Blog Series Guest Post: Looking Back

Author: Cate Luther

Bio: I'm Cate, a former classroom teacher who taught for over 20 years. Now I'm a stay-at-home-mom, blogger and educational advocate. Check out my blog at : Raising a Drama Queen. I also have a Facebook page called: Raising a Drama Queen: Adventures with Autism and Bipolar Disorder.

I grew up in a time where mental illness was not like it is today. Both of my parents had their challenges with this.

In my father I saw it when I was a young child. He was diagnosed with what at the time was called Paranoid Schizophrenia. Now it is just called Schizophrenia. He was brilliant yet couldn’t hold a steady job. In many ways he was like the character in “A Beautiful Mind.” I’m not sure why, but he refused to get the help he needed. Perhaps it was because of the stigma surrounding mental health. It may have been that he was in denial. I remember one incident that I witnessed. Like many with Schizophrenia, my dad had an unhealthy perspective of religion. He thought he could audible hear God’s voice. On that day it told him that his sons’ toys were of the devil. He took a hammer to all of their toys while standing over a trashcan in front of our house. Another time, I was told that he felt that my mom was of the devil and so were her children. He had brought home some holy water from church. He chased my mom and my little brother around the house trying to sprinkle them with it in hopes that it would purify them. Shortly after these two incidents my mom left my dad. She saw that he was becoming more and more unstable. Even though the church she grew up in frowned upon divorce, she valued our lives more than being right.

Back in the early 1970’s when all of this was unfolding, my mom didn’t have many places to turn to for help. She eventually found us a place to live and secured a job for herself. She did all of this while suppressing all of her own mental health issues.

As a young college student I sought out a counselor to help me heal from the pain of my past. She told me that I should be angry with my mom for some poor choices. I felt that I couldn’t since my mom very well may have saved my life and my brothers’ lives. I knew she was doing the best that she could.

While I was growing up, I heard that my mom had had a nervous breakdown. (This is now referred to as a psychotic break.) I was told that this occurred shortly after her marriage to my father. This was before she had any children. The story goes that she had never been on her own before marriage. The stress of being married and having to be a grown up, became too much for my mom. She spent some time in a mental institution where she received electric shock therapy. It would be almost thirty years before she was admitted again.

After she left my dad, my mom hunkered down and raised my brothers and I. We became her life’s work. We’d see glimmers of her instability from time to time. I remember feeling like I was my mother’s mother. I had to be the strong one. I was not allowed to grow up. My mom was narcissistic. We were supposed to feel sorry for all of her struggles. I was the one to comfort her on many occasions. Even though I felt this tremendous pressure to be my mom’s rock, I still had to take care of myself.

The first thing that I did was to go away to college. My mom was proud of me, but also terrified that I would grow up and leave her. We all eventually did. I had only partially left the nest while in college since I still came home on weekends and school breaks. My youngest brother was the first to officially fly the coop when he left after high school to join the army. Then several years later my older brother got married and left as well. After college, I left home even though I was still living in the same city as my mom. She tried to hold it together by keeping herself busy with various activities. I know it was a tremendous strain for her. You could see it on her face and in her words.

I finally met the man of my dreams when I was 32. I married him a little over a year after meeting him. Although my mom was extremely happy to see me get married, it caused her a lot of grief. She knew that she could no longer lean on me for support. Little by little I saw her slip away. One day she thought she was having a heart attack. I took her to the emergency room at our local hospital. After running some tests, the doctor told her that it was a panic attack. These episodes started to increase in frequency. One thing led to another. Eventually, she was hospitalized for mental health concerns. These hospitalizations became episodic as well. Finally, the hospital social worker convinced me to look for an assisted living facility for my mom. She retired from her job as well. My little brother helped me move her belongings there. He also helped me transport her there after she was discharged from her latest hospital stay.  Sadly, the assisted living facility really did not know how to help my mom. Within a few months of moving there, we moved her to a board and care facility. As time progressed so did my mom’s illness. Her last was schizoaffective disorder. That means she was depressed and had hallucinations and delusional thinking.

During all of my mom’s many hospitalizations I became a mom to my own sweet child. I spent many days working, caring for my child and caring for my mom.  I also found myself driving home in tears after visiting my mom. I mourned the loss of my mom. I mourned the grandmother my daughter would never really get to know. Had my mom been well, she would have made an amazing grandma. There were times when friends and family would come with me to visit my mom. Many times I went by myself. It was really hard because no one knew how to really help me.

(From the author: Pictured is me, my daughter and my mom during a time she was ill. Even in her suffering she was so happy we came to see her.)

Then in March of 2008, a doctor called me with some disturbing news. I was told that my 
mom had been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. The doctor didn’t think she would survive it. He told me to “circle the wagons.” I had to call all of our friends and family to let them know about this. My mom died less than a week later. I think she gave up the will to live.

A year later my dad passed away. Even though I had forgiven him for many things, we never had the father daughter relationship that I so desperately wanted.

Through all of the heartache and pain that mental illness put me through. It did prepare me to be the kind of mom my own child, who lives with mental illness, needed.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post about that.

Blog Series Post: My Medications

Author: Me

I take medicine every single day that would put most people on the ground, but it actually helps me to stay upright.  I have been stable on these specific meds for about 4 years now, and it is a major blessing.  These meds make my moods stable, help me not have so many racing thoughts, and help me to not have overwhelming, debilitating anxiety.  These are the meds I take every day.

The 3 blue pills are my anti-psychotic/ mood stabilizer.  I have never been psychotic, but these pills are good for helping people with Bipolar to control our moods.  I take these pills every night before bed.  The big white pill is another mood stabilizer. I also take this every night before bed.  The half yellow pill is an anti-anxiety med and I am proud to say that I take the lowest possible dose!  I also take that every night before bed.  The two pink pills are my anti-depressant.  I take these in the morning and they obviously help with my depression.

I am very thankful for medications that help.  They are quite strong, as all psychiatric meds tend to be, and most psych meds have side effects.  I am lucky that I do not have side effects with these meds.  They work very well with my body, and if I forget to take them (which I only do about once a year by accident), I will not sleep at all that night, and I will be very sick.  I have learned to ALWAYS take my meds because they help me and if I don't, I will get sick.

I have been stable on this "cocktail" of meds for 4 years, and I am very thankful for them!  They are literally life-saving meds that help me to not be suicidal, too.  They keep me living.

Blog Series Guest Post: The Pain of Eating

Author: Leslie Kassal

Bio:  .....I remember being about 4 or 5 and feeling as if something was different, wrong, "too private"....as if I was not healthy, but growing inward, and disturbed.  In retrospect, I was carrying more sadness than any child should have borne.

Now, I am 65, and more whole than I have ever been.  I am grateful for expert psychiatrists, medicine, hospitalizations, and friends like Megan Roach, that I have met along the way.......

I think I was born with shame.  For too long, I have felt guilty simply for being, for existing -- as if everyone had the right to be, but not I.

In 1967 I developed anorexia nervosa.  In some ways it was my cry to not exist.  I felt guilty for weighing anything, and wanted to be No Thing.

I was 16 years old, and already mired in mental illness.  Today I am 65 and have survived rather triumphantly.  I would like to explain how I have survived, thanks to binge eating.

Surely, many will know the term Binge Eating as an eating disorder.  I have been hospitalized numerous times when my binge eating seemed so beyond my control, that I felt it might perforate my stomach; and I have felt so helpless in the face of Binge Eating that I thought my only way out of the pain it induced in me, that suicide was my only option.

Binge Eating Disorder (BED) usually involves eating large amounts of food when not hungry, rapidly, or eating that way past satiety, and usually when alone, in secret.  BED does not include any compensatory actions that are seen in bulimia nervosa, when one may exercise or use laxatives or vomit, to compensate for excessive eating.  I am a lay person, and I am describing from my vantage point; certainly your physician, or an eating disorder professional can aid in better understanding of these monstrous illnesses.

After recovering from my own time with self-starvation, I went to an opposite pole.  I began to eat anything and everything I could get my hands on, with a sense of nothing ever being enough.

I was in college at that point, and I stole food in the dining room and out of the dorm rooms of other students.  I would sit in the cafeteria at the trays of what others had left behind, and eat that.

I ate out of garbage cans.  In retrospect, I believe I was, in part, experiencing psychosis.  I do not think I could help any of what I was doing, nor was I truly aware, in reality, of how my actions must have seemed to other people.  All I wanted was to eat, all I wanted was the food.

And throughout all these ensuing decades, I have continued to binge.  The rapidity and voraciousness of my eating have slowed down, but I still binge -- particularly after eating with others in social situations, and when behind the closed doors of my apartment.

Shame filled me.  My body became fatter and fatter.  At some point I lost track of how large I truly am, and how I come across to others.  I am very very large.  My body has in some real ways broken down, because I eat so much and I rarely exercise.

But, after many hospitalizations for eating dis-order, and attempts to heal in conjunction with therapies, nutritional, cognitive, personal, something has helped me like never before in my life.

I have thrown off my shame.

I have embraced who I am - my weight, my body, my binge eating.  It is part of who I am, and that is very very okay with me.

Perhaps in retrospect, I truly owe a debt to food and to binge eating.  It has kept me alive -- dousing my horrendous life-long suicidal thoughts like nothing else.  When I am in very bad emotional pain, I use food: to anesthetize, to comfort.

This has been my path.  I am who I am, and that includes being an individual who binge eats.  I am fat.  I am alive.

And I give thanks, for it all.

Blog Series: Realizing Abuse Was Trauma (potential trigger)

Author: Me

I have a tendency to not view my experiences and abuse from my mother as trauma, but I know that that's what it was.  Trauma is defined as a deeply distressing or disturbing experience, and that is what I experienced for many years.

My mother began emotionally abusing me around the age of 6, when she and my dad were going through a bitter divorce.  My mother was so deeply hurt and she took it out on me, and only me.  I always wanted to be with my dad, but my older sister and I only got to see him on Wednesday nights and every other weekend.  I was always upset about that, and my mother wanted me to hate my dad because he cheated on her and went on to marry his mistress.  My mother hated them, and she would get angry with me because I wanted to be with my dad and step mom.  I think that I reminded my mother a lot of my dad, and she hated him, so therefore, she hated me.

Her abuse was very subtle, to the point where I didn't even want to call it abuse for a very long time.  She used guilt, manipulation, and brain-washing to get me to do her bidding, which was mainly to live with her and hate my dad.  I hated living with her and went to live with my dad's family a couple of times throughout my growing up years, and she used massive guilt to get me to move back.  Every. Single. Time.  

She always wanted to fool herself into thinking that she had a close relationship with all of her children- two biological daughters and three stepdaughters.  She was and has always been all about appearances, and I'm not into that at all, mostly due to her.

I believe with everything that is in me that my mother's abuse created negative coping skills within me, and that she made it possible for the mental illnesses that were already in me to come out.  I tried to end my life at age 14 because I kept all of her abuse inside and that led to depression.  I was diagnosed with Major Depression at the hospital, but when I tried to tell the doctors and nurses that it was my mother who was abusing me, they just said that I had a chemical imbalance.  And, like with everything that didn't sit well with her, my mother simply swept my illness under the rug and pretended like I was fine. Except I was dying inside.

I got through high school, and graduated from a community college, but when I went away to a four-year school, everything fell apart. I could not cope with anything, and, over the course of many years, I tried to kill myself many times, was hospitalized many times, and began self-injuring.  

After a major suicide attempt at age 24, I was sent to live in a group home for people with serious mental illness.  I hated it and felt like my family had abandoned me there.  I hated life and didn't want to live at all, and so I lived there for more than two years.  While living at the group home, I was correctly diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder.  I truly believe that I developed these disorders directly because of my mother's abuse.  I did not have good coping skills, or self-esteem, and developed very harmful ways of dealing with life.  The abuse was the worst thing I have ever experienced as far as trauma goes.

After another serious suicide attempt, I was sitting on a psych unit, and I was praying that I would have some reason to live, because I had none.  All of a sudden, I heard God say "You're worth it to me and I love you."  In that moment, I knew I would be okay.  I called my dad and told him that I was going to be okay.  

After that healing thing happened, I was able to stop self-injuring, I moved out of the group home, and got an apartment with my housing voucher.  My disability payments started coming through, so I was able to live a pretty good life and support myself in my apartment.  I even went back to school and completed my Bachelor's Degree in Psychology.  I was doing okay, but still in contact with my mother, so the abuse continued, although it wasn't nearly as bad as it had been growing up.  But, her abuse was so ingrained in me that I didn't want to be around her, but couldn't cut off communication because she still had me within her grasp.

In 2007, I met my amazing and accepting wife and she gave me the courage to cut off contact with my mother.  And it was the best thing I have ever done for myself!  I only rarely email her now, and that has worked out very well for me.  It has been almost 7 years that I have had very little contact with my mother, and in those 7 years, I have been able to heal leaps and bounds!  I am no longer subject to immense guilt, manipulation, or brain-washing. I am free to live life on my own terms without worrying about my mother or what she thinks.  

I also wanted to mention a book that I have read that is called Toxic Mom Toolkit.  It is all about toxic moms and how to deal with them, and it has helped me to realize that emotional abuse is trauma.  I used to think that because I wasn't physically or sexually abused, or because I don't have PTSD, I couldn't claim that what I went through was trauma.  After reading that book, I now realize that emotional abuse is trauma.  

In conclusion, I am currently living well with all of my illnesses, and have been for several years.  I am a volunteer with NAMI Baltimore and that has been life changing.  I've been in therapy for over 8 years, been seeing a psychiatrist for over 6 years, and I've been stable on meds for 5 years.  I've talked through my trauma a lot and continue to talk about it and how it still affects me with my therapist.  I have healed a lot and continue to heal every day.

Blog Series Guest Post: My Life With Depression

Author: Philip Kaplan

Bio: I am a 37 year old resident of Towson, Maryland, although I originally hail from Jersey. I spent over seven years as a lawyer for parents in custody cases initiated by Child Protective Services. I struggle with severe depression and am in treatment for it. In the past, I have served as a judge and scorer in regional high school mock trial competitions, as well as an appellate moot court judge in law school practice exercises. I am a huge fan of random acts of kindness/generosity and was fortunate enough to have gotten the chance to be one of the Kmart "layaway angels" making the rounds in recent years. More currently, I am a proud member of and volunteer for NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). In my spare time, I enjoy power walks, pop music, twisted humor, and deep conversations.



I was 11 years old when I began having thoughts of wanting to die. I remember feeling hopeless about everything. I saw death as an escape. These feelings would only grow in intensity. But I remained just functional enough so that my parents didn't see it as a problem. My mother, with whom I otherwise had a close relationship, dismissed it as "normal teen moodiness." 





Finally, at age 15, I was taken to a therapist who quickly diagnosed me with major depression. By this time, I was practically failing 9th grade because I had no motivation for school. After almost throwing myself out of a 23 story window, I was hospitalized. Over the next few years, my life would consist of endless medication trials, therapy, outpatient programs, a transfer to an alternative high school, and some really, really bad times. Mood wise, I experienced chronic unhappiness, punctuated by acute feelings of frightening despair.  

At 19, right after my freshman year at college, I was hospitalized again, and a decision was made to discontinue all the medication I had been taking. None of it had seemed to help. Miraculously, the discontinuation of my meds resulted in my depression ending in a matter of months. Over that summer, all the darkness seemed to lift, and my mood began to improve dramatically. I felt like I had been unchained and benevolently freed from some deep pit. I began experiencing a sense of confidence and optimism that had eluded me throughout my entire adolescence. I returned to college in the fall, pronouncing myself depression-free and terminating all therapy.

At this point, I was a motivated student-- an intellectually curious philosophy major-- and was doing well in my classes. Intent on proving myself, I put all my focus on school and outward achievement. I graduated from college with multiple honors and headed off to law school. Everyone was proud of me. I was proud of myself. How far I'd come. I told myself I was on my way up in the world.

But all was not well. I was 22 and had never even been on a date with a girl. My teenage depression and resulting social isolation had made attempting to date unthinkable. And even in college, I had put dating on the back burner, instead choosing to focus on academic/career goals. Not to mention that I was a commuter student who had lived at home and had never become very involved in the campus scene. 

Now I was in my early 20s, about to start law school in a new city, having moved away from home for the first time. I felt my dating inexperience, and I hated it. 

I don't believe I was clinically depressed during my 20s. But I was not happy, either. In between managing the stressors of being a law student, I was struggling to date. At 25, I started dating the woman who would become my first girlfriend, and I would stay with her until I was 32. We would be together throughout my next batch of major life stressors: the bar exam, job hunting, moving to another new city (with my girlfriend, who also got a job there), and beginning work as an attorney. In many ways, we were good together. In other ways, we were not right for each other at all, and on some level, I think we always knew that. 

We broke up, and now I was struggling to date again. I was also dealing with some serious job dissatisfaction. Still, I would not call myself depressed.

Yet.

Around age 34, my general unhappiness began crossing that line. It was a line I was familiar with. The line-- sometimes clear and sometimes blurred-- that separates unhappiness from clinical depression. I felt like I could no longer hold it together and pretend that everything was more or less fine. I had trouble getting through the work day. My friends became worried because I'd start talking about hating my life and wishing I were dead. I was battling those same feelings of hopelessness and despair that haunted me as a teenager.

That was three years ago. I am 37 now, and unfortunately, I have had to accept the fact that I am dealing with a recurrence of depression. I have a great therapist, great friends, and supportive family. And yet there are still so many unresolved problems, so many questions I can't answer. The best I can do is keep moving forward, not being ashamed of my struggles, and continue to fight off those darker moods when they come.

Blog Series Guest Post: 10 Things My Children With Depression Taught Me

Author: Michelle Belles 

Bio: I am Michelle the mom to three adult children, two of which suffer from mental illness. Our journey hasn't always been easy, but it's been more than worth it. My children are a blessing and a lesson. They have made me strong, kind, and courageous through their journey to a healthier, happier state of mind.

What do you do when you find out you're the mom of children who suffer from mental illness? You learn from it. 10 things my children with depression have taught me. 

1. 1. Depression is an illness, just like high blood pressure or the flu. You don't just shake it off, or man up. You have to have medical care. Therapy and medication. If you broke your leg you'd take pain medication and see a doctor to have your leg set and cast. With depression you get medication to help regulate the chemical imbalance in the brain and see a therapist to help reset your way of thinking. 
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3. 2. I am strong. It took the strength of Hercules to admit my youngest child into a long term care facility. Putting his needs first was easier said than done. Truly putting someone else first takes commitment; you have to think with your head and not your heart.
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5. 3. Prayer is power. When no one else has time for you and your problems God is always available and willing to listen. Worry about nothing, pray about everything. 
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7. 4. It is not my job to make my children happy. Happiness is a state of mind that they must choose for themselves. I can't give or buy them happiness, happiness is a mindset and way of life.
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9. 5. Cutting people out of your life is okay. If someone is negative and can't be supportive of your situation, let them go. Sometimes it will even be family members. Removing the negative makes more room for the positive.
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11. 6. “I don't know” is an acceptable answer. Not everyone can put a voice to their thoughts and feelings and sometimes you just don't know. 
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13. 7. Communication is a learned skill. Listening to someone talk without interpretation, giving them permission to speak freely, and giving honest feedback that makes them feel validated requires you to be 100% honesty no matter what and speaking facts not feelings.
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15. 8. Saying “F*ck it”, is okay. Sometimes things just get too overwhelming and there are no words that express how they’re truly feeling. Allowing them to say “f*ck it” gives them time to take a minute and reset. If any of my children drop the F bomb, I know it's time to give them space.
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17. 9. When one of my children says “let it go, mom” they really need me to just let it go. Harping on a subject doesn't make it better and sometimes they really are capable of handling things on their own. 
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19. 10. I'm the best mom I know how to be for them and that's enough. I am always available to listen when they need me, I support them even when I don't agree with them, and I keep my promises always. I love them unconditionally always.

What it's like to be actively hypo-manic

I am very hypo-manic right now, so I thought I'd write down how it feels to people who have never experienced it before but would like to know.  It feels weird.  I have a ton of anxiety over absolutely nothing at all.  I just went out to lunch with my wife and ordered a small salad and could not even finish it because my appetite was immediately turned off.  I had to literally force myself to chew and swallow the food, and finally I just gave up and stopped eating it.  This always happens when I am hypo-manic.  I have such bad anxiety that food doesn't even taste good.  In fact, a lot of times when I'm hypo-manic, food smells terrible and makes my stomach turn.  This is what happens when I have regular anxiety without hypomania, too.

I feel very shaky.  My arms feel super shaky and my hands feel like I should not be holding anything because I will drop it.  My hands are also very fidgety. I can't keep them still, and so typing this on my phone actually is giving my hands something to do.  But, if I were not typing this, I would be wringing my hands, playing with them, or playing with the bracelet that is in my right wrist.  (It says "My story isn't over yet ; " and I wear it as part of the Semicolon Project.). I do it all the time when I'm hypo-manic and don't even realize that I'm doing it.  It is just natural.  I also am constantly fidgeting my face.  Not playing with it or fidgeting WITH it, but just making faces, I guess you could say.  Moving my eyebrows, forehead, mouth, nose.  I literally just cannot help it and I don't like that I do it.

My mind is racing with thoughts, but it can't stop on one thought, so I really don't even know what I'm thinking.  I couldn't even focus on what my wife was saying at lunch, and I was constantly looking around. I would look above her head, or at the tv that was on in the restaurant.  There was a lot of stimuli and my head was spinning.  I was desperately trying to listen to my wife, but I couldn't really remember what she was saying.  

I get easily upset when I am hypo-manic, too.  My wife usually just doesn't say anything and gives me space because anything could set me off to pick a fight with her.  Usually I start out talking really fast and can't stop to focus on any one thought so it's hard to keep up with me a lot of times.  Usually I only do this at first, and that is what happened today.  That is how my wife knows that I am hypo-manic.  Usually I will say that I am hypo-manic and she will say "I know" or "I thought so" or "yeah, you're acting like you are".  She usually knows from my behavior that I am even before I tell her.  

I don't have ADD, but I think that being hypo-manic probably feels much the same as it does.  But, I don't know because I don't have ADD.  Luckily, I usually only am hypo-manic once in a while.  It is not a pleasant feeling at all.  I don't like the anxiety, the racing thoughts, the not being able to focus, and I don't think it makes me more creative in the least.  I hate it and usually I just try to lay low, watch tv, play on my phone, and just wait for it to pass.  Usually it only happens at night, or in the evening, so I can just lay down for bed and try to sleep. Obviously, I never can sleep, but I'll lay in bed with my eyes open for three hours or so and just try to calm down.  And, usually my eyes just become so tired, and my brain so tired of the racing thoughts, that I will just fall asleep after a few hours.

I try not to be around people if I can help it.  I know what I'm acting like, and that I can't pay attention, so I just try to not talk and just stay by myself.  It's better that way, for everyone involved.

Being hypo-manic is no fun for me.  I hate it.  But, usually in the morning, I will wake up feeling okay, albeit quite tired, but okay.  

So, that's what being actively hypo-manic is like for me. I am hypo-manic right now, and so I decided to write about it while it is happening.  I hope it helps people to understand that I'm not trying to be like this. In fact, I am trying to NOT be like this.  I hope that this helps you understand a little more about it and how it really feels.