Category Archives: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

Blog For Mental Health 2013 Is Here!

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Once upon a time, there was a lovely young lady named Lulu. She was bright and vivid and bigger than life (she still is, don’t worry, I just talked with her the other day), and it was an especial desire of hers to advocate for understanding, strength, support, and education about mental health.  She had suffered a long time with her own mental illness, and she never wanted anyone to feel alone, as she had.

If you’ve been reading this blog for very long, my loves, you might know her as the woman with whom I co-founded the community mental health site, A Canvas Of The Minds.

(Side note:  Please, if you haven’t, go check Canvas out.  It isn’t just a site about being mentally ill, it’s about dealing with so many aspects of life, and chances are if you can’t relate to any of our authors’ pieces personally, we still touch upon topics and situations that you may have to deal with through a friend or a loved one.  If nothing else, it will give you a glimpse into life with mental illness, and hopefully foster dialogue and understanding.) 

So.  Last year, Lulu did something awesome, something so much more, which caught on like wildfire.  She started Blog for Mental Health 2012.  It was a simple idea that united a community.  If you have ever seen this badge on a site (and chances, are, you have):

well, that all started with her (and yes, I know it wasn’t here, but let’s not psychoanalyze me right now).

Now, to be absolutely clear, this isn’t an award.  I want to make that very plain, because I know that many bloggers feel that the blogging awards passed along, however well-intentioned, sometimes have a bit of a “chain mail” feel to them.  I would love to see even “award-free” bloggers taking up this gauntlet, because it is something else entirely.  It’s a simple, yet very powerful way for a community of mental health bloggers to show that they are proud of their lives, that they are writing for themselves as well as for those who have not yet found their voices, that they are ensuring no one ever has to feel alone when dealing with mental illness.

This year’s badge is especially cool, because Lulu put together a number of different choices.  She posted them on her blog, Sunny With a Chance Of Armageddon, as well as on A Canvas Of The Minds.  The community then got to vote on which image they wanted for 2013.  After a mostly scientific tally (read: I made tally marks in a notebook scientifically), I can reveal to you the Blog For Mental Health 2013 official badge:

Designed by Lulu, selected by the community!

Designed by Lulu, selected by the community!

Here is how this thing works:

1.) Take the pledge by copying and pasting the following into a post featuring “Blog for Mental Health 2013″.

I pledge my commitment to the Blog For Mental Health 2013 Project.  I will blog about mental health topics not only for myself, but for others.  By displaying this badge, I show my pride, dedication, and acceptance for mental health.  I use this to promote mental health education in the struggle to erase stigma.

2.) Link back to the person who pledged you.

Blog For Mental Health 2013 « A Canvas Of The Minds

3.) Write a short biography of your mental health, and what this means to you.

So, I carry diagnoses of Bipolar Disorder I, and also nearly every anxiety disorder in the book (the book being the DSM, the one used for making these diagnoses) — Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Possibly also Impulse Control Disorder.

I kept a lid on things until I was about 25, when a whole series of events led to a complete and total nervous breakdown.  The short version is something along the lines of six years of medications (soooo many medications, like upwards of 70), talk and structured therapies, eventually electroconvulsive therapy — which was the most horrible experience of my life, and left scars I will carry forever.

A lot of you who are reading this probably don’t know all about that.  That’s because something happened at the beginning of March last year, I can’t really explain it, but I became well again.  I became the girl I was at 21, when I could do it all beautifully and flawlessly and joyfully.  I have spent this time healing, and I know that I won’t ever be exactly that same girl; I’m a whole lot wiser, and sometimes much sadder.  I have to take my medications regularly, or things can get pretty rough for me.

But I am happy, oh so happy.  And were you to ask me if I would go through all of that again, six years of Hell (capital H) to get where I am now — 32 years old, living on disability, in my parents’ home — my answer would be a resounding, ”Yes!”, without qualification.  I am more blessed than I ever imagined I could be.  I love and I am loved, and I discovered the wonderful, loving, supportive community of all of you because of my journey.

4.) Pledge five others, and be sure to let them know!

I am pledging five of my fellow bloggers who have stood with me, and have proven their mettle in my eyes as mental health bloggers.

I’m going to put a little twist on this one.

First, as the entirety of Team Canvas was pledged in the original post, I’ll start out with five other bloggers whom I know and respect and who have made lasting contributions to the online mental health community:

Cate, of  Infinite Sadness… or hope?

Mel, of Toby and I together and/or scienerf (I wasn’t sure which to pledge)

Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars

Kevin, of Voices of Glass

Pride in Madness

But I also would like to include five more bloggers, just a sampling of the newer voices I am reading, who may not yet know about this.  So I pledge:

My Mind Matters

2bbritt

How To Fly Over The Cuckoos Nest

Bipolar 2 Dad

AnxiousElephant

If you happen upon this without being pledged, I still pledge you.  Feel free to take the pledge!  Promote awareness!

5.) And, as something novel for 2013, Lulu and I ask one more thing of you.

As you may have noticed, Canvas does not keep an official blogroll, outside of links to our authors’ personal blogs.  For something new and special to introduce Blog For Mental Health 2013, and really build a sense of community — and show everyone how many of us there are, and how strong we are, coming together — we are launching a Blog For Mental Health 2013 Official Blogroll!  So, in addition to linking back to the person who pledged you, please include the link to the original post in your piece.  As this gets passed along, link back or click here and leave a comment containing the link to your pledge, and we will put you on our Blog For Mental Health 2013 Official Blogroll page!  Show the world our strength, show them our solidarity, show them what we are made of.  Take the Blog for Mental Health pledge and proudly display the badge on your blog!

(And yes, I do know that I stuck about 752 links in here.  I figure the more this gets passed around, the more some will get lost, and I want people to be able to find their way back to the original post and page!)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Midnight Ravings Of A Madwoman

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I’ve had some shit going on in me lately, I haven’t been quite myself.  Or rather I have been, I’ve just been a self I don’t particularly care for, and usually have properly under wraps.

Paranoia.  It’s an ugly word, a much uglier feeling.  What am I so afraid of?  Better to ask what I’m not.  I’m afraid of leaving my room.  I’m afraid of speaking to anyone.  Two years ago it was so bad that I had a little device rigged up to cover the lens for the camera in my laptop.  Never mind if it was turned on or not.  And there has been more.  A lot more.

You can’t explain paranoia, nor can you really do much to treat it.  I carry diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder (PD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  Of all of these, I say paranoia is the worst.

In any case, GAD, PD, OCD, PTSD, these are all things that came along for the ride when my bipolar got bad — latent traits, recessive genes activated by my wildly dominant bipolar.  Or, in the case of PTSD, a trauma that was a result of a “treatment” for my bipolar depression (electroconvulsive therapy), and a trust violated.

Paranoia has been with me, in milder but truer form, since birth (to keep things straight, I do not believe that bipolar has, but that I have yet to discuss).  I have what a lifelong friend calls “a paranoid personality” (minus the disorder part, it makes an enormous difference).  And it’s true.  I read the big books young, cutting my teeth on gems like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and (of course) George Orwell’s 1984.  I even understood the evils of totalitarian societies when I read Richard Adams’ Watership Down for the first time when I was ten.  Oh yes, a book about bunnies and evil.

These books didn’t make me paranoid. I was drawn to them because they spoke to something I knew, something which was already a part of me.

Lately there have been so many people and things that have me scared. I’ll stick to the latter.  This thing, this internet, this “information superhighway” — it scares the fuck out of me.  Do you know how your information is being collated and collected and used and stored?  I think most of you know the bare bones of facebook.  But do you know that The Library of Congress is saving all of your tweets?  Do you know how tailored Google’s algorithms and tracking of pretty much everything you do online is? Do you know that the privacy laws (in the United States, at least) protecting information like your private, personal email correspondence are so incredibly loose as to be a joke?

(Do you know I am terrified to have ventured down to The Dungeon right now to post this? My wi-fi is out, so I have to connect to the modem in the basement directly and I feel utterly exposed.)

Do I know I sound like I’m raving like a madwoman right now?  Yep.  That’s what paranoia does.  I’m terrified to watch and read and learn more, but I’m much more frightened to look away, because someone has to be paying attention, goddamnit.

I don’t know.  I don’t know what I’m meant to do with this, what I mean with this post.  I have this magic brain — and not in the crazy, “magical thinking way”, in the unusual, really fucking amazing way.  It got me through years of horror and saw me out the other side.  It’s like there are two of me, living simultaneously.  And one of them would be hallucinating, and the other one would be telling that one, ‘This is a hallucination.  Those noises, that smell, those things you see and feel on your skin, they aren’t real.  It’s okay, don’t worry, all you have to do is to just wait it out.’

And I did.  That part of me saved me, it talked me through highs and lows and fears and crazies and got me to where I could be the happy, healthy, more-or-less sane woman I am now (maybe not right now).  Most people don’t have that, believe me, I’ve done my research here.  But my point is, that part of me is now wondering how to talk the other part down.  Or at least keep a lid on things until this episode passes.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Ties That Bind Me

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As you read this, please remember that I take all medication under the supervision of a psychiatrist, and also that my drug metabolism is quite unusual, so I often take very high doses of medications that would be extremely unsafe for most people. Don’t ever, ever try this at home.

Two days before I was to embark on my latest trip back to Pittsburgh (Monday, the 15th), I felt myself stricken with anxiety almost immediately after waking up.  I took a Xanax, and I did pretty well running what were meant to be the last of my pre-travel errands.  I went to sleep that night calm: purchases made, laundry done, a whole day left to arrange things in my suitcase.

The following day I woke suddenly at 4:22 in the morning, despite the fact that I had gone to bed at about ten the night before, and my body likes much more than six hours of sleep, especially if I have ingested any benzos.

I couldn’t get back to sleep.  A little while later, I again recognized anxiety and took a Xanax. I went out for a chai, and drove around in the five a.m. darkness for a while, allowing the fresh air from the open windows to soothe me.

Within another hour came another Xanax.  I was wound up like a spring.  I realized I had one or two more errands to run after all, and down the hatch went Xanax number three.

It was at that point I realized I was in the grips of a panic attack so intense that the last one of its caliber had sent me to the Emergency Room for a night.

Sitting in the parking lot in front of the open-air mall I was about to patronize for some odds and ends, I talked on the phone to my shrink.  He could get me in for 15 minutes that afternoon, could I make it?

Could I?  I would have cleared my entire schedule!  As I hung up the phone, I realized what had woken me up in the early hours of the morning had been terror.  I just couldn’t figure out why.  I had general anxiety about the trip — I’m not a nervous flier or anything, these trips just bring with them a special brand of family stress.

Xanax number four was popped in the doctor’s waiting room.  If you want to count along, that’s eight milligrams of Xanax in as many hours.  And not only was I not asleep or in any way goofy, I was so wired that my psychiatrist, who had previously been against giving me any more benzos, was pretty nearly throwing them at me.  I got more clonazepam (Klonopin).  I got more diazepam (Valium).  I got permission — actually it was much more like encouragement — to take the diazepam on top of the mass amounts of alprazolam I had already ingested.  And for the first time in the relatively short ten months we have been seeing each other, I thought, ‘Thank God for this man.’

But even with all of that, do you know what I have spent most of this trip doing?  Arranging my belongings.  And rearranging them.  And taking things apart to reorganize.  It wasn’t until I repacked my carry-on for the eight zillionth time that the light bulb went off in my head.  Hello, OCD, haven’t seen you around for a while!  Haven’t missed you, either.

Now don’t get me wrong, I know it could be so much worse, because in the past it has been so much worse.  I’m soothing myself, while distracting my brain from all of the germs I can feel on every surface of this hotel.

I’m dealing.  I’m coping.  And while it certainly isn’t the most fun way to spend my trip, it’s a very interesting insight into the way my anxiety disorders are linked.

I’m just praying that nothing triggers my PTSD.  Which, given that it’s primarily linked to a fundamental betrayal of trust — and electroconvulsive therapy — I’m thinking it’s unlikely.

I’m praying it’s unlikely.

(Note:  This post was written Sunday, the 21st (four days ago) while I was traveling.  I’ll pre-date it accordingly, but just a heads up that this is not exactly the current state I am in.)


© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Any and all permissions set forth here are superseded, and when applicable revoked by this page’s Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Will You Be There To Catch Me If I Fall?

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For 31 years of my life, this one was a done deal.  Okay, I can’t speak to my younger years entirely, but something happened to me around age 14 that made me my own and only support.  I had my first breakdown, and in true Ruby style, it was one hell of a mess.

Crying hysterically when your mother tries to drop you off at school may sometimes be normal for some adolescents.  But I was never bullied, I had lots of friends, and I wasn’t afraid of any of the teachers.  So for me it was a bit extreme.  To my mother’s credit, she knew this was not one of those “You’ll feel better when you get to school” things, and she didn’t force me to go in.

Hiding in the basement, cowering in terror from your very good friends when they try to come and find you at your house after school definitely does not fall on the spectrum of normal for a 14-year-old girl.  It would be more than a decade before I had any idea why I did it.  Even before then, I never really thought about how incredibly strange my behavior was.  And no one was home with me to see the degree to which things had deteriorated.

Now don’t take that to mean I had absentee parents.  They simply both held jobs, and as the crying and anxiety seemed to relax almost entirely when my mother brought me back home in the mornings, she went to work at hers (not without reservations, I’m sure).

At some point I pulled myself back together.  I couldn’t really tell you how.  It probably had something to do with the looming threat of not graduating the eighth grade and getting the fuck out of that school forever.  Even if my days in middle school weren’t as miserable as some, that place still sucked.  There’s a reason they parcel those three years away into their own little hell.  That way you can get through them and start semi-fresh somewhere else.

There are a lot of now infamous parent/teacher/principal/student conferences that went on while they tried to figure out what to do with me, as I was so far behind in so many classes.  May it suffice to say I gave a lot of the staff a lot of hell, but in a very adult, don’t-you-dare-talk-to-me-like-I-am-a-freaking-child kind of way.  I was pretty incredible, even my parents thought so.  My theory on why I was graduated is that I had one or two good teachers who were on my side and realized that there wasn’t really anything else they could teach me, and the others just wanted me the hell out of their lives.

Point being, after I got back up onto my feet, I made the decision that no one was ever going to see me off of them again.  Fuck all to what was going on, I could hide it.

And I did, with one exception when I was 16.  Never mind the details, but it caused a shift in my perspective.  It was no longer I’m going to hide this, damnit.  It ceased to be an issue of pride and independence and turned into a belief that ultimately, I really was the only one I could rely on to take care of myself, at least emotionally and mentally.

And for the next 15 years, that was my life.  I had friends, I had family, and I had doctors, eventually.  And they were all good people looking to help me in my time of terrible distress.  But I wouldn’t have it.  Not really.  Yes, I sobbed in my mother’s arms more times than I’m sure I ever did as a child.  Yes, my father cleaned up my financial messes and babysat with me during the days as I went through electroconvulsive therapy.  Yes, my friends made themselves available to me to the degree that they were able to and then some – but they did all have children, most were spread across the country, and for a lot of that time I wasn’t really with it.  And yes, on more than one occasion I know I begged for help from my psychiatrist.  I had even begun to develop a strong support network through blogging.

But still, when I got down to cases, I was the only one I could count on.

It’s funny how the most unexpected things can change your whole perspective.

Last Winter, I spent about three days in the worst migraine I had ever lived in my life.  By the third day I couldn’t even think, and when I went to speak to my mother in the early morning hours on a Saturday, when she was getting ready for work, I was pushing back hard on the tears.  You cannot cry when your head feels like that.  Crying equals more pain.

The solution she quickly came to was for my father to take me to the urgent care.  Sensible enough, except my father hates all things medical, he doesn’t deal so well with them, and dear Lord, in the past five years had I put him through enough doctor and emergency room visits to last several lifetimes, and I just didn’t want him to take me, honestly.

I expressed something like this to my mom, tears rolling down my face in spite of myself, and she told me that maybe that was something my father was meant to learn from all of these experiences, how to be able to deal with the medical world (my mother is so very Catholic and, I swear, everything with her is “meant to be”).

I don’t think my dad learned anything that day, but I got to thinking about what maybe I was supposed to learn from all that had happened to me in the preceding five-and-a-half years (yes, I’ve got some of it in me, too).  And sometime after the Vicodin and the ice packs and attempting to sleep and the muscle relaxers and throwing up, I came to the most amazing realization.

I have so many people in my life who are reaching out their hands to catch me.

I have friends who would put a roof over my head and food in my mouth should I land on their doorsteps.  I have aunts and uncles and cousins of my parents who would take me into their lives in an instant.  I have two grandfathers who would give me shelter and love and whatever I could need.  I have so many wonderful cousins.  One particular branch have absorbed me into their lives and made me feel like closer family than I technically am, and never so much as blinked when I asked them to help me find a pharmacy where they live and drive me there (twice) because I was going off-the-wall manic.  I have my parents, I have always had my parents, but I feel differently about their taking care of me than I ever did before.  I have so many of you lovelies, who would scoop me up and tuck me into your lives and set me on the road to recovery in an instant.

I have the whole beautiful world.  There will always be an endless number of kind hands, even if they are the hands of strangers, reaching out, willing and wanting to help me should I need it.

Kind of amazing when you think about it.

There won’t be another breakdown.  I may have my moments here and there, but I can say with absolute confidence and certainty that I will never go back to where I have been.  But while I can’t list for you all the things that journey through Hell (capital H) taught me, one of them was definitely how to let love in.

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

On Doing Something I Shouldn’t (Should)

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I shouldn’t be writing this to you right now, lovelies, I should be trying to sleep.  But that’s exactly the reason I am writing it.  Lemme ‘splain.

This week has been such a good week.  I’ve had wonderful days, and I’ve had wonderful days.  The former have been wonderful because everything was so beautiful and right.  It’s the latter we’re concerned with.

These past few days I’ve stepped out of the glowing bubble.  I’ve felt distress, I’ve felt sorrow, I’ve felt rising anxiety, I’ve been disturbed, and I’ve had a night of very fractured sleep (this last one).

So why is all of that wonderful?

Because the distress didn’t become anxiety.

Because the sorrow was so completely different from depression.

Because the rising anxiety dissipated when I told it to and then read a book, no Xanax required.

Because the disturbance was the thing most likely to throw me off-balance, and it didn’t.  It may have contributed to the fractured sleep, but so may have a lot of things.

And because the night of fractured sleep was exactly that.  It wasn’t my brain not shutting off, it wasn’t my sleepies failing.  It was simply that I had things tugging at me that kept me from sinking into complete and total somnolence, which I have done every other night this week.  And those things will not tug at me tonight, so I don’t fear more lost sleep.

Isn’t it so very wonderful?

(Incidentally, why did no one ever warn me that Splendor In The Grass was such an incredibly fucked-up movie?  I mean, it was excellent, I know it was excellent by the way it resonated deep within me, flipped me all around, and nearly caused a misstep.  But geez, it would have been nice to know what I was letting myself in for!  Though maybe it meant more because I didn’t.)

Moral of the story:  Fear is antithetical to growth, progress, and strength (yes, all of them).  Quash it whenever possible.  ;)

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Wait Is Over

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Here it is!  I have been working very hard, and collaborating on the development of another blog.  This one is a different approach, a community of people blogging together.  Well, it will be, anyway.  Three authors (including me) are already on board, another has given a yes, and after the diversity is a bit more properly on display, we’re going to get to reaching out and recruiting and advertising.

As far as I am concerned, I’m keeping this blog for my primary, and just contributing to the new project here and there, and only with regard to my mental differences.  Although so far there are two posts up, and they’re both mine.  But I have the most time, currently.

So shall I give you the link?  Would you like to know where to find it?  Are you sure?  Do you really want to know?

Okay, I’ve kept you in suspense long enough.  A Canvas Of The Minds - still very much in development, but I’ll keep you posted!

Ruby

© Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Ruby Tuesday and I Was Just Thinking. . . with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.