Wonderful Video Documentary About a Mother with Schizophrenia

2012, Acceptance, Activism, Allies, Anti-psychotics, Children, Depression, Discrimination, DSM-5, Education, Families, Family, Grandmother, insanity, Kristin Bell, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Mom, Mother, Motherhood, Prescription Meds, Psych Meds, Psychiatrist, Psychiatry, Psychiatry Denial, Psychoactive Substances, Psychology, Psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, Schizophrenia

I’m taking a Women’s Studies course at school and we are looking at the topic of Motherhood. This week we are discussing motherhood and disabilities, and I came across this wonderful video series that is made by a student about a mother who has schizophrenia and how it has impacted her life and the life of her daughter. I think he did a really good job! The video is divided into four parts and I hope you watch all four parts! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx6j_Tyb8Uo&feature=share&list=PL81E9C419F7641FD8

Mental Health Update: Monday, May 28, 2012

2012, Abilify, Acceptance, Anti-anxiety meds, Anti-depressants, Anti-psychotics, Anxiety, Autobiography, Bipap, Body Image, Body Narrative, Brain, Buspar, Depression, Diary Rant, EDNOS, Fat, Fat Acceptance, Fat Hatred, Haldol, Haldol DEC, Haldol Decanoate, Happy, Health, Injections, insanity, Kristin Bell, Medicine, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Mood Stabilizers, Prescription Meds, Psych Meds, Psychiatrist, Psychiatry, Psychiatry Denial, Psycho, Psychoactive Substances, Psychology, Psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, Schizophrenia, Sleep, Sleep Disorders, stigma, Weight, Zoloft

I thought I’d do a little mental health update, since it has been quite some time since I’ve blogged about my overall mental health. As some of you dear readers may know, I have schizophrenia. I first had issues with it when I was about 15. My first hospitalization was when I was 16. Towards the end of 2000 I got mostly stabilized with my Haldol injections and Zoloft. I haven’t been in the hospital since then! Yay! Quite a long run I’ve had and I hope it continues! For quite some time I had problems getting things done, being motivated and feeling down…that sort of thing, even though I was mostly fine. I think it was last year that I started taking Abilify and it has made a HUGE difference! I’m still taking Zoloft, Buspar, Haldol and some non-psychiatric meds in addition to the Abilify, but the addition of the Abilify was great. I’m doing really pretty well these days. Sometimes I have anxiety, although I think it might generally be related to performance issues with school. I also tried taking Topamax to help with weight loss, but I thought it might be making me stupid and giving me more anxiety, so I quit taking it. I think overall, the Topamax was not helping. It seemed like I was becoming less motivated and more sad with it. I also had that bad anxiety day that I wrote about recently.

So, I think I was just hoping for a magic weightloss bullet with the Topamax. It didn’t work. Boo. I have lost about 90-100 pounds though which is good, but I still need to be less sedentary. I’m also a believer in fat acceptance, but of course it is hard to say that I never want to try to lose weight. I would be an even bigger believer in fat acceptance if I wasn’t actually fat I think!!! hahaha. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is kind of true. I can accept the hell out of everyone’s fatness, but my own! lol.

Anyway, enough about fatness for now. What I want to say is that I’m doing well on the whole. My sleep patterns have improved with my sleep apnea machine, and while I’m not sleeping on any kind of normal schedule yet, I’m getting sleep every day and mostly at the same time! I still tend to be somewhat paranoid, but I’ve found that opening up with people over the years on the internet has really helped me to realize that I don’t need to be afraid of everyone in the world. I still have some delusional thoughts that blow through my brain now and then, but I consider them to be more of a slight annoyance than a big deal right now. But seriously, it is because of the medicine. If I wasn’t taking my meds, and doing so faithfully, I would be in and out of hospitals and massively psychotic. Some people don’t believe me, because I “seem so normal,” but I have to wonder what THAT means anyway? And, I don’t know, it seems like I should be insulted when people say that to me, but I’m not sure why I find it so insulting! I don’t necessarily want to be abnormal, even though I pretty much am, but I think it just bothers me that people attach a kind of value judgement to the term “normal” as if “normal” is superior. It is definitely easier to live in the world if you are “normal,” but it isn’t the only way to be in the world, that’s for sure. Normal is just such a peculiar word, no?

So, I’m doing fine. Some anxiety here and there, some weird thoughts here and there…a depressed mood now and then, but mostly just good. Which is nice. Thank you meds and thank you lucky stars! So, that’s my update after living with schizophrenia for 24 years. Wow! 24 years! Man am I getting old!!! LOL.

Schizowhat? Website!

Acceptance, Activism, Kristin Bell, Lunatic, Mental Health, Mental Illness, neuroscience, Problems, Psych Meds, Psychiatrist, Psychiatry, Psychiatry Denial, Psycho, Psychoactive Substances, Psychology, Psychosis, schizoaffective disorder, Schizophrenia, schizowhat?, Shame, stigma, Stories

I was just informed of this great project called Schizowhat? that is a website aimed at raising awareness about schizophrenia. For those of you who don’t know, I have schizophrenia. I was first diagnosed when I was about 15/16 years old. I hope others of you who are interested or in some way impacted by schizophrenia will check out the website and contribute! Let’s fight the stigma! Yay!

It Is a Major Chore Realizing You Are Fucked Up…

Acceptance, Haldol, Haldol DEC, Haldol Decanoate, Kristin Bell, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Psych Meds, Psychiatrist, Psychiatry, Psychiatry Denial, Psycho, Psychoactive Substances, Psychology, Psychosis, Schizophrenia

I hate to be so blunt…okay, I really don’t mind, but my mother really wouldn’t approve of such language. heh. Anyway, it really is a major chore realizing you are fucked up in the head. There’s no easy way to put it and no easy way to realize it.

Okay, maybe I could just say “mentally ill,” but that phrase seems so sterile to me compared to what it is really like to realize you are fucked up. I remember when I first became sick, and for years after honestly, I SERIOUSLY thought *I* was not the one who was screwed up, but that everyone around me needed therapy instead. I probably even told my parents that they should go to therapy instead of me.

Still, my life just seems like my boring old life to me. I hardly seem as messed up as I actually have been in real life. Doesn’t everyone try to kill themselves these days?!? I mean really! Don’t most people have eating disorders? No? What? And the psychosis? Well, I know that isn’t *quite* normal, but it isn’t THAT bizarre once it happens to you. Only, it kind of is bizarre. I guess a little more strange than “normal.” I just have to laugh about it all. It seems so ridiculous! All of it. My whole life really seems spectacularly odd is all. I really can’t imagine a life more “normal” than mine. That is why I am always surprised when I talk about one little thing in my life and people look at me funny.

Anyway, back to the realizing you are fucked up in the head. If you are new to the business of realizing it, just take the time and let it sink in, because it takes a LONG LONG time to really let it absorb properly. I think it is because once pretty much ALL of us were in the “normal” spectrum, even the ones like me who eventually jump ship into crazy-land. It seems to me like everyone pretty much likes to be “normal” in some way, even if you are a “normal” tightrope walker or a “normal” person with blue hair who likes to hang from your piercings. There is still a community for your type of normal out there. When we are kids, we are all sort of “normal.” No one really says to their teacher “yah, I want to grow up to be the guy who walks around the streets talking to voices! YAH!!!”

A lot of people say “oh, you shouldn’t use terms like ‘normal’. No one is really ‘normal’ anyway!” But really, there are NORMAL people in the world, even if the term is somewhat corrupt, so I am going to use the word normal and I’m going to quit using quote marks around it by God! haha.

I know that I am somewhat normal in some ways, but in other ways not so much, and that is okay. We grow up thinking that we want to be superstars and the best of something, but no one really wants to be completely off the charts weird. I’m just going to say, you can survive being weird. You don’t have to be a superstar. It is just important to realize that in some ways you, or at least I, am different from normal people. Part of accepting my mental illness means accepting my non-normalness, because if you think you are normal, you most likely won’t take your medication, and for people like me, people with schizophrenia, you need to realize that medication will and does help if you are on the right meds.

I don’t even know why I’m writing this. It is just something I was thinking about as I was looking out the window today. Specifically, I was thinking with a chuckle how I used to think that it was everyone else who needed a psychiatrist and NOT me. And it was just so hard realizing how it was me that was messed up and me that needed help. That’s all.

Review: Loud In the House of Myself by Stacy Pershall

Acceptance, Anorexia, Anti-anxiety meds, Anti-depressants, Anti-psychotics, Anxiety, Ativan, Autobiography, Binge Eating, Bipolar, Black & White, Body, Body Image, Books, Borderline Personality, Bulimia, Compulsive Eating, Compulsive Exercising, Depakote, Depression, Eating Disorders, EDNOS, insanity, Internet, Kristin Bell, Lithium, Loud In the House of Myself, Mania, Manic, Manic-Depressive, MAO Inhibitors, memoir, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Mood Stabilizers, Navane, Prozac, Psych Meds, Psychiatrist, Psychiatry, Psychoactive Substances, Psychology, Reading, Review, Self-Harm, Self-Injury, Stacy Pershall, Stories, strange girl, Suicide, Surviving, Thin, Weightloss

Loud In the House of Myself: Memoir of a Strange Girl is a new book by Stacy Pershall. Of course, I was immediately drawn to this memoir, because it is a) a memoir b) about a “strange girl” and c) deals with mental illness. Yay! Since I’m undoubtably a strange mentally ill girl, I knew I had to read this. Pershall writes about her life growing up in Arkansas and her morphing from an über-sensitive child into a teenager and young adult with Borderline and Bipolar issues. Anyone familiar with the mental illness memoir genre will certainly have heard of Elizabeth Wurtzel, and I just bring her up, because UNLIKE Wurtzel, Pershall is not whiny in her writing! Pershall is matter-of-fact about her trials and symptoms, even though the reader can imagine the actual playing out of illness to be much more harsh and unbearable.

Pershall describes her unrelenting eating disorder, mood swings and suicide attempts with a steady and precise hand. This book seems really accessible to me, because Pershall speaks not only to those of us who have been through the mental health care system, but also to people who might not really understand this special weirdness. The only thing I would like to see more of in this book is more OF this book! haha. Seriously though, I enjoyed reading this memoir and would love to read more from Pershall. I would especially recommend this book to people struggling with Borderline Personality Disorder. There is a special misery only known by Borderlines that is never really represented in the books that ostensibly deal with Borderline Personality Disorder. I really wish there were more accounts like this that show the uncrazy through the crazy of Borderline Personality Disorder.

Go All the Way or Go Home: Name-calling in the Media

Acceptance, Arizona, Bipolar, Culture of Violence, Denial, Discrimination, Ethics, Gabrielle Giffords, gunman, Guns, Hate, insanity, Kristin Bell, Lunatic, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Nutcase, Psychiatry, Psycho, Psychosis, rhetoric, Schizophrenia, shooting

I seem to be one of the few liberal-ish people who thinks that the Arizona shooting had more to do with mental illness than politics, and I think it is kind of ironic that a great majority of the Left is talking about “dangerous” rhetoric while simultaneously throwing pejoratives about mental illness and the mentally ill around like “crazy.” Everything from “nutter” to “nutjob” to “lunatic,” “crazies,” “wacko” and every other euphemism for the mentally ill that you can think of—except a plain “mentally ill.” If the Left is really so worried about a culture of bad rhetoric, then I say they should go all the way or go home. In other words, stop calling mentally ill people disrespectful names (of course, the Right is rampant with this too). This kind of vilification of the mentally ill does exactly what the Left is talking about the rhetoric of gunning people down does—it objectifies people and dismisses their humanity. But, I guess that it is okay to diss the crazies, because we aren’t really people afterall are we? We are just wild animals that need to be chained and shot for the good of everyone. Well, that is what a lot of people seem to believe, especially when something tragic happens like the shooting in Arizona. What happened in Arizona was wrong and awful, but despite peoples’ desires to paint the tragedy into black and white terms where there is good on one side and evil on another, in reality the good and evil don’t exist. They are words we’ve made up to downplay and deny the complexities of situations that we have a difficult time understanding. We can do better.

Steps To Body Acceptance: A Process

Acceptance, Anorexia, Binge Eating, Body, Body Image, Bulimia, Compulsive Eating, Compulsive Exercising, Discrimination, Eating Disorders, EDNOS, Extended Plus Size, Fat, Fat Acceptance, Fat Hatred, Health, Kristin Bell, Mental Health, Plus Size, Self-Harm, Steps To Body Acceptance, Supersize, Thin, Weight, Weightloss, Weightloss Industry

It has been a long while since I’ve written about body acceptance. I sort of ran out of “steps” that I could think of. For me, it really is a process. I told my therapist that when it comes to weight, weightloss and size acceptance, I feel like I am walking on a balance beam. Not quite a tightrope, but still balancing nonetheless.

Over this past year quite a lot has changed. My blood sugar levels were elevated with an A1C level of 6.3, so my nurse practitioner qualified me as diabetic. She also did other blood work and discovered that I was really low in Vitamin D and that my thyroid was off (hypothyroidism ), so I started meds for those too. I decided that I was sick of people suggesting that I get a gastric bypass, and I felt like I really could be in better shape, so with the combo of meds for my thyroid and blood sugar, watching what I eat a little more, and getting a bit of exercise, I have lost some weight.

However, I still want to maintain my outlook as one of size-acceptance. I know it seems kind of weird to say I am for size-acceptance and still be trying to lose some weight. There really is no manual for this kind of thing, so I’m just working on it as best I can. I am taking steps to improve my health. I got my A1C level down to 5.3 (non-diabetic) so far and my other labs are looking better. I’m still taking meds, but I’m TRYING to take a bit better care of my body. I know that at my size I am not quite as healthy as I could be, but I also know that I am not going to starve myself and turn into a raging bulimic again to try to maintain and lose weight (well, I really hope not at any rate!!!).

But, it is hard in some respects, because when I do make some attempt to pay attention to what I am eating, all of those negative thoughts tend to come back to haunt me. Thoughts like if I eat something “bad” I am being a “bad” person. My therapist calls thoughts like that ANTS (automatic negative thoughts). You know, some months I might gain some weight or not lose weight, and I have to be okay with that.

As a person who has struggled with weight issues all of my life, it isn’t like losing weight is just a matter of calories in and calories out. It is a whole quilt of past experiences, thoughts and feelings related to weight and how I have dealt with things throughout my life as a fat person.

So, I feel like I’m in a process of understanding how to accept myself and my body while trying to take some steps to improve my health. For me, it is important to remember that at the end of the day, the whole world drifts away and what matters is how *I* feel and how *I* can function and accept my body in this life. So, maybe I want to lose some more weight, but I still eat. I still eat “bad” stuff and I’m not ever going to live on a diet of celery, that is for sure. I don’t want to give up my life and I don’t want to give up eating. I just want to live my life the best I can!

P.S. And just so you know I am not anywhere near skinny, I have posted a picture of myself that was taken a couple of days ago! lol