Sticky post: I may be well

Hi, I haven’t been keeping up the blog partly because things are going so well for me. If you have been diagnosed with a mental illness and/or are taking psychiatric medication and stumbled across this blog take heart, you can recover. Your life can be fun, productive, calm…whatever consider as good. You can also wean off psychiatric drugs.

I started this blog to share my experience with others. I am at a good place in my life. I still am not ready to go public and I have other projects where I need to spend time. So I will not be posting as regularly.

Happy Sunday in November

Hi,

One of my goals was to write a book on how I recovered. Now I’m wondering why I would even want to expose myself to all the critism.

Getting the word out about Big Pharma and our children

Hello readers,

Today I thought I would post a link to another blog I came across while I was on the mainstream news looking for other news. I was surprised to find, Whos mining the kids by  by family therapist and author Marilyn Wedge, Ph.D. I read her post: The Connection Between Big Pharma And Our Kids  Well maybe it wasn’t mainstream this blog is on the Huffington Post, but I came across it while suffering for mainstream news. In the post she talks about the media’s effect on children and how it is transforming them to addicted consumers.

She is interviews f Joel Bakan about new book, “Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children“  and asks him about the about chapter title Prescription for Profit.

 

I’m glad the word is getting out the mainstream public. Maybe someday I will have the courage to tell my story to the mainstream public.

He thinks I’m okay because I found the right meds…I’m okay because I weaned off those meds

Yesterday my husband and I visited the tax man. We filed an extention on our taxes, so now we are doing them in October.
Two years ago I felt like I had to explain to man who prepares our taxes why I was on disability. I was on in 2010 too, but not 2011.
I told him he was one of two people in this town who knew I was on disability because I never told anyone because of the stigma involved.
He said he understands about stigma because he wife is a social worker and that with the right meds I would be okay. My husband and I just sat there. Neither on of us told him that weaning off the means is what has enabled me to have a more “productful” life. (Productful according to the Urban Dictionary means: “Fully realizing the utmost capacity of productivness. Acheiving with success one’s abilities.”  or  “When you’re so productive you start creating your own words for how much work you’re getting done.”

There’s no way in Hell I’d have the job I have now if I was on psych meds.  (Time to make a donation to MindFreedom methinks.)

Oh boy, what to do when your friends are your enemies.

I’m to scared to “come out”

Hi,
I know I should be writing more than I do. There is a lot to tell. I’m just too scared that if I tell too much of it that I will be found out.
I’ve become my own best friend.
My job is stressful although many people think it is a fun job. Others want me to be happy. They ask me if I like my new job. I say I really miss my old job.

I have a constant ache in my left shoulder. It is related to stress. I miss my life 20 years ago…..the good parts certainly not the bad parts…the parts that made me go to a doctor and ask for pills.
Sometimes I think that God has plans for me. And then I wonder if a psych-doc heard me say that if he would say I have grandiose ideas.

I miss the time that I had a a little girl and a husband I really loved and felt close to. Now my little girl is all grown up. I think the only thing my current husband and I have in common is our commitment to escape the hellhole of psych drugs and psych diagnoses.
He doesn’t’ really seem to be that “into’ me. I am unable to tell him I love him. Yet we live a life of incognito together hiding our psych diagnoses. It seems better than living alone and in poverty. I just wish he had more of a sex drive. I think about finding someone to love me all the time…or should I say, someone to make love to me. I am a HWP and told by many that I am pretty. I just don’t know why he doesn’t initiate intimacy more often.

Outing someone else

Well, I did something I never thought I would do. I accidentally “outed” another person. I said in writing that this person had a mental illness. They were furious with me. I can’t beleive that I did that. I didin’t have the guts to tell the person. I really know how you feel becuase I have one too!

The ‘real world”

Well, I’m still working at my “real world” job. I’m kinda proud of myself. But I’m full of tension. My back has knots in it.

Dr. Gabor Maté on the Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction, Attention Deficit Disorder and the Destruction of American Childhood

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/5/30/dr_gabor_mat_on_the_stress

Paperwork completed?

I mailed off the paperwork to SS yesterday to let them know that I now have a professional job and don’t need ss anymore.  I had phoned and mailed them a couple months ago. They then sent me  a bunch of new or more forms to fill out. The forms asked questions about employment from years ago. I m not sure why they were asking all those questions, because they should already have the answers to those in their files already. And some of the questions were about how much money I made in a specific month years ago.  I don’t have paperwork from that far back. Also questions abbot supervisor’s names from years ago…I don’t remember or those people have moved on to new jobs.

I phoned a woman at the office about a week and a half ago. She seemed friendly enough and just told me not to spend the SS money since I had started my new job. The paperwork asks for names and phone numbers of my current supervisor. I also told her I would prefer if they didn’t phone my boss and ask question because of the stigma involved. (I don’t need my new boss know that I have an illness.) The woman told me to simply write on the paperwork that I would prefer if they didn’t contact my new boss.

I was supposed to have finished the paperwork a couple of weeks ago, but I have been so busy with my new job AND the questions are about details and fact that I don’t know where the documentation is. Obsessive and organized  I am not. I finally figured I would just answer the paperwork questions the best I could so they would know that I was at least trying to answer them. sometimes in life trying to do something rather than doing nothing because you can’t do it correctly is the best way to get help or to let others know you are doing your best.

Is anyone reading?

When I started this blog in 2008, I hooked up with other alternative bloggers. It was fun. Now it seems many of them have quit blogging. That seems like a lifetime ago.

I am still kinda running scared. And going through life incognito.

I suppose if I just go public, I could write a better blog. I just don’t want to blow my cover.

Right now I am sitting in my bed with my laptop and typing this. My husband is out of town. I did send some mother’s day gifts to my mom. They were fair trade roses and my daughter gave me a fair trade rose for mother’s day too. Trying to live my life in accordance to my values is hard. Fair trade roses assure that the workers are paid a fair wage and they aren’t exposed to too much chemicals. Going environmental was one of the ways the lightbulb for treating my body in an environmentally friendly way too would benefit me. All those pharmaceuticals were poison to me.

I know that my daughter is proud of me. I have accomplished a lot and she has been there through it. A lot of it wasn’t fair to her. I sometimes wonder if that is why she wants to be with me so much. If it is because she wants to make up for lost time when I was depressed or doped up out of my mine.

Jazz in Pieces was one of the bloggers. She has recovered and doesn’t blog about her mental illness anymore.

I wish I could write more. I see some new people have started blogs about mental health. I always feel sad when I read the people who are going the traditional “I’m going to take my medicine for this genetic illness rout.” I just spend some time this afternoon reading a couple of those. I wasn’t o comment on their blogs…Hey, don’t get suckered into that medication route. It will do more harm than good.

Anyway, I am going to sign off. Please comment if you are reading.

I need the encouragement.

Write a little each day

One of the best ways to write a book is to practice writing everyday. I’ve been thinking about writing a book for a long time now. I want to write about my recovery from mental illness. I want to write a book, but I’m not sure why. I used to think it was because I wanted to help others. I now feel like someone who is “passing” for a normal person. That most people who know me now wouldn’t ever even dream of my struggle with mental illness. I have a lot of things I ‘ve done in my life that I am ashamed of, and I don’t know if I really want to write about those things. I wouldn’t want to embarrass my children or my parents. So, I wonder if I really want to write the book. I keep thinking I need to be just a little more successful before I can write the book.

How successful to I need to be? What is your definition of success?  For know, my definition is that I need to be off disability and holding down a full time job with benefits and also having a little status in my community. I know I was actually successful before I was off of disability. And in this economy defining success by a full time job with benies, isn’t really the best thing to do. Why does anyone have to be a success by how much money he or she makes?  Well, I just want others to see, “yes, it can be done, a doctor can diagnose you will a “genetic, brain disease, give you so much mediation that you are doped up beyond able to function, and yet, you can recover and lead a “successful”, “normal” life.
Writing also keeps me sane. I remember once, when I had been very depressed and the psych doc had recommended that I go into a pych unit…that one of the “excerises was for me ( all of the patients to write down their feelings.) I didn’t do it, not becuase I was noncomplient, no, rather, I didn’t have any feelings. Later, a freind of mine said “you sould have written, ‘Today, I feel nothing.’”  Yeah, I should have. We also  had art thearpy and I made a little plaster puppie. When I go out of the psych unit . I had that plaster puppy sitting on the ledge by my fireplace. But, whenever I looked at it, it just reminding me of my time in the psych unit an dwhat a awlful time it was for me. One day I picked up that plaster puppy and threw it in the garbage.

Which reminds me of another thing I did during that time period. I had a job in which I thought people picked on  me and treated me unfarily. I had the phone numbers of my colleagues written on a piece of paper. One day I picked up that paper and held it over the sink as I lit a match under it and watched it burn.