Mental Health Friday #28

Hi, my legal name is Rayette but I go by Ray. I am totally blind and have been since birth. I have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, PTSD and an eating disorder-Anorexia, to be more specific and it is something I have been dealing with for the past 17 years.

I was never officially diagnosed with an eating disorder because my grandparents didn’t believe in mental health treatment.

For most of my life, I have experienced physical, sexual, emotional, mental, verbal, mental, and ritual and spiritual abuse. I attempted suicide multiple times and have been admitted into the psychiatric facilities 23 times within the last 5 years.

PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) was my first diagnosis, the major depression and then the Borderline personality disorder. In December, I was diagnosed with Dissociative identify disorder.

Mental Health Friday #27

Have you ever wondered if a therapist is right for you? Have you ever contemplated whether you should break up with a therapist or even how to go about it? Well, then stick around because for this week’s Mental Health Friday, I had the honour of hosting a therapist John Dennis who blogs at Parent family Solutions. Below are his answers to the questions plaguing many of us.

We need to break up!

It’s you, not me. OK, maybe I’m partly to blame too.

As a therapist, I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about people seeing a counselor that wasn’t right for them. They had no idea how to bring it up or how to end things…and consequently it usually didn’t end well.
People will keep seeing a counselor even if it’s not a good fit. Often times, they keep going out of fear or guilt, hoping that they will still be able to work through their issues despite the lack of connection.

For most people who have gone to counseling, they have seen more than one therapist.

I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve met with someone who probably should have been in counseling long ago, but, due to a negative experience with a first counselor, they avoided going back.

This post is going to explain how to break things off with your therapist.

First you have to determine what the issue is.

Is the therapist not a good fit for you?

It’s important to feel there is a good fit with your therapist.

In the very first session I usually explain to clients and family members that it’s important for the client and family to feel like they have found the right professional. I go on to further explain that I’m not the counselor for everyone. All counselors are not cut from the same cloth. If that’s the case, it’s my job to get the client a referral to someone that may be a better fit.

Are they not the right fit in terms of their personality? Or their worldview? (Ie. They’re really into…fill in the blank…and you’re not. You’re an evangelical Christian and they’re an atheist). Now, I will point out that there’s a difference between feeling supported in your life, your choices, etc. and your wish for your therapist to support your cannibalism and heroin use. Just because they don’t support you 100% of the time and confront you on certain areas doesn’t mean they are the wrong therapist. I’ll further point out that doctor and therapist-shopping is common among those struggling with narcissism, substance abuse and borderline personality disorder.

Long ago-

It seems so long ago-
Since the cold outside,
Matched the cold within,
And the grey skies reflected,
The world I hid;
When the right words failed me,
my words disgraced me;
When the hurt I bore,
I dispensed,
To those who didn’t deserve it.

It seems like a century
Has passed, from the time
When the face in the mirror,
Was starved from its one source;
When the body I dwelled in,
I failed miserably;
When the soul inside was aching,
And the body- failing.

What seems like centuries
gone is but a few years;
And the cold outside,
Now feels foreign to my skin.
And my words have filters,
And my body now my temple..
What I though I wouldnt survive,
I lived to tell it’s story;

The weight loss journey-

It’s not the starting that is difficult,
It’s the knowing where to stop;
When to put a brake on the pedestal,
When the time comes to change course,
On the journey of weight loss.

Not eating- ‘course is difficult,
But to start eating is worse;
Every bite becomes a battle,
Between necessity and want,
A struggle it becomes.

The thing- which once gave you joy,
Now evokes apprehension,
Should I or should I not?
When every meal time comes,
And the not would always win.

But you made it, you little fighter you,
And you’ll it make through this too;
It was okay to start, to take the road,
It’s also okay to change course.
It is a journey after all.

Flash Fiction: To eat or not?

“Ehh, I don’t come to visit you for a while and this happens.” Aunt Bose wailed, barely descended from the ferry board. “Where did all your meat go?”

“Good to see you too Aunty,” Vivian began,

“No, don’t greet me. Turn, let me see you well”.

Vivian succumbed to her aunt’s protests, turning around so her aunt could view her properly and pretended to be oblivious to the side eye she was getting from the other arrivals.

With great difficulty, Vivian managed to draw her aunt’s attention away from her physical appearance and towards her car.

“Good thing I’m here.” Aunt Bose declared, “God forbid you return home looking like skin on bones.”

“But Aunty,” Vivian teased, “I am working to become a model.”

“Well, It better be a model weighing 70 kg because that is what you are going to be before I leave,” then she added, “70, at least.”

“You could die by eating too much”, Vivian muttered,

“And you would die if you don’t,” her aunt countered.

Vivian sighed knowing her Aunt was right.

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Word count: 175 words. This story is in response to Flash Fiction For Aspiring Writers photo promot challenge where each week we are provided a picture and are to write a story on it using 75-175 words. Thank you very much Louise for providing us with this week’s image.

The Girl on The Street

It came as a curveball,
The news that they met;
A girl on their street,
Had succumbed to death;
But I thought she was happy,
They chorused all day;
And saw flashbacks of her,
With burgers and a grin;
But the truth of the darkness,
Which hovered her being,
Was placed on the status,
Of her various dps;
It was written in the poems,
Which she shared with her friends,
Who described it, “beautiful”,
And ignored its depth;
It was displayed in the redness
Of her eyes after meals,
When she came out of restrooms,
Appearing fatigued.
It was drawn on collarbones,
Poking through her skin,
And the clothes she resized,
For the waists were too big.

It came as a curveball-
News, The illness took her;
Her weight was too downscale,
She couldn’t survive;
But I thought she was happy
Was all they could say,
But for the girl on the street,
It was too late.

Pretty-

All that you are,
Isn’t reflected in the mirror;
And the face looking back,
Is but a twinkle of a star;
The scales that you mount,
They measure lipos and calories;
But the worth of your heart,
Can’t be measured and priced.

When your clavicle pokes up,
Passers-by call you pretty;
So you run extra kilometers,
Spending hours in the gymnasium;
You eat at the brink of starvation,
Feeling dizzy and lightheaded;
But my God, you think it is worth it
Passers-by would call you pretty.

All that you are girl,
Can’t be reflected in the mirror;
It shows you face worth,
Not the reality your soul captures;
And the words passersby throw,
Is but a drop in the ocean;
So you say it ain’t so,
I’m always pretty regardless

The above image is courtesy of Visualize.com

Mental Health Friday #22

Hi. I’m Angela and I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar 2, borderline personality disorder, binge eating, and general anxiety. I can’t remember how old I was when I realized I had a mental illness. I know I’ve always been suicidal. I think my mind uses it as a coping mechanism. I know I was at least fifteen. It wasn’t until I turned seventeen that I sought help. The catalyst was I went from being suicidal to homicidal. I wanted to stab a kid in my class and it terrified me. I went to the counselor at school and started therapy. Still no one recognized my true diagnosis.

It took me twenty two years to finally get diagnosed properly. I had to get a psychological evaluation for myself. After being treated for depression off and on and then general anxiety with meds that didn’t help, I now have a good mix of medication and therapy. Most days I’m good and for those off days… Well I take one moment at a time.

One final thought… Always self advocate. I wish I had sooner. It took me almost being imploding to realize I need to be picky in my doctors and to get second opinions. We need to take care of ourselves before we can others.

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This week’s submission is by Angela who blogs at I am my own island , do pop by and say hello. She writes about life in general, living and improving despite mental issues.

As always, The goal of Mental Health Friday is to break the silence, talk about mental illness with the aim of blurring out the stigma one story at a time. If you’d like to share your story, I’d love to have you. You can contact me at my email: mykahani@yahoo.com . For more information, visit HERE.

Mental Health Friday #17

“When I moved into my new room at the sober women’s house on July 2, 2012, I was mandated to attend thirty A.A. meetings in thirty days, without exception. It had already begun that people in the program were treating me differently although I did not know why at the time. I felt uncomfortable going to the meetings, in addition to the fact that being forced to go made it difficult with my defiance issues. I have never been in a detox or any other facility where I was told what to do. John went to the meetings with me and I now found it very difficult to sit through the hour meeting now that it was mandated as opposed to being my own choice.”

The above is an excerpt from my last post here.

During the next couple of months, my mind was a whirlwind. It was overwhelming to feel free and on my own. I spent a lot of time talking to my friend Kay at the sober house and talking with John. As I mentioned, he went to the thirty meetings in thirty days with me. To get a slip signed saying I was there, I had to sit through the entire meeting.

One evening, we were at a meeting and I was having an extremely hard time sitting still. At break time, I was about to walk away and give it up when a man I had never met before came outside and sat with me. His name was also John and he talked to me and gave me the hope I needed to go back in. If not for this man who at the time had thirty days of sobriety, I would have walked away at that moment. I thank him for that.

A few days after I had moved out, my ex-husband told me that he was going to have to cancel my health insurance, but that he would wait until I had gotten my own. I knew he was not going to wait. I made the decision to wean myself off of my meds before my ins. was cancelled. It took two months for me to do this. On Aug 29, 2012, my then husband called to tell me that my insurance would be cancelled the next day. If I had not weaned myself off of the medications, I would have ended up in the hospital.

Going to my home group of A.A. became miserable for me. Some people in my group would not look at me and the ones who did insulted me. I didn’t know this at the start, but my ex-husband was telling people that I was manic and out of control. He was also telling people about my eating and sleeping issues. Every Friday, when I went to my home group, I was questioned on my weight. I had been 170 pounds, 40 pounds overweight, due to bloating from the medications and when I stopped them, the bloating had gone away and it was very noticeable. At first people told me I looked good, but one week they simply started to say I was too skinny, that I looked sick. They wanted to know if I was eating and sleeping. I do not go to A.A. meetings for eating.

Mental Health Friday #6

What NOT to say to an ill person:

1)“You look terrible. How are you feeling?”: I am pretty sure if a person looks terrible, chances are, they feel terrible too. And I am also sure the right conforming answer here would be: I’m fine

2) “You’re looking thin, you sure have lost a lot of weight, I know its hard but you should really eat.”: I should point here that for a person going through chemo, this is totally inappropriate, because a) they do not have the appetite to eat courtesy of nausea and vomiting b) it doesn’t matter how much they eat, weight loss is a side effect of the chemo.

3)”Awe you don’t look so good, treatments are rough eh?”- but of course they are rough. Drugs especially, psychotropic drugs change the biological and chemical balance in our body.

4)”Well my (mum, dad, uncle, friend, relative) had a similar problem and they tried (?????) and it worked. You should do that cause it makes it go away”

5) “You’re looking a little stressed. Are your treatments going ok?”: and if you say they aren’t, I have a feeling the next statement would be no(6) below.

6) “well just keep praying”.

The above list was compiled and sent to me by Colin from meandray.com who is one of my greatest Mental Health Friday supporters since day one.

And it’s another Friday, which means another Mental Health Friday. I would love to do another of this list. So, if you were having a chronic Illness or mental illness, what are some of the things you wouldn’t want someone to say to you? Please leave a comment and I’ll be sure to include it in next week plus the link.

P.S: an MHF story would be published later in the day. Stay tuned and looking forward to hearing from you.

IMAGE CREDIT: Whisper.sh