How Patriotic of Them

So it's been a while. September, it looks like. Well, to be perfectly honest, not a lot has been happening. What with the constant stress of the threat of lay-offs, 2009 was pretty much a crap year, and I was quite glad to see the hind end of it come December 31, and don't let the door smack your ass on the way out, 2009.

Unfortunately, 2010 is not shaping up to be a whole lot better. The Chief got laid off a few weeks ago. The Big Bad Evil Corporation he works for decided that four guys in India could do his job a lot cheaper (but much less efficiently, apparently, although the Big Bad Evil Corporation is more concerned about bottom line than it is about efficiency, or about doing its patriotic duty by keeping our jobs in America, but that's another rant for another day), so it's adios muchachos, here's some severance benefits to tide you over for a bit, and have a nice life.

So, long story short, The Chief is here. Job searching. At home. In my office. All day.

Which is okay in a boy-it's-nice-to-get-to-spend-so-much-time-with-you sort of way, but somewhat less okay in a how-the-hell-are-we-going-to-pay-the-mortgage-when-severance-runs-out sort of way.

So I'm debating starting my own job hunt. While this mom-at-home gig I've had for the past fifteen years has been extremely rewarding, it doesn't pay awfully well. At least, not in ways that will enhance my bank account balance.

Hmm. I wonder if there are any knitting jobs out there…

Maybe I'll Catch Fire...

Every year about this time I get Anxious and Worried about some Terrible Event occurring just before Christmas. Like someone ending up in the hospital or worse. So every time I have to go out, I'm imagining ending up dead in a car wreck. And every time The Chief goes out, I'm imagining him ending up dead in a car wreck. And if it's not that, it's some other unlikely, convoluted event that only my dark imagination could come up with.

Can't help these thoughts...

Whenever something good or fun is coming up--like Christmas or a vacation or something--my mind has to conjure up all the ways that something horrible could come along and twist it all up.

When I was on antidepressants, I did not feel this way. Of course, when I was on antidepressants, I didn't feel much of anything, so I suppose that's not really a fair comparison.

Writing Prompt: What kinds of things make you Worried and Anxious? What do you do to help yourself when you feel that way?

Social Anxiety? Or Just Me?

I quit my quilters' guild. I was supposed to go on Monday night, and I just couldn't deal with sitting in that room with all those women that I don't feel I have anything in common with...except that we all make quilts. Of course, my quilts don't look anything like theirs...mine aren't these pretty, traditional things in country blues and pinks with perfect points and lovely neat blocks. My quilts are abstract-flowing-full-of-rivers-of-color things that look like someone spilled a paintbox and then threw water all over it...

Okay, well I like them!

So anyway, I'm not sure what it is with me...I have a really hard time belonging to groups. Part of it is never feeling like I have anything in common with the people in the group. Part of it is not wanting to commit to anything too far ahead (this comes from the bipolar thing...not knowing if I would be too depressed to get my butt off the couch when push came to shove). Part of it is me being me, which is to say, shy and introverted and just not needing or wanting to have a whole lot of people around me. Crowds irritate me to the extreme. I can't stand that amount of energy around me.

I'm sure my psychiatrist would be happy to diagnose me with Social Anxiety Disorder and put me on Seroquel for life. But what if I'm quite happy with the way I am? What if I've learned to adjust and accommodate for my needs, and know what I need to do to keep myself happy and functional? Is that still a disorder? Or is it just me?

And why should someone else decide that I'm not the way I should be, that I should be more like everyone else, and that I should therefore be medicated?

Writing Prompt: In what ways are you different from the rest of the world? Do you see these differences as strengths, or do you wish you were like everyone else?

Fitting In...Or Not

Ever since I was a little kid, I've felt like I was on the outside looking in. While I was growing up, much of what the people around me felt was important--the "right" clothes, the "right" hair, being part of the "right" group--all bewildered me no end, and still does. I find it very hard to relate to this culture's value system, and now, as an adult, I have realized that I will probably never find a place where I really fit in. And I have to wonder if perhaps this is the source of the anxiety that has dogged me as far back as I can remember.

Oh, I've found a few like-minded travelers in my journey. My husband, for one, and a few dear friends that have come and gone through the years, but for the most part, people and what they want out of life are so hard for me to understand.

I often wonder why this is so. Is it part of whatever anomaly made me chemically sensitive and prone to mood swings? Is it because of my experiences of alienation as a child, having been brought to America and dumped into a world where everything that was familiar to me was gone? Is it because of the way I was raised? But my brother doesn't seem to have had any problems taking this culture's value system to heart.

Saying I don't belong here, of course, begs the question, well, where do you think you would fit in? Honestly, I don't know. I often think that perhaps I would do better in a place (or perhaps a time!) where people live in tune with the rhythms of the earth. Where time moves slowly through the turning of the seasons, and my days would be set out according to the seasons' demands rather than the siren song of the holy dollar.

I guess the best I can do is try to find peace within myself...but I find it sad that I have never found my "herd", never felt like I truly belonged.

Although I must note that since I started blogging, I seem to have found more individuals who think like me than I have ever found in real life!

Writing Prompt: Belonging seems to be an important human need. Where do you think you belong? Are you content with where you are now, or do you find yourself wishing you belonged somewhere or somewhen else? What are the consequences to you of not feeling a sense of belonging?

Identity Theft

One of the most insidious effects of my bipolar diagnosis was the way it robbed me of my identity...

I was not suicidal, nor was I psychotic, or even a whole lot out of control. I initially went to my GP because I couldn't sleep. I hadn't slept more than a few hours for nearly a week, and wasn't feeling tired, and I figured that wasn't normal, I ought to be exhausted...so maybe I better get this checked out. I was also under an enormous amount of stress, and my anxiety levels were sky-high due to some extremely stressful Family Bullsh*t that was going on at the time. Did anyone ask about that? No. Instead, I was asked if I'd ever been depressed. And since I said yes (although I'd never been diagnosed or medicated for it), I was sent home with Zyprexa and Ambien, and told I should call a psychiatrist.

This led to an ever-descending spiral of self-doubt. In my reading, I learned that my writing highs--those times when I could just let go and write for hours on end--were actually "hypomania". And those times when I felt like I just loved life and really enjoyed everything I was doing--that was "hypomania", too...so the last two or three years of my life, which had been wonderful, happy years in which I felt productive, and excited about my future, suddenly took on the sinister aspect of an "illness". Which must be "managed." I learned that if I ever felt that way again--exuberant and loving life--that I should talk to my psychiatrist immediately, because I urgently required a "medication adjustment." And that if I didn't have my medications adjusted, the hypomania could steamroll on into full blown "mania" in which I would be completely out of control and need to be hospitalized (even though I had never been close to being "out of control"). I also learned that if I felt just a little bit sad, I needed to consider that a "warning sign" and to talk to my doctor because I might be getting "depressed". Which would require that another medication or three be added to my "cocktail" in order to prevent me from becoming so ill that I might kill myself (even though I'd never really considered that seriously before). Overnight, my perception of myself went from creative, confident and happy to "very sick and in need of medication for the rest of my life."

For the next two years, I would be haunted by the question, "How much of my personality is me and how much is it?" The answer, according to my psychiatrist, was that a lot of my drive, my energy, my productivity, and my creative whirlwinds could be attributed to it. So I figured whatever was left over once the medications were working, that was probably the real me. And since I lost my ability to think, laugh, create, write and enjoy life once I was medicated, I began to think that the real me wasn't worth very much, was she? She was actually a hopeless, dull-witted, exhausted lump who couldn't even speak without stumbling over her words, and didn't want to do anything but sit on the couch.

Life was pretty dismal for those two years. I no longer had the capacity to enjoy life, and the medications I was taking actually made me more sick. My moods began to cycle, and within a year I'd had three "episodes" each requiring that my medications be adjusted (read "increased") and that new medications be added. My doctor pointed this out to me as proof of just how sick I was.

I am so glad that I retained enough clarity and sense of self to say Enough. Unfortunately, it took a near-tragedy to shake me back to my senses (my husband's heart attack and my inability to respond to it in any sort of normal way). But however it happened, I did finally see the light and realize that my misplaced trust in psychiatry was only making me sicker, and that there had probably been nothing wrong with me in the first place that a little therapy or education in stress management wouldn't have taken care of.

I stopped taking medications over a very short period, probably too short, but then I didn't have much in the way of medical support--my psychiatrist's view of stopping medications was that it would be "stupid" and that I would "ruin my life". He didn't say It would be a bad idea, but if you're hell bent on doing it, here's how to do it safely, no, he just said Don't.

When I came off of meds, I was a mess. I had no idea who I really was anymore. After being told that all the things I had loved about myself were due to my illness, my self-confidence had taken a serious hit. I was terribly overweight and out of shape and dreadfully ashamed of myself for having let myself get into that condition. It took a long time for the anger to fade, for me to accept what I'd allowed to be done to me. And in some ways, I think I am still working on that acceptance, because the anger is still smouldering away in there.

After I was off most of the drugs, my sense of self, my sense of humor, and my ability to enjoy life slowly returned over a period of a few months. It took a longer time for my creativity and my confidence in myself as an artist to return--after all, I'd been told that all of my artistic achievements were actually manifestations of my "illness". For a long time I wondered if my drive to create--to write and to "make stuff"--would ever come back, or if the medications had damaged my brain in some subtle way and I'd never be able to create again--or worse, even want to.

Thank goodness I took my life back into my own hands. I dread to think where I would be now if I hadn't. I certainly wouldn't be myself.

Writing Prompt: Has there ever been a time in your life when your identity, your sense of self, was threatened by a label, an event, or a person/group? How did you deal with it and in what ways did this experience change you? If you've never experienced a threat to your sense of self, what sort of event do you think it would take to do this? Where are your vulnerabilities?

Sensory Overload

I have been pondering silence lately. Silence and peace.

Silence is extremely important to me. I can't stand a lot of noise around me. I don't have television on, or the radio, or even music, most of the time. Sometimes I like it, but mostly I find it irritating. I even have my computer's sound muted because the constant blipping and beeping drives me bats.

It's the same with visual input. I can't watch movies or videos with a lot of fast cuts, and I find those new billboards that change pictures every few seconds extremely irritating and distracting. I guess I don't deal well with sensory overload.

Even artificial smells irritate me, particularly strong perfume. I can't stand scented soaps, scented shampoos, scented laundry products...all those clashing smells. And I can't stand next to some heavily perfumed person in an elevator.

It makes me wonder if there's some sort of connection between our noisy, flashing, smelly, overstimulating modern environment and some of the mental health issues many of us deal with. Particularly anxiety and depression.

Writing Prompt: What is the most irritating environment you have ever found yourself in? What was the most restful environment? What sort of place would be the perfect environment for you--a place in which you feel you would function your best?

Hidden Trauma

What breaks your heart?

That was the journal prompt I was working with the other day. I wrote a series of short paragraphs about a number of different things that break my heart, and the one that struck me the most was this:

It breaks my heart to think of that little-girl-me who was uprooted from almost everything she knew...in one fell swoop she lost her home, her beloved Nana, her toys and books, all her friends, her favorite foods...the only things she didn't lose were her parents and her brother. Is it any wonder she was a terribly anxious child? And has grown into an anxious woman with a mind capable of extrapolating even the most innocuous occurrence into tragedy?

It's funny how I've only recently become cognizant of what a trauma that move from England to America must have been for three-and-a-half year old me. I've never thought of it as a traumatic experience before, seeing as I don't recall any of the emotions involved, really...just pictures of the different things--the plane, the hotel room where we stayed for the first three days, the furnished townhouse we lived in for the next three months...

My parents' story--the one I was fed from the moment I could understand--was that we were so much better off here than we would have been in England, and that there were so many more opportunities for my brother and I here than we would have had there.

But until now, I've never really stopped to consider what my own story was, and what a deep and terrible loss that move would have been for such a little person. There must be a raw wound buried deep inside me. A wound so well hidden that I don't even remember it and don't consciously feel it. A wound I suspect has been there all along, colouring my life in various and subtle ways.

What if is a dangerous question But I sometimes wonder, what if we'd never made that move? Who would I be now?

Nursery School

As a child I lived in the shadow of fear and anxiety. I'm not sure where they came from...the easy answer is that my family moved from England to America when I was three and a half, but the way my mother tells it, I was an anxious, clingy child even before that.

I've heard the story of my first--and only--visit to the local nursery school some months before we left England, but I've only ever heard it from my mother's point of view--the exasperated, exhausted woman with the child she couldn't leave anywhere. Not even for a minute.

But what's my story in all of this?

...I run my hand along the black iron railing that separates the school yard from the pavement. Mummy walks beside me pushing the pram where my baby brother rides. I want to ride in the pram, too, but Mummy says I'm too big and must walk beside her like a big girl.

The big girls and boys in the school yard are very noisy and I press my hands to my ears to shut them out. I'm glad there's a fence to keep the big boys away. I don't like big boys. They are noisy and they frighten me almost as much as dogs. Big, loud, nasty things. I walk a bit closer to Mummy. I wish I could ride in the pram.

We get where we are going and I find myself in a room full of children. There are some ladies there, too. One of the ladies says I must go and play with the other children while she talks to Mummy. I think the big wooden climbing frame looks fun. It has a big slide, and I would like to go down the slide. I don't think I want to climb the frame to get to the top, though. It looks too high and I'm afraid of falling and hurting myself.

I go to the bottom of the slide and start to climb up. It's slippery polished wood. I grip the sides tight with my fingers. A boy shouts at me from the top. He wants to slide down but I am in the way. I want to slide too, but this is the only way I can get up to the top.

I finally get to the top and slide down. Then I look around for Mummy. She's not there, so I start to cry. Mummy should be here. Where has she gone? One of the ladies sees me crying and comes over to me. She wants to know what's wrong. I tell her I want my Mummy. She picks me up and asks me if I want to go and find a toy to play with. She carries me to a room full of toys. There's a hobby horse and a toy train, a red ball and some blocks. But I don't want to play with those toys. I just want my Mummy, and I don't know why she doesn't come. She always comes when I cry...

I'm told that my mother was actually there the whole time, watching through a window. She hated leaving me there, and felt awful when I cried, but she'd been told that she had to get me used to being without her for short periods...

Nervous? Try An Antipsychotic...

Furious Seasons reports today on problems with the antipsychotic drug Seroquel , which is soon to be approved for treating depression and anxiety. Last year, Furious Seasons reported that Seroquel has been studied as a "treatment" for "social phobias." Of which, fear of public speaking is apparently one.

I cannot believe that any responsible doctor would prescribe an antipsychotic to people who are exhibiting what is a completely normal fear of looking ridiculous in public. Given how much importance is attached to appearance and performance in this culture, of course people are going to worry about looking stupid in front of their peers. And let's face it, public speaking is one of those activities that carries with it the very real potential for Embarrassment and Humiliation.

Seroquel is a powerful drug and the list of possible side effects associated with it is quite frightening. It can cause weight gain, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, over-sedation, and carries with it the risk of tardive dyskinesia, a movement disorder that can become permanent even after the drug is discontinued.

AstraZeneca, Seroquel's manufacturer, is seeking FDA approval for using Seroquel in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder.

Talk about using a sledgehammer on an ant.

Or in this case, on the American brain.

It disturbs me greatly that our culture should deem this acceptable.

I suppose I should not be surprised, given that worship of the Holy Dollar seems to have more converts every year than all of the traditional religious traditions combined.

Still, it's one thing for someone to be prescribed this drug for psychosis, and quite another for someone to see an ad on TV and ask for this medication from a doctor who is not a psychiatrist, and knows nothing more about the drug than what Big Pharma has deigned to share over lunch in a five-star restaurant.

Where are the checks and balances in this system?

The whole thing makes me Nervous and Anxious.

Perhaps I need a good slug of Seroquel...

My Dark Gift

I have a great imagination.

It has made it possible for me to write poetry and lyrics, short stories and novels, journal entries and satire, and have an amazingly rich inner life. It also assists me in coming up with the curvy, organic quilt designs I love best.

But it also has made me more anxious and unhappy than I would have been without it. My Dark Gift is the ability to take a joyful event or experience and pick it apart until a dark tangle of what-ifs is revealed. Then I focus on those what-ifs, following them to some inevitable conclusion (always bad) until I can't concentrate on anything else.

For instance: Little Mouse and her best friend are competing in the regional science fair tomorrow, which is being held at a college campus about an hour away. The Chief is taking her, and she will meet up with her friend there. As it is an all-day event, I shall stay home with the Barrister and the fur-children. And instead of thinking about how much fun she'll have, and how her dad is going to take her someplace nice for lunch, and that they'll have a great day together, all I can think of is car-wrecks and kidnappings. Or some disgruntled college kid opening fire upon the proceedings.

Intellectually, I know that they will have a great time, and everything will be fine. But I will be worrying about them all day.

Why does my mind do this to me?

Why can't I just enjoy life without always looking at the dark side?