A (Lack Thereof) Treatment Plan

It was about a year ago when I really started to think about taking my mental health head on.  I had reached a point, I had gotten a good job and I was in a good place.  I wanted to keep that job, and I wanted to make sure I had the tools.  So a year ago I started fighting for better treatment then just the band aid of more medication, different medication; I needed something different, I needed a solution.  

It’s been a year and so far all that I was able to get from my doctors is three brand new diagnoses and a new medication that didn’t work to level out my moods.  I have tried everything that was offered, but mostly what I have been doing is a lot of waiting.  In the mean time I have lost my job and I have been fighting to keep myself from going into a downward spiral.

I am fairly certain I have hit rock bottom.   But there’s a difference this time.   This time I am not looking for easy or quick fixes, I know that I am really going to have to work to get myself better, to make myself successful, and to get myself to a place where I feel that I deserve all of the good things that come along with success.

So of my three new diagnoses, there are two that I’m really worried about, and one, now that I know it I am going to use it as a tool.   I am not going to sit still and wait for more consultations to tell me that I need another consult.  There are things I know I’m starting eventually, but I the mean time I really need to start a treatment plan, even if it means I am working on my own, or at least without medical help.  This is all subject to change.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy

Of course I haven’t started the group therapy yet, and honestly it probably won’t be until December until I do.   But that being said, I feel that I can start working on my skills now, I have picked up a couple of books that were suggested to me, that I am going to go through, and one is a workbook, which of course I am going to take my time and work through it.

I won’t be doing this entirely on my own of course, I am lucky enough to be a patient of not just a family doctor, but a family practice.   They are going to be hooking me up with one of their social workers/counselors in the interim while I wait for a DBT group to be available to me.   With their help, I hoping that I will be able to get a good head start on working on the things I need to.

While working through the books and the skills – I am going to be utilizing my blog as a way to document my thoughts and feelings regarding what’s going on.

Referencing the following books:
The Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Workbook
The Borderline Personality Disorder Survival Guide

Eating Mindfully

I have always struggled with food in one way or another.  I am taking the steps to change this.  Yet another book I picked up, Eating Mindfully by Susan Albers, I will be using this as a tool and guide to start developing a more healthy relationship with food.  The reasons that I need to do this is not only for my mental health, but for my physical health as well, I just found out that I have been diagnosed with Fatty Liver Disease and it really woke me up.

I have decided that I really need to be more mindful about what it is that I am putting into my body, but not limiting myself.  I feel if I put myself on a fad diet just to lose weight I will just end up reinforcing my already healthy relationship with food.

I need to approach this in a way that doesn’t look at taking things away – I need to stop stressing myself out over losing my favourite greasy foods and sweets, but instead look at what I’m gaining.  Challenge myself to make new and exciting dishes, which not only taste awesome, but are good for you.

Much like above, I will be using my blog as a tool.  This book lays things out in lessons – I plan on writing about lesson, and discussing my food choices.  This might be boring to a lot of people, but I feel that it could be helpful to those of us that struggle every day with eating and eating choices.

Referencing the following book:
Eating Mindfully

Spirituality

I have spent some time looking back on my life – trying to figure out when I last felt at my healthiest.  There were many things going on then, but one big element is that I was really connected to my spirituality.  It helped bring clarity and lifted the fog.

I wanted to post this, because I think that this is an important step in my healing process.   However, this is one thing that I think is a pretty private step and my reflections on it are my own.  It’s funny that I am much more private about my faith then I am about my mental health, but I think talking about my health issues I am bringing understanding, not only to my struggling peers, but to my friends and family that are trying to understand.

My faith however is my own relationship with what I believe in, and I think it’s important that I don’t press those choices on anyone.  Seeing as how, as a gay man I have had many religious paths shoved down my throat.

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Right now, those are the three steps that I am taking.  My treatment plan literally consists of mind, body and soul.  I think it’s important that we all take care of our mental, physical and emotional well being anyway that we can.  It isn’t much, but this is something, and it seems that so many of us that are fighting with the medical health system for treatment, for whatever reason, whether were not high-risk enough for priority care or there just isn’t the resources in your area to meet the demand, we can’t just wait for them to treat us.  All of us need to make the steps on our own to get better, and it doesn’t stop with getting your diagnosis(es).

I know how frustrating this is, in fact my anger and frustration on this has a tendency to consume me a lot of the time.  We spend most of our lives fighting just to survive; we shouldn’t have to fight so hard to get better.  We should be entitled to the care that we need.  But it’s not the reality of the situation.   I think we as individuals coming up with our own plans: self-care, treatment, ect., is a way to help ride out the storm.

Dreaming of the Past

I used to have this friend – I don’t think of her often, but when I do she consumes my thoughts.  I just had a really intense and vivid dream about her, and I woke up heart sore – I woke up missing her.  

Part of me wonders if she ever thinks of me.  Does she remember me fondly?  Or does she look back upon me with distaste after catching me in a web of lies and deceit?  Most of which had to do with her.

We had an incredibly tumultuous friendship.  A friendship that seemed to be incredibly bad for the both of us, as we both tended to bring the worst out in one another.  Both of us were as equally fucked up, both of us did our very best to hide it from the world – I think both of us at times tried to use the other to make ourselves look better.   I can remember her doing certain things to me that really hurt, that allowed her to come up on top – and vice versa, there were times that I made her look the fool to make myself feel better.

So despite thinking about her from time to time, I don’t actually want her back in my life.   I look back on our friendship and time together with a smile on my face generally, because when it was just the two of us it honestly felt like we could take over the world.  

From randomly driving around chain smoking and blasting punk, and some pop punk, we each had an equally weak spot for Green Day to watching romantic comedies and being sappy about it. I did and still do love her dearly.

But I recognize that we weren’t healthy for one another – I think, I feel, that we each needed more help then we were willing to admit and we compounded on each other.   Now that I have become a little more self aware – I notice a lot of my behaviour towards her was very symptomatic of my BPD and I would suspect that BPD might also have been a problem for her to, despite the fact that she always seemed to have things much more together then I did in some regards.

This has got me thinking though, one of the things that I find I tend to do in a friendship with a person is that I tend to emulate things about that person.  I try to become more like them for them to like me.  I don’t know if this type of mirroring is typical of people with BPD, but I think it makes sense.  Since I never feel like I’m a whole person, that I’m ever really somebody, I tend to try and make myself into someone they would like by emulating them.

Because of this I have often come across as fake, insincere, or like I’m trying way too hard.  It’s why my most of my  friendships and relationships tend to end in such a spectacular display of fireworks and drama, instead of fizzling out.

I’m scared of starting DBT, because I’m scared that when I finish treatment, when I discover who I really am I will lose friends, because what brought us together, what held us together as friends was never real.  It was me just trying to be someone I’m not.

Borderline Personality Disorder – it really fucks with your head when you let yourself really be aware and question what you’re feeling and the motives behind it.  Hopefully I can get into therapy before too long.  

Wherever you are my old friend, I hope that you are having a much easier time of things and that you have the life that you always wanted.  Much love to you.  

Follow Up Confession

There are many reasons I started this blog, and although most of them are for me - pretty much all of them actually -  it’s also a place where my friends, family and other loved ones can go to actually understand what’s going on with me, because I so often have trouble understanding it.

However, there was one thought that went into it that’s not about me.   I wanted to break down issues surrounding mental health stigma, homophobia, slut shaming, and many more things that I have struggled with on my journey. I wanted to give something to someone, to know that they’re not alone.

For the first time someone contacted me in regards to experiences I wrote about, an acquaintance of mine that I’ll call Sam, because I like using gender neutral names.  This person contacted me because they were really taken aback by what I had written, because they had identified with it so profoundly that it actually made them really question what was going on with their life.

Sam also feels now, upon doing their own research that they need to go speak to a doctor about BPD.   That they need to get help, get better, and figure out the best treatment course for them.

I can not tell you how glad I am that I was able to, in some small part, help Sam ask the right questions and to reach out and get help.  For so long - I have begun to notice  with my BPD peers - we go undiagnosed for a long time.  We are just told we have depression or anxiety and are given pills and left to fend for ourselves.   This doesn’t help.  I didn’t even know what BPD was until I was diagnosed with it, and I have always been pretty well versed on mental health issues, so I wasn’t being asked the right questions for the longest time, and I didn’t know the one’s to ask.

I am so glad that I can at the very least, help someone with that step.

I’d be lying if I said that I was comfortable and at ease when Sam contacted me.   In fact, it actually stressed me out, I found myself getting a bit defensive and irritated. Sam is a great person, and I have much respect for them, but I found myself feeling a bit more lost.

As I mentioned in my last post I really have had much anxiety over this diagnosis, because I am fearful of losing myself in it.  I have to say one of my biggest fears right now is that there is nothing more to me than this disorder.  That if it is taken away there will be nothing left.

To have someone so profoundly identify with what I wrote; these incredibly personal feelings…. Well  it felt a bit like that I was losing  a bit more of who I am. It’s as if it was proving to me that I am nothing beyond my symptoms because my symptoms create these behaviours.

But I need to remind myself, “I am not my disorder.”

I need to remind myself that Sam is where I was a few months ago, and since we’ve already talked about it, they too are going to feel this.

I am not my disorder.  It’s an important reminder, it’s something that I, and other loved ones in my life have been constantly reminding me of in the past few days.

“Sam” has read this post and has given me permission to post this after we spoke about what was going on. Talking about this these last few days has actually helped me immensely, so if this is something you also need to talk about then I extend the invitation to do so. . If I come off as a bit defensive and irritated, please know that that’s about me and not you.

A Confession of Sorts

By Pretty Paradoxical on Tumblr

It’s 3:30 am, I am sitting on my balcony and drinking jasmine green tea in an attempt to relax enough in order to write this.  In fact I just wrote a facebook status about it, in hopes to lessen my fear about this, to admit to the people I know that this is something that’s bothering me.   Of course some people in my life know about this, and pretty much everyone I knows about my struggles with depression, but this I feel has so much more stigma attached to it. 

You see, it’s hard to write something down when you feel ashamed of it.  I have tried writing this a million times, each time scrapping the two or three pages that I come up with – because I just don’t want people to know.  

I have spent a good part of my life really guarding my thought processes, I have actually have become quite adept at disassociating myself from what I am thinking, in order to rationalize it at the same time.  However, despite the fact that I can see that I am acting irrationally at times, I am unable to stop it until it’s run it’s course. 

I want to talk about Borderline Personality Disorder.   I want to tell you about what it means, what it means about me, and what I am going to do now that I am diagnosised with it, and as equally as important what I am not going to do.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), is obviously categorized as a Personality Disorder in the DSM-IV.   The symptoms include: unstable relationships, poor or negative sense of self, inconsistent moods and impulsivity.  There is often an incredibly intense fear of abandonment that often become a self-fulfilling prophecy.   Someone with BPD will often yoyo between pushing people away and being clingy/needy/helpless because of this fear and all in attempt to avoid getting rejected. 

As well there is an element of self-harming behaviour, suicidal tendencies and other destructive behaviours.  There also tends to be difficulty of monitoring emotions, for example someone with BPD who becomes sad can be inconsolable, or if they’re happy they’re bouncing off the walls ecstatic.  

There are some key indicators of what can cause BPD, but I won’t be discussing those here.  If you are interested there is a lot of literature on this topic all over the net.   

First of all, I need you to know I am not suicidal. However, I do often think about suicide, often feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness bring these up.  I fantasize about how I would kill myself, whether it be from downing a bottle of pills to jumping off the balcony of my apartment.  I have a rule though:  it’s okay to think about suicide, but it’s not okay to follow through.   I have this same rule about self harm and cutting – which I used to when I was a teenager.   It’s actually worked a lot for me.   So you, my friends and my family need to not worry that I am going to kill or hurt myself. 

Now with that all the way, I want you to know how this personally effects me.  A lot of you, my friends have seen the push and pull that I have done, get angry and bring you back into mylife.  I often yoyo with this, and there’s a few of you that know me well enough that have never really allowed me to get away with this.  In intimate relationships I am often a lot worse, I often feel like I don’t deserve to be loved, and often question anything and everything a partner does until it drives them off. 

I feel things so out of proportion that I have very little control over how I express my emotions.  The smallest thing could set me off, I could see a really cute puppy on the street, and this could make me so happy I would cry.  I can take a sarcastic comment the wrong way and go into a rage because of it.  

To touch on the anger issue a bit more, I quite often will not speak to the people that I get pissed off at, especially when I get to the point of snapping at them.   There’s a couple of reasons, one I honestly feel wronged in the situation, I either have been unable to communicate this, or if I have it is rare that I feel that the person takes responsibility for the way they have wronged me and it pisses me off more.  The second is that I am often so embarrassed by what has happened that I don’t know how to get back from it.  

A lot of my destructive behaviours are in the past for me.  The cutting, the promiscuity, putting myself into dangerous situations, smoking, drinking, drugs, a lot of that I have completey cut out.   But there are other things I have replaced them with – eating, needless spending, escapism into tv shows, movies, books, video games.   I disassociate myself with the world around me and escape into something else. 

Now, you might ask yourself what I really have to be embarrassed about.   This all has come off to be rather clinical, and it looks like I have a good handle on this.   I promise you, that I don’t, but I am trying. 

Where my embarrassment and shame about this disorder come from is the fact that when I look back on the past 10-15 years of my life it explains so much about me.  Some of the behaviours I’ve read about I am so embarrassed by them because I identify with them so much.  

IT’s come to the point that upon getting this diagnosis I feel like there’s really nothing left of me.  That I am not a real person, that I have no real personality, that I’m just a bag of emotions that can’t really succeed at anything.  I feel that this disorder defines me so completely that I will never actually ever be able to be a real person, and one will ever be able to see anything  beyond this disorder.

I feel that I am a complete success at being a complete failure, and that too is defined by the BPD.  I am unable to find love, do well in school or keep a job.  In fact, I feel this diagnosis had a lot to do with me loosing my last job, in a self-prophesizing sort of way.

I have decided though that I can’t let myself get caught up in this thinking.   I have taken this step to get better and that I need to keep moving forward.   Getting caught up in how this disorder has shaped my past is going to continue to let it shape my future.  I think that there’s amends with certain people that I need to make, but even with some of the people I have pushed out of my life I need to let myself move on from and not obsess about.  

What I am going to do over the next ear and a half, of when I start treatment, is that I am going to allow myself to be selfish.  However, not hedonistically so, I am going to be productively selfish.   I am going to do things for me to make me feel better, but not necessarily give me instant gratification.  I am going to take the time to get better and not feel shame in doing so.    I am not going to throw myself into my causes, and lose myself in them , I am not going to volunteer my time, instead I’m going to look into hobbies, some old and some new.  Cooking, community theatre, baking, singing things like that, I need to take the time to find me, instead of helping other people by throwing myself into a political cause, although I admit to some and even to me at times being altruistic can be self-gratifying.  

I am not going to let myself to feel guilt over any of this.  I have to take the time to get better so I can be happy, so I can be who I want to be, and more importantly discover and be happy with who that person is.