Second 3-Month Review

Wow, it’s hard to believe this blog is already 6 months old! It’s grown a lot since I created it in mid-December. I’d like to say I’ve grown a lot, too – at least, I’ve gained a better understanding and acceptance of what’s going on in my brain, and turned my focus toward tending to my mental health needs. I don’t always do my best with that, but at least I’m trying; at least it’s my priority.

So far I’ve published 105 posts (this will be #106) and Fox has published 2: “Masculinity, Tools of Violence, and Embracing Femininity” and “From a Supporter’s Point of View”. A Day with Depression has gained over 100 followers and receives over 400 views per month from visitors all around the world! I cannot express how inspired I am by the readers of this blog. Thank you all so much for your support!

The dark blue columns indicate number of visitors per month, while the light blue columns indicate number of views. Click the image to view a larger version.

I would like to extend a special thank-you to international readers, who make up at least 1/3 of the visitors to this blog. Click the image to view a larger version.

I posted my First 3-Month Review on March 12th; check that out to read a synthesis of posts from mid-December through mid-March, organized by theme. My current review begins just after that post.

As tempting as it is to focus primarily on my depression, anxiety is a significant factor in my life that affects everything from my ability to get ready and go places in a timely manner, to my ability to sleep, to food choices, to my very career. On March 15th I changed my tagline to reflect this. I also reflected on the primary sources of anxiety at the time: my rats’ health, my own academic performance, and becoming a caretaker for Mom (who was, at the time, preparing to receive double knee replacement surgery). In all these situations I felt like I lacked control, questioned my ability to “perform” well, and expected to have unpleasant experiences. It didn’t help that I felt “violently torn and ripped to shreds” by Mom’s expectation that I would meet her needs arising from a decision she had made, in combination with (what I perceived as) her simultaneous lack of respect for a decision I had made.

I found that taking action seemed to help reduce the anxiety – at least temporarily. “Taking action” included doing my homework and beginning to take anxiety medication (Buspar) in addition to the SSRI (Zoloft); I’m thinking perhaps it should also include regular exercise. The thing about taking action that relieves anxiety is that it gives at least a small amount (or semblance) of control over a stressful situation. For example, I take control over my academic performance by doing my schoolwork, which generally turns out to be high quality. But in life there are a lot of extra factors involved, such as noises waking me up in the middle of the night and the job market and my difficulty finding clothes I like that fit and how expensive everything is and the cruel malicious things people with power and wealth do to make a profit and misogyny and all the messages in mainstream American/Western culture that make me want to turn into the Hulk and destroy everything associated with it.

Click the image to read the blog post: “Being Carrie Marin.”

Sometimes I need “taking action” to mean blocking it all out; my default form of doing so is to play a game where my character doesn’t have to deal with all that shit. She can take more direct action to accomplish things I feel I (currently) cannot: earning money, creating things with value to herself and others, dressing sensibly but fashionably, traveling, making friends, and ridding the world of evildoers (and people who piss me off). Best of all, anxiety is never an obstacle for my character; she never has to worry about the sacrifices involved in “desirable” life transitions (as I described in Giving In). If the shit hits the fan, I can reload a recent save and try again!

In early April, “taking action” meant making the very difficult decision to drop the two graduate-level courses I need to complete my degree and enter my chosen career. I had already waited 2 years to take them and will have to wait 2 more years. But my anxiety and self-criticism attached to those courses were posing a significant threat to my health, possibly even my life. It was the first time I made such a huge sacrifice in my academic life to tend to my mental health.
What I Need + Withdrawn + Taking Off the Mask + Grace

Around the same time I started using poetry as a means of expressing what I found difficult to say in prose. Themes included: my need for space to rest and work through the depression (Wish & Taking Off the Mask), my guilt about spending so much time playing The Sims 3 instead of with Dog (Groundhog Day), what I was trying to block out (Re: Groundhog Day), anxiety (Nightmare), and why I was avoiding my mother (Silence).

Then, the shit hit the fan. Fox learned he had to move out of his apartment after the end of the semester and requested to move in with me. I addressed my thoughts and feelings regarding the matter in Living Together, but the issue went on the back burner until fairly recently. We’ve both been stressed out of our minds about the whole moving process: his need for me to drive him there and back, sorting through and packing his possessions, and finding space for everything in my home. I’ve been procrastinating going through and reorganizing my own stuff because I’d find that stressful in the best of times, and right now I’m terrified of merging with him. A huge part of why I tend to get up in the middle of the night is because it’s the only time I can truly be alone, focused 100% on whatever I choose.

While Fox moving in was on the back burner, Mom had her double knee replacement surgery. I was overwhelmed by anxiety for her, frustration about not really being able to do anything for her, my own fear and hatred of hospitals & medical professionals (stemming in part from bad past experiences when loved ones – e.g. my father – were terminally ill), my inability to manage other responsibilities such as schoolwork and chores, and my resentment toward her for being able to receive the treatment and support she needed – including from me – while I felt left largely on my own to try and survive with severe depression and anxiety. I was eventually able to talk to her about some of this stuff and found her to be more compassionate, concerned, and supportive than I’d expected. She’s actually been quite independent (and willing to call on other people for help), doing all she can to lessen the pressure on me – especially as she gains mobility. She also shows a lot of appreciation for my efforts to help her.
PANIC!!! + Don’t Hurt My Mommy! + How to Visit Mom in the Hospital + (Barely) Holding It Together + Sculpture + Communication + Awesome

An unexpected self-portrait.

As if all this weren’t enough, I’ve been struggling with my own symptoms and lack of much-needed treatment. I was off my meds for five days (ending a week before Mom’s surgery) because I couldn’t juggle refilling the prescription in a timely manner with everything else that was going on. I kept seeing disturbing images of knives cutting various parts of my body. I was hurt and angered by Psychiatrist B when he interrupted me in the middle of talking about suicidal and self-harm ideation to take a phone call. A later conversation with Wakana (who had hoped to coordinate treatment with him) confirmed that I need to find a new psychiatrist. I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet because I’m frustrated with the whole process and have been distracted by everyday shit such as the end of the semester, followed immediately by Fox’s move. I’ve been hypersensitive to loud clangy sounds, to the point where I had a severe anxiety response to an action movie. Wakana had to cancel a few of our sessions due to health and family issues, and I had to request phone sessions because I lacked the energy, motivation and/or time management skills to get to her office. I’ve been so physically and mentally exhausted and obsessed with Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion that I haven’t been able to focus enough to express my thoughts and emotions through writing or other creative means (on most days).

That said, I have made some efforts to express and care for myself. The Bloody Arms Project was an attempt to channel the self-harm ideation (which mostly involved an urge to cut my arms) and the painful emotions behind it into artwork. Not long afterward I discovered the joy and catharsis of Sculpture, which enabled me to channel my anguish into art I took pride in and perceived as beautiful.

“Sculpture” also became a metaphor for taking control over my own life and depression treatment, including asserting my needs in conversations with Mom. I learned about the potential benefits of aromatherapy and had the opportunity to try it out, with good results. Although I have yet to really act on taking a full day once per week to focus exclusively on my own health (Ziya’s Day), it was after I asserted this need that Mom really started being more independent and turning to other people (instead of just me) for help.

Finally, Writer’s Block, In Search of Truth, and this untitled post were my recent attempts to express myself visually when I didn’t have the words to write. For now I feel it’s best to let them speak for themselves.

Domestic Violence

I was interrupted from my early morning insomniac reading by what sounded like a woman crying and talking in a very rushed, upset voice. It sounded like it was coming from nearby, but outside. Then the doorbell rang three times; I thought, who could possibly be ringing the bell this early in the morning? I’m not answering it! But then Fox came into the room and said he didn’t know what to do, he’s not officially a member of this household yet but it sounded like someone was calling for help. I was off the couch in an instant – if someone needed help, I wanted to help them.

I went to the door to find a woman on my (enclosed) porch holding her dog. She was crying and shaking with her cell phone between her ear and shoulder, already talking to the local police department. As soon as she saw me she started apologizing and explained that the door to the porch had been unlocked, so she ran in to get away from her boyfriend. The boyfriend had been drinking, hit her, and threw her dog across the street. She was convinced that if she hadn’t gotten away he would have killed her. “Thank you so much for keeping your door unlocked. It saved my life!”

I let her in and locked the door behind her and checked that the other doors to the house were also locked. Sure enough, the boyfriend came and was banging on the door to the porch to be let in. I assured the woman that the most important thing to me was for her to be safe. Mom came over and tried to comfort her as well; that helped me feel more confident that I was doing the right thing. The cops came and arrested the boyfriend and took her in for questioning. Before she left I looked her in the eye and said, “Don’t go back to him under any circumstances.” I really hope that was helpful.

From what I’ve learned, by the time physical violence becomes part of an abusive relationship, the victim’s self-esteem is often so damaged ze has great difficulty living without the abuser – everything from believing hir safety is more important than the abuser to being able to perform basic tasks to care for oneself.

The woman on my porch kept apologizing, said she was “stupid” for staying with the boyfriend for two years, and said she owed me dinner. At the time I interpreted all that as low self esteem, but she seemed very, very agitated – very scared and grateful for safety and compassion. She was able to say that “he makes [her] look like a liar.” She was able to run away and call the cops and assert that she didn’t want to ride in the same car as the boyfriend; these facts give me hope that she will choose to stay away from him, and hopefully avoid abusive relationships in the future. But I’m worried about her, and I don’t feel safe living across the street from an abuser. I was shaking myself for a good half hour after everyone had left.

The whole thing was so surreal, I’d think I’d dreamed it if I didn’t still smell like the woman’s perfume from hugging her. It reminded me of dreams I’ve had in the past, where I tried to run into the house to escape some unknown but terrifying danger or run through the house locking doors behind me (often to no avail). But this really happened – to someone else – and I was a brief witness to it. I provided comfort, a haven, maybe even some hope.

At the time I put my needs aside to help someone in crisis, but now I need to tend to my own needs. Writing this post is part of it but I feel like there’s more – I’m not sure what, though. I think I’m still a bit too shaken to try and sleep. I have a letter I want to mail and a massage appointment I’m thinking of rescheduling. The former is an attempt to reach out to my cousin whose father died in late March, letting him know I love him and support him in doing whatever he needs to take care of himself on Father’s Day. Writing it (yesterday early morning, when I couldn’t sleep) was therapeutic for me because I was able to be honest in it while feeling like I might also be doing some good. The latter is a deep tissue massage intended to relieve the tension in my back, but at the expense of physical pain, emotional upset, and soreness lasting a few days. For a massage to be helpful today, I’d need its focus to be purely on relaxation – not the specialty of my currently-scheduled therapist. I think I’d rather cuddle with Fox, maybe even do something to try and express the crazy mess of emotions I’ve been feeling trying to block out by playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion all hours of the day and night.

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Americans for Responsible Solutions

I’m concerned about a letter I received in the mail yesterday. It was from Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly at Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC. They wanted my money, of course, and they had a petition to Congress for me to sign saying I’ll only vote for candidates who support requiring background checks for all gun purchases. Okay, that makes sense to me; considering the hoops one must jump through to get a driver’s license (a privilege, not a right), get a job, receive health care, etc., a 5-minute background check before buying a gun seems like very little to ask. Who knows how many lives it could save?

My concern is with the wording of their message, particularly regarding people with mental illness (such as myself). A quote from Gabby Giffords included in the petition shamed politicians for blocking legislation that would have made it harder for “criminals and people with dangerous mental illnesses” to acquire guns. The first sentence on the Americans for Responsible Solutions About page describes the person who shot Gabby Giffords as a “mentally ill young man.” They list who should be banned from buying guns via Criminal Background Checks: “dangerous people like criminals, terrorists, and the mentally ill.” It is important to prevent gun ownership by “criminals, domestic abusers, the seriously mentally ill, and other dangerous people.” Even in their Poll where they offer addressing mental illness as a solution that visitors can support, their focus is not on actually helping those of us with mental illness but on identifying and treating us “before they commit heinous crimes.”

People with mental illness are not a threat to society. We’re a threat to ourselves. During a panel on “Guns in America,” Richard Friedman (a professor of clinical psychiatry and director of a psychopharmacology clinic) said that:

only 4 percent of gun deaths annually in the United States can be attributed to individuals with mental illnesses ­— far lower than most people think. If America could hypothetically solve the problem of mental health issues leading to violence, “you’re likely to see a reduction in suicides, not homicides.”

Most of the people who die as a result of gun violence commit suicide; the majority of suicides are committed by people with mental illnesses, such as depression. According to Jeffrey Swanson (a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences), “federal guidelines preventing individuals with mental illnesses from obtaining firearms are ineffective at preventing violent behavior, particularly mass killings.” What we – people with mental illness and society as a whole – really need is proper mental health care to reduce the number of suicides.

This point is also emphasized in Margot Sanger-Katz’s article, “Why Improving Mental Health Would Do Little to End Gun Violence.” The people with mental illness who are at the highest risk of committing violence against another person 1) are unlikely to use a gun and/or commit murder and 2) typically do so early in the course of their illness, before there is an opportunity to “identify and treat” them (to use Giffords and Kelly’s terminology).

There’s a huge risk that the message Giffords and Kelly are sending will perpetuate the untrue stereotype that people with mental illness are violent and dangerous, increasing the stigma we face. That’s really the last thing we need! Their call to use background checks to keep guns out of the hands of people with mental illnesses so we won’t commit heinous crimes only addresses a tiny portion of the problem. I’ve made a series of diagrams to illustrate this point:

There is only a small overlap between people who commit violence against others and people who have mental illnesses. Please note that the relative sizes of the circles do not accurately reflect the relative sizes of these populations.

Of the small percentage of people with mental illnesses who commit violence against others, only a small percentage use a gun to do so.

It is rare for a person with mental illness who commits gun violence to have an official diagnosis. It is even less likely that the individual is receiving – or has ever received – mental health care.

We need society to provide us with better mental health care and better access to mental health care, so we can care for and avoid harming ourselves.

Preventing violence – particularly gun violence – is a whole separate issue. I suggest looking at our cultural values, particularly how violence / gun violence is portrayed glamorized in mainstream media (TV, news, movies, etc.). Who commits the violence, and against whom? Why? In what contexts? (e.g. gender norms; poverty; age/generational factors; race – including white people; access to education, healthcare, and/or employment; etc.) How can we change society to make it a safer place for everyone?

Maybe the first thing we should look at is the fact that gun ownership is a right, but access to safe, effective, and affordable food, housing, health care, education, employment, and transportation is not!

In Search of Truth

A series of 4 images.

First, I used oil pastels to color in a spiral – or, as Fox put it, a rainbow snail shell.

I drew both spirals from the outside, in – but I colored the big spiral from the inside, out. My original intent was to go from the darkness within through the blood red to the light and growth without.

Then, I used darker colors to cover it up. By the time I was done smudging everything, my hands were almost completely black.

This is just one potential way to visualize depression.

I wanted to bring out some faces I saw in that mess, but drawing over it with oil pastels wasn’t working. If only there were a way to cut through the smudgy, messy depression and see something – anything – clearly!

I used a scratching tool to scratch off some of the oil pastel to create the image(s) you see here.

Finally, I was able to discover what was truly hiding behind that mess …

An unexpected self-portrait.

Writer’s Block

I’ve been struggling with writer’s block for the past few days, wanting to post something but unable to settle on a topic or focus on the writing process. Finally, today, I gave up on trying to express myself in words and decided to draw with oil pastels instead. Here is what I drew:

I colored with the oil pastels, then smeared the colors from left to right with a tissue. The shadow in the lower left corner was cast by me as I took the picture.

It is interesting to note that, like the sculpture I made a couple weeks ago, the face in the image doesn’t have a mouth. Fitting, seen as I’m having so much trouble expressing myself. I even had a hard time trying to answer Wakana when she asked how things have been for me. I had trouble forming complete sentences.

Worse, as I was drawing, The Critic kept bombarding me with some really mean thoughts. Some of them might be triggers:

…

…

• You’re crazy
• You’re decompensating
• People are going to think you’re insane
• People won’t get what you’re trying to say – are you even trying to say anything?
• It’s rubbish
• It sucks
• An immature level of artwork
• You should destroy it
• You should kill yourself
• It would be better if you used your own blood
• WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!?
• Those eyes are too haunting. Make it stop.
• You’re a failure and you’ll never amount to anything
• Nobody cares about you
• Why are you still breathing?

…

…

I showed the list to Fox and he said, “The one that stands out the most is this: ‘Those eyes are too haunting. Make it stop.’” The Critic is scared. It’s trying to keep me from expressing myself. All those horrible thoughts, lies*, to keep me from the truth.

What could I possibly have inside me that’s that terrifying?

…

…

* I tell myself they’re lies, echoing Fox’s Mom, but I’m not entirely convinced at least some of them aren’t at least partially true.

Welcome, Kit! and Thoughts on Mad Pride

My friend Kit decided to start her own WordPress blog, cheshirekit, where she’ll also be writing about experiences with mental health issues. Although she has several psychiatric diagnoses, she prefers to consider herself “mad and neurodivergent.” Near the end of her Introduction, she explains the meanings of these terms:

Neurodiversity and disability rights refer more to physical and cognitive disabilities, while mad pride and radical mental health refer to psychiatric diagnoses.  The basic idea is that humans are meant to be diverse and have diverse ways of perceiving, experiencing, and acting on the world, and this actually improves society as a whole rather than hurting it.  Having a brain that is wired differently, though it can be challenging at times since our society at large is set up to be convenient people with “typical” brains, does not have to be a bad thing, and can in fact be a source of pride.

I like this way of thinking, but I have yet to examine my own relationship with it.

Whatever labels people might stick on me, my basic experience is that I have very strong emotions. I’m learning what to do about / with them – how to express them safely; how to channel them into a healthy activity; how to respond to the situation in which they are arising so as to meet my own needs while still respecting others; etc. Right now I’m taking medication intended to make them a little bit easier to handle, but most of my work is on coping with them.

I don’t want my intense emotions to go away – they are an important part of who I am! They give me energy, creativity, the passion and drive to do amazing things. I often find it difficult to function in a society that devalues emotions, demands conformity, sensationalizes tragedy, and over-stimulates the senses. Worst, I’ve internalized messages from society that take the form of very harsh, critical thoughts with the power to decimate my self-esteem. But as painful as the lows may be, on some level I value them just as much as I value the joy that can rise in response to the simplest things. The depth of the emotions I can experience is meaningful to me; it is the genesis of my art. Having experienced the lows helps me to appreciate the highs so much more. They’re also an important part of how I connect with other people – empathy.

So I guess for me Mad Pride is recognizing these aspects of who I am as a way of being that, while undervalued by society, is valuable in its own right. My emotions aren’t “pathological,” society just isn’t really built to handle them. My journey isn’t about “recovering” from an “illness,” it’s about learning the skills I need to live and function in society, while still valuing, expressing, and utilizing all of my Self. It is in this way that I can make the most meaningful contributions to society.

… Though any change that can occur in society, to make it more accepting of and accessible to people who are mad and/or neurodivergent, is certainly a big help. That’s where activism comes in: changing the structures of society to be more inclusive; to make diversity more visible; to value respect the myriad of ways humans can be in the world – rather than considering one way “normal” and marginalizing everyone who doesn’t fit into this narrow mold.