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[Tobin S.]

This message was self-deleted by its author (Tobin S.) on Sat Dec 24, 2016, 06:10 AM. When the original post in a discussion thread is self-deleted, the entire discussion thread is automatically locked so new replies cannot be posted.

[Denninmi]

1. Great question. I don't think many "normal" people understand just how hard this is.

If they did, they would never mock or ridicule or stigmatize anyone going through any kind of significant mental health problem. But, there are petty minds and ignorant people in the world, as well as cruel and evil ones.

You, and everyone else here, knows in depth the events of the past 14-15 months of my life. And, you no doubt know how utterly terrified I have been of stigma, of the thought that knowledge of my problems being disseminated into the wider world beyond DU and a few very discrete individuals would ruin me. As you know, I believed it would literally end my life, that I would have no future, no career, etc.

And, as I wrote a few weeks ago, my darkest moment, darkest secret that I didn't share with anyone, professionals or otherwise, was the fact that I did have one remnant of my father, his old pistol. And, in the worst of it last year, I bought bullets and sat on a dock at five in the morning intent on killing myself. It was a stupid, fucked up thing to do. And, I didn't do it because of "mental illness" per se, I did it out of the sense of desperation that grew from that situation which revolved around those events and those beliefs. And, as you all also know, my beliefs about mental illness and those with it were as skewed and stigmatizing as anyone's in this society -- my statement that I believed my initial diagnosis of bipolar was a "death sentence" raised more than a few hackles. And, rightly so. I have since learned a LOT about the entire diaspora of mental illness, it has been very eye-opening, and I hope that what I learned has made me a better man, less inclined to run with a stereotype and more inclined to view these situations with an objective eye. The reality is, so many people have mental health histories. I am finding that out more and more all of the time. People I never would have guessed have problems, or people with loved ones with problems.

I started watching Breaking Bad a few weeks ago, and I was struck by the manner in the lead character, Walter White, goes to extremes to cover up his crimes from his family, and of course the authorities, since he is "cooking" and dealing methamphetamine. I've done that, too, (not the meth part), gone to extremes to cover up the entire mental health crisis I went through, from the initial panic attacks to the day hospital to the ongoing treatment struggles. I have taken "baby steps" towards becoming open and revealing this information, over about the past 6-8 months. But, it has only been in the past two months, as I really confronted what occurred in an attempt at desensitization therapy that I have begun to come to terms, slowly, with the concept of outing myself to the people in my life. And, I have been doing it. In fact, I posted the other day about this, and ... I've made some serious inroads. There are still a few people I said I needed to tell, that I haven't out of fear, but ... I've also told some of the people on my list.

And, the response has really surprised me. I feared what they would say, or think, and of course, maybe with some time to let it sink in, they may react differently. But, to a person, they have been nothing but gracious about it. And, they have all reassured me they do not think less of me.

So, "coming out" has been an act of bravery.

But, I think it is only the second bravest thing I did. The first was NOT blowing my brains out on that dock. Because, it took far more courage not to take the easy way out, to face a very uncertain and terrifying future.

And, I think ALL OF US are brave for going through this. We didn't ask for it, we sure as Hell don't want it, but just like any other illness, it is what it is, it's absolutely no one's fault. It's not my fault I have PTSD, I grew up in a Hellish environment, tortured by a father with his own serious mental health issues. I don't fault him for having those issues, I do fault him for not realizing the damage he was doing. I and my family deserved so much better. Mental health, like any disease, has environmental and genetic components, both interact to create the conditions we have. It is what it is. And, we deal. And, we survive.

There are going to be people who mock us, ridicule us, consider us less than equal, or even less than human. That may just be due to ignorance in the literal sense of the word, just as I did, they may just need to be educated about mental illness. If it goes beyond that, if they are made fully aware of what this is like, and they choose to remain hateful, well, they are just bigots. And, I think things are changing in society, people are becoming more open about mental health, and I think the vast majority of people would condemn a mental health bigot just like they would condemn a racial bigot, or a GLBT bigot, or a sexist. Because good and decent people know it's life. And, to again quote Bon Jovi lyrics from a favorite song off a favorite album, "It's ok to be a little broken, everybody's broken, in this life. It's ok to be a little broken, everybody's broken, that's just life, it's ok."

To the unreformed bigot, I have only this to say, "Fuck You! Rot in Hell, and remember this, those you vilify, the troubled, the needy, the desperate, and the very people that Jesus said needed your help and compassion the most. So, to go against them, to hold them in contempt and disdain, is to go against God, who created everyone in His image."

To the good people of the world, the vast majority, who "get it", I have only this to say, "Thank you, and God Bless, your kindness and support makes all of the difference in the world."

Finally, this thought -- someone else on these forums wrote something very recently about mental health, people's reactions, and the way some can be cruel. And, this author wrote about his personal struggles, how he over came them, and he concluded with this thought, "Living well is the best revenge." So true. My struggles have been hard, the last 14 months I've shed more tears than I knew I could. BUT, BUT, BUT ... I have also made amazing progress in so many areas of my life, I am truly "living well" in that sense. Sure, I have good days, and bad days, we all do. But, I am determined to beat my PTSD and have the life I deserved and still deserve, the life that was stolen from me by mental illness, both my own recently, and my father's from the first day of my life.

Namaste.

[Tobin S.]

2. Thank you for the amazing post, Denninmi.

[Denninmi]

3. Ah, I just call 'em like I see 'em.

Veritas without the vino, that's all.

[Tobin S.]

4. The best advice I ever got but only started taking recently

was given to me by an English teacher at a vocational school I went to so I could avoid real academics my junior and senior years of high school.

She asked me if I was going to go to college after high school and I told her that I was not. I thought it was kind of a silly question since nobody that I knew that went to vocational school was going to go to college.

She then told me, "Don't sell yourself short."

She saw something in me that I couldn't at the time and wouldn't for many years afterward.

You've got it in you to do some great things. You're a good man and you're intelligent and well spoken. Don't sell yourself short.

[Bertha Venation]

5. Checked myself in.

Brea Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Brea, CA. (It's not there anymore.) September 30, 1986.

My mother had been hospitalized at least twice, and not wanting to be like her, I resisted. I had gentle encouragement by my therapist and by a dear friend, an older woman who told me, "If I could, I'd take you myself, but I don't have the power."

So it was up to me, and I did it. Hardest thing I've ever done in my 50 years. It saved my life.

[Denninmi]

7. Can I ask you a couple of ?'s.

At the time, did you feel like this was something to help you, or some kind of punishment? Were they nice to you in there, staff and patients? Did you feel embarrassed either at the time or afterwards? Did a lot of people know?

Only respond if you are comfortable. I am still trying to work through all of my feelings about this, it may provide some insight into my own experience.

[Bertha Venation]

9. I believed it would help.

I was embarrassed, but not too much. AFAIK, only my family and the woman who helped me knew. The news was probably spread at work, but I didn't think about that at the time.

I didn't feel punished. The staff was really good. A couple of the patients were threatening but the staff helped with them.

I was terrified, but on some remote level I knew I was doing the right thing.

Does this help? I'm glad to answer anything.

[Denninmi]

10. Yes, thank you.

You're a class act all around, your support has meant a lot to me.

I just need to get to a mindset where I don't equate psychiatric treatment with criminal justice in my mind. For the record, I don't feel,like that about anyone else, I can see it for what it is. Just me, I am so much harder on myself than I would be on anyone else. Funny, I save the iron fist for myself.

[Bertha Venation]

13. re the iron fist

I think we all do.

[hunter]

19. You are a "class act all around."

[HereSince1628]

8. Bravery seems a fine quality, the expectation that the ill display it? Maybe not

This isn't a criticism of the OP. But it is an alternative critical view of how bravery is viewed with respect to the ill.

One of the curious things about street advice on treating illness, is that it regularly seems to run opposite of whatever the prevailing pathologic condition may be. When things are bad, we're told that soon things will be ok. When we're sick and impatient to be well, we're told to be patient. When something we depend upon breaks and the repair requires an amount of money we don't quite have, we're told to be frugal and save. Within healing traditions, this sort of approach is an application of allopathic thinking. It is a major theme in our thinking about illness, but that doesn't mean it is always best.

Allopathy calls for application of a therapy that opposes, and thereby neutralizes, the pathological condition. Feverish? Apply cold compress to forehead or cold water to hands. Depressed to the point of inactivity? Get your ass off the couch and exercise! The examples of this sort of thinking are legion if you just look around for them.

In my American life I've found that bravery is a common cultural expectation of the ill. I can't say this is a universal human expectation. Here in the 'home of the brave', we are expected to courageously, willfully, and actively fight against our illnesses. This, too, is an application of allopathic thinking. It is deeply integrated into our folk-culture and regularly reinforced. Like many culturally accepted solutions, one's capacity for bravery becomes an issue of moral, and personal character. Fighting an illness is good; giving in to an illness is bad. Surely you've heard or read things like: "Mom died after a courageous fight with breast cancer"; "Steve overcame leukemia through a long fight using chemo"; "I've fought borderline personality disorder for decades". If we are ill, we are expected -as a moral imperative- to be brave warriors. And so , as slippery multifaceted concepts often do, bravery becomes something to be measured and a quality for moral judgments about ill people, even judgments about ourselves.

That slide is insidious. The thought of being ill and not manifesting objective signs of bravery by external stoicism, goes beyond being a bad patient, it turns the ill into a bad person. It drives us like the overseers lash. Few of us wish to be deemed a bad person. We'd much rather struggle with doing the right thing and project an appearance of stoicism. We will 'keep a stiff upper lip', we 'never complain', we will 'bite the bullet' and, quite unfortunately, many of us simply and stoically attempt to 'tough it out' or go, unsustainably over the top in manifesting behaviors that show, to meet cultural expectations, engagement in 'the good fight'.

As the bard wrote...'Aye, there is the rub'. To be stoically brave is to go forward in spite of and even in denial of symptoms. Suffering in silence, without any help, does us no good for conditions that are more than transient. With respect to mental illness toughing it out is the choice of 80% of those afflicted. I know the decisions of those 80% are complicated by financial and other factors]. Probably not a good outcome, that. Nor is it good to encourage persons into the manifestation bravado and false indications that the 'fix has been found', that the illness is improving and that recovery is a fortnight away.

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate bravery. I am deeply embedded in this American culture, too. I really don't want to give the impression that my position is that for the ill, mentally or otherwise, bravery is wrong. I certainly don't want to say that for the ill, the opposite of bravery is always right. I am neither arguing that homeopathy is a preferable approach to allopathy, nor that 'giving in' is always preferable to fighting.

My observation is just this...bravery is often recommended and acknowledged with a casualness that nears thoughtlessness under the cover of cultural expectations. We have a rather deep need to see that the cultural expectation we've bought into are expressed and reinforced by those around us. It angers us when its value is challenged (an emotion I suspect this post elicits in some).

Yet, bravery, can't be given out in doses. It can't be demanded. Expecting bravery, it's behavioral correlates (the things family, friends and therapists desire of the mentally ill), and presenting bravery's estimable values to the ill mostly as a mechanism that allows 'our' values to be endorsed, isn't necessarily so much supportive as it is an imposing act of cultural hegemony.

[HereSince1628]

12. As I said I'm not against bravery, I'm not for cowardice.

I rather doubt such a strict dichotomy could stand much critical scrutiny.

Regarding biological connections to personality traits, it's common to think that genetic expression is only a matter of having particular sequential patterns in nucleotides inherited from parents. But, things aren't that simple.

For example, epigenetic events--chemical alterations to DNA by methylations, phosphorylation, etc, which are personal acquisitions, also alter what RNA is transcribed and what protein segments get tailored and sewn together, and the subset of stuff that's actually dong work is quite different in composition from what's possibly produced by DNA within chromosomes.

Molecular biologists are really in the early days of understanding how being exposed to environmental conditions/stimulus might alter mechanisms of cellular function to create different capacities of cellular receptivity and response, and collectively variations in tissue/organ structure and function. Neurobiologists' trail behind that vanguard. What is clear is that organisms are not mechanisms solely defined by the DNA blueprint their parents gift them.

I understand that the content of your post is an expression of your personal experience.

My point is really more general, and on the nature of "what is supportive?" As I've written in this group many times...support is a tricky thing, yet, understanding support is an underlying requisite of this group.

My reply is in this thread because it is a reaction to the subject line of your post--which calls out to others to talk about their bravery relative to mental illness. Your subject line communicates an expectation that stories of bravely confronting mental illness are out there among readers of this group. That is an expectation about shared experience--the stuff of culture.

Our culture has all manner of vernacular knowledge about what's good or bad for the ill, mentally and otherwise, and derivations on those rules that serve as standards of performance about how to acceptably conform while ill. Being patient, hopeful, brave etc are such expectations.

If you look over the history of posts/replies in this group, you'll see both affirming expressions to conformity to cultural expectation and histories wherein apparent attempts to manifest conformity to expectations became painful sources of distress.

[HereSince1628]

20. Sort of, though I'm questioning uncritical acceptance of culturally defined 'good' things

like patience, hope, courage/bravery.

Your straw-man example about marriage is easy to see, because it conflicts with a norm of our culture. What I wrote about is a more difficult view--that what culture norms asks of the ill may not be what the ill can give, may be questionably healthy, and may be shouldn't be a facile expectation of the ill, after all.

Culture defines how social roles play out in daily life. We learn these roles. We know what's expected and mostly we do it without question. Knowing these roles makes social life easier and less conflicted. Being ill comes not only with some pathological dysfunction but also with role definitions.

Cultural expectations for the role of mentally ill-person include 'sanctioned goodness' such as being patient, hopeful, and brave. But the socially sanctioned behaviors of the role aren't meant to only serve the ill person. They also serve all those who encounter the ill person. With respect to the ill person cultural role expectations may be situationally inappropriate and qualitatively the same as asking/expecting a depressed person to get up off the couch/bed and become cheerfully productive.

The goodness of normed expectations may be truly believed. Beliefs may be repeated with the best of intentions. I don't question that. On critical inspection, repetition of sanctioned role characteristics is inescapably, intentionally or not, a lot about the indoctrinating effect of reiteration of beliefs and expectations about how to play roles, even roles of mentally ill-persons.

[hunter]

21. Most of my life I've been a dysfuntional person in normal society.

Largely, I still am. Ask my wife and kids...

My grandparents were all "eccentric." Even my most normal grandmother suffered what would now be labeled as an "anxiety disorder." Her husband, my dad's dad, was a lunatic but he was also a wizard with metal, first deemed essential to the war effort as a World War II officer who kept a band of geniuses and misfits out of jail. Later he was an engineer for the Apollo moon project. He could make impossible things out of titanium. But during his down times he was just a depressed autistic spectrum freak. Odds are good, like Paul Erdős, he was addicted to amphetamines. Perversely, I think they helped him sleep and dream in numbers. My own reaction to drugs is the same. Mostly I sleep. Uppers, downers, it doesn't matter. My current prescriptions supposedly have a side effect of insomnia but I don't sleep without them.

My mom's parents were simply insane. As kids me and my siblings never could figure why adults were treating our grandparents like they were rational. My mom's parents were way out there but we never let it bother us much.

Give my mom a glass of champagne and she will tell you stories about her childhood... oh my! Her parents were welders. Both made lifetime careers of it. During the war they built ships. My mom's dad worked sixteen hour shifts. He came home and slept. Her mom worked eight hour shifts welding and eight hour shifts as a party girl entertaining sailors. Dance, sailor boy? (Some groping allowed.) My mom's daycare providers were hookers who were very protective of her, mama grizzly bear protective. My mom is a mama grizzly bear too, she'd kill to protect her kids or grandkids. Fortunately the whole lot of us are good at avoiding that kind of trouble. In middle school they'd send me to the library whenever I got in trouble because they were often afraid to call my mom. I like libraries. They are my refuge.

The first time I was asked to leave university it was for fighting with a teaching assistant. I never touched him but he was throwing things at me. Chalk, an eraser, then a book, and people fled the class and somebody called the campus police.

Yes, it was my fault. I was saying mean things. My first two words were "That's Bullshit!" and it escalated from there. I flunked that class, but when they allowed me to return to school I got an "A" in it, so I guess I learned something.

[HereSince1628]

22. Generally speaking, many of us would expect mentally ill to not conform to cultural expectations

with regard to one or more of the following--behavior, emotionality or cognition.

However, deviance, and the dysfunctional social reactions that it attracts, IS NOT a sufficient criteria for a mental illness dx. IMO (and that of U.S. and E.U. psychiatric professionals) one must be extremely careful about advancing deviance from cultural norms as sufficient evidence to warrant any dx of mental disorder.

Without such care, societies risk using dx's to commit crimes against humanity...sentencing legitimate social critics and political opponents, and those merely eccentric, to confinement in institutions--as has been done in various totalitarian regimes last century.

One of the truly important questions to be considered about specific mental illnesses is whether or not a condition appears to be independent of culture vs whether it is restricted to a specific culture. Although belief itself is to some extent an artifact of culture, there seems to be concurrence among researchers that observation of an identical 'condition' across varying cultures is important evidence supporting the notion that the said condition is 'empirically real' and not an artifact of culture/subculture.

I think it's important to remember that both culture and mental illness are like colored lenses that cannot help but limit (and potentially distort) significant portions of the spectrum of light that we depend upon to illuminate our consideration and behavior.

[hunter]

23. There's clearly an autistic sort of *something* from one of my grandfathers...

... a dominant gene. It manifests itself as everything from a mild speech disorder to autism. My grandfather had a milder form, same with my dad, myself, and one of our kids. A few years of "speech therapy" in grade school is often a clinical indicator and modern anti-depressants are immensely useful.

My grandfather had two siblings who were not functional in normal society, my dad had cousins who were never fully functional, and I have a nephew and a niece who have great trouble, but not so much as they would have had when society was less accepting, when "mental illness" was something families hid from the outside world.

I'm 100% certain this genetic trait would have obvious manifestations in most human societies. The obsessive-compulsive aspects of it are sometimes beneficial, especially when these tendencies have practical application. I was a very valuable employee when I was working alone nights and weekends in a blood bank. Being alone at work didn't bother me at all, I'm a natural recluse, and I could map some of my OCD perfectionism, which is often one of my handicaps, onto the job I was doing.

My crazy grandmother (not the wife of the autistic spectrum rocket scientist, but the grandma who was eventually removed from her home as a danger to herself and others), nobody ever knew what she was about. It wasn't brain damage related to welding fumes or syphilis or any other probable cause because so far as anyone remembered, she was always that way, even as a little girl. I think she could only clearly relate to dogs, horses, and hot metal. In her retirement she became a hoarder. If she hadn't had a house that was paid for and a good pension she probably would have been a bag lady. She was a terrible grandmother, and not even a good mother by my mom's stories, but my siblings and I learned to accept her good moments as something rare and nice, and ignored her crazy stuff. She was not ever physically abusive but she could say crazy mean stuff, which was probably okay if you were a horse or a dog and she was taking care of you, but not so good for grandkids. So we, as kids, whenever we were in her care learned to respond to her meaness exactly as if we were horses or dogs. We simply didn't hear what she was saying.

I think the most important thing for any child is to feel safe and secure. My middle and high school experiences were hell on earth. If my home experience had been anything like that I doubt I would have survived. But I always had food at home and a safe place to read and sleep.

I'm absolutely certain the pressures to conform in this society, to be competitive, exacerbate certain mental states outside the norm, turning these mental states into full-blown mental illnesses. A person who is "bipolar" or "depressed" in our society, might not be so much in another.

I had a high school friend who committed suicide, probably because he was gay. I also had a very high drama relationship with a woman was using me to prove to herself and her family she wasn't a lesbian. (Our breakup almost killed me. I jumped out of her moving car, sliding and tumbling down a street in Berkeley...)

These horrors would not have happened in a society that simply accepted homosexuality as something well within the norms, even something special. In this same sort of way our society is capable of turning some minor mental eccentricity into a raging mental illnesses.

It's often the very structure of our society causing most of the suffering attributed to "mental illness."

On the other side of the coin, the denial of mental illness, covering it up, or even claiming it doesn't exist, causes extreme suffering too. If I stop taking my meds usually because I don't like the side effects, or I decide to try something supposedly milder, I always end up in a very dark place.

[Denninmi]

24. Hunter, I think a lot of what you said is spot on.

People who don't conform to certain images of how they "should" act can be ostracized, and that in itself can lead to a spiral of problems, such as depression. There is a lot of pressure to conform, and a lot of vicious criticism of those who don't.

Homosexuality is a good case on point, actually, for an example of "mental illness" that wasn't there, mere persecution of someone who is "different" from the norm. Now we are a little more enlightened, and the vast majority of people understand it's fundamental biology, and accept the GLBT community as people. The bigots who don't, well, they can rot in their holes, who cares?

I, as someone who was really ashamed, and really petrified that knowledge of this would "come out", am really getting to the point that I totally agree with your last statement about denial leading to stigma, leading to suffering. I am slowly, and then rapidly with some people, "coming out", in my own way, and it's a relief. I have done NOTHING wrong, and I'm certainly not going to be judged, mocked, or ridiculed.

Hunter, you are a brave and great man, and it's a pleasure and honor to know you from the DU MHS forum.

[hunter]

15. I've never been brave. That's what it feels like to me.

At my very worst I simply become invisible; that strange dude living in his car in a church parking lot.

Is hitting rock starving bottom and accepting help "brave???"

Maybe it is. I have done that... several times.

[hunter]

18. Thank you.