therapy

Giving crazy a name

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I’m a very analytical person.  I like when things have names and definitions and concepts I can understand.  One of the reasons I went into psychology was so I could put a name on my mother’s type of crazy.  I wanted to know why.  I wanted to know what exactly was wrong with her.  There has to be something.  People don’t just act like that for no reason.  I needed an explanation.

I have since realized that my mother’s crazy is not diagnosable, or should I say, not limited to a single diagnosis.  My mother exhibits the signs of narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline personality disorders.  She’s also paranoid and likely has a mood disorder of some sort.  But you know what?  Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better.  Having a mental illness doesn’t excuse you from being an abuser.  Hell, it doesn’t even excuse you from being asshole (that’s you, Dad).  In my early 20s, I struggled a lot with placing blame.  I so badly wanted to hate my mother for what she did, but then part of me thought, “what if she’s mentally ill?”  I was just trying to find an excuse for all the shit she did and was still doing.  Eventually, after several years, I realized all of that didn’t matter.  My mother did what she did because of who she is as a person, not because of some illness.  She had a choice.

Despite not caring about my mother’s diagnosis, I still so badly want to know what’s wrong with me.  Will it make a difference?  I don’t know.  I would like to think that it would.  A diagnosis provides a sense of direction, a method of treatment, an explanation of symptoms.  I have yet to have that.  It’s quite possible that my desire for a diagnosis, a name for my crazy, has been strengthened by my years of experience with different diagnoses.  I never really had a concrete answer.

My first diagnosis was bipolar II at the age of 15.  My first therapist worked with a psychiatrist who officially diagnosed me and started me on a mood stabilizer.  I didn’t really understand the diagnosis, even more so now that I am older.  My mood changes were nothing more than what is typically experienced by a teenager.  My issues were much deeper than that.  After more therapy, my diagnosis was changed to bipolar I with psychotic features.  My therapist believed there were times in which I was out of touch with reality; I did things I didn’t remember doing and acted like a different person, which she attributed to psychosis.  I now believe that those instances were actually times I had dissociated, not psychotic episodes.  Back then, I had no idea what dissociation was, and apparently neither did my therapist.

When I returned to therapy a few years later, my therapist diagnosed me with social anxiety.  I think he mistook my fear of talking with him (and others) as social anxiety when the real reason was because I was conditioned not to speak by my mother.  I don’t blame him for that bad diagnosis; you can’t diagnosis someone accurately if you don’t get the full picture.

Many years later, when I scheduled an appointment to see my primary care physician, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety.  Generally, I don’t condone primary care physicians diagnosing psychological disorders because their training is just not adequate in most cases.  But I was desperate at the time and could not manage to see a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I did the only thing I could.  I wasn’t looking for a diagnosis; I was just looking for relief.

After my first hospitalization, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression with suicidal ideation.  The PTSD diagnosis made sense, as I had experienced some debilitating flashbacks as well as other common symptoms (irritability, trouble sleeping, and hypervigilence).  The depression diagnosis I had no strong feelings about; it just seemed like something they labelled on most people.  My diagnoses were relatively similar after  my second hospitalization (which I would hope so, seeing as though it was less than two weeks later).  The only difference was that they added “chronic” to my depression diagnosis.

When I started mandated therapy shortly after my second hospitalization, my therapist was required to make a diagnosis to report to the insurance company.  After two hours of intake and two subsequent one-hour sessions, she completely ignored the PTSD diagnosis and any related anxiety and diagnosed me with depression secondary to asthma.  This diagnosis was laughable.  I was not depressed because of my asthma.  Asthma was the least of my problems.  And it wasn’t like she was unaware of my history.  She was sent all of my information from the hospital.  She was clueless.  So clueless.  She even had the nerve to tell me she didn’t think I had anxiety at all.  Anxiety was probably the only thing I was sure I had in some form or another.  She was such an idiot.

Around the same time, my PCP diagnosed me with ADHD.  I was having trouble keeping attention, focusing on anything…hell, sitting still was difficult.  I always had problems, but they seemed to be magnified in those last few months.  It was never an issue before because I managed to function quite well academically as a child.  It could have very well been all of the medications I was on that made it worse, or even just my ever-increasing stress levels.  Who really knows.

When I was hospitalized for a third time in February, the ADHD diagnosis was dropped by the psychiatric nurse.  Instead, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, chronic depression, and borderline personality disorder.  The BPD diagnosis was shocking to me.  I had extensive knowledge about the disorder from my psychology studies, and didn’t fit most of the criteria for diagnosis.  I believe they made the diagnosis based on my self-injury. Many professionals automatically associate self-injury with BPD, even though it is also present in order disorders.  I didn’t want that label on me.  I also knew, through my studies, that many professionals did not want to work with someone with BPD.  When I told my therapist about the diagnosis, she seemed to agree with my disapproval of it.  It was comforting to at least know that someone was on my side and I wasn’t completely unaware of my own mental state.

As of right now, I don’t have a diagnosis.  I have chosen to disregard all of my previous diagnoses because I don’t feel confident in any of the people who diagnosed me.  I hope that eventually, in my current therapy work, I can be diagnosed with something…anything.  At least this time, my therapist is taking her time and learning as much as she can about me and my history.  I trust in her knowledge and experience more than anyone else.  I just want to know that I’m not completely crazy.  I need a name for what I’m experiencing.  I need an explanation.

I am not my mother.

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I am not my mother.

It is such a simple sentence, yet it is an extremely difficult concept for me to embrace.

I try to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.  But when I was at a group-therapy workshop this past Sunday, I participated in a body image project that brought up a lot of those feelings.  It took everything in me not to just color over my body outline and stab the paper.  I’ve always had difficulty connecting to my body.  I’ve always had difficulty loving my body because I feel like it’s her body.

I’ve mentioned before how many people tell me I look so much like my mother.  That makes it so much harder to separate myself from her.  Aside from her being a couple of inches shorter, she has the same skin color, eye color, and stature as me.  To make matters worse, my mother consistently went out of her way to make herself look even more like me.  I believe she did it because she knew it bothered me.  It was just another way to manipulate me.

If I dyed my hair, she dyed her hair the same color.  If I got a haircut, she got a haircut, too.  She’d buy the same underwear as me.  She would even take my clothes without my permission and wear them.  I remember getting picked up from work one day last year and she was in the back of the car, wearing a familiar outfit.  It was the outfit I got for Christmas from one of my best work friends.  I didn’t even get to wear it.  When I asked her why she took it, she said it looked better on her anyway.  It didn’t even fit her.

I avoid looking in the mirror because I constantly see her, both in body and in face.  I never see myself.  If I look like her, that must mean that I am like her in every way.  It is nauseating to me.  I hate my body because it’s her body.  I hate my face because it’s her face.  I don’t know if I can get past that.  I’ve never been able to feel like anything is my own, and that includes my body.

During my therapy session today, my therapist asked me about the body image project.  I told her about my difficulty in seeing myself as separate from my mother, and how that makes it difficult for me not to hate my body because of how much I hate her.  My therapist tried to get me to realize that I was not my mother, especially on a psychological level.  Our personalities are very different.  I am also more intelligent than my mother – and that was something that she hated about me and constantly made me feel bad about.

Despite the differences, I still have a hard time acknowledging that I am not my mother.  It’s hard when you grow up in a society that judges you on your looks before anything else.  Part of me wants to make a drastic change, because now she won’t be able to copy me.  Maybe I’ll dye my hair dark.  Maybe I’ll get a new pair of glasses.  I need something to help me feel different, because knowing it isn’t enough for me.

Taking steps in rebuilding my life

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

Today marks exactly two weeks that I’ve been out.

I’ve taken the bus five times.

I walked 1.3 miles home in the dark of night.

I’ve crossed a major highway twice.

I navigated successfully through three different towns and only got lost for a few minutes.

I used Uber three times.

I had a phone conversation that lasted an hour and a half.

These may seem like small, insignificant things to most people.  But for me, they were big steps…things I had never done before, actions I had never taken.  And I got through them (though I admit, I did walk into a tree and tripped over my own foot during the late night walk home).  I’ve managed to wake up every morning and drag myself out of bed, even when I didn’t want to.  I’m trying.

Oh, yeah.  I also managed to get a job.  I applied to every place I could think of over the last month or so, and finally got an interview on Monday.  I got through that interview with no problems and had my second interview yesterday with the general manager.  He hired me on the spot, and started me with almost $3 more an hour than I was making at my old job, which I had been at for over 10 years.

I was so thrilled; it felt like I was finally on my way to getting established here.  Then I came home to go over the paperwork and my excitement came to a grinding halt.  I completely overlooked the fact that I would need identification.  I have my State ID, but that’s not enough.  I need a birth certificate, passport, or Social Security card.  I’ve never had a passport, and my mother kept my birth certificate and SS card locked away – I was never allowed to have them in my possession.  I just started crying.  What the hell was I supposed to do now?  Do I go home and try to get them?  Can I really handle even going home?

I looked online to find information about applying for new ones.  It takes at least four weeks to get a birth certificate; I also have no idea where I was born, so I don’t know if it’s even possible.  For a social security card, it takes 10 days from the date of approval.  That’s cutting it close.  Luckily, my roommate’s boyfriend offered to drive me to the Social Security office today.  We got there a half an hour before it closed…but…I did it.  My application was processed and now I just have to wait to get the card in the mail.  Crisis averted.

The most important step of all has been getting myself into therapy.  I was fortunate enough to be in contact with a therapist from my online support group before I even made my move.  Now all that was left was for me to actually show up.  And I did.  It may take me a half an hour to walk there, but I’m doing it.  I may need a second job just to pay for my sessions, but I’m doing it.  It may be hard for me to talk about shit, but I’m doing it.

I knew by coming down here that I was taking a lot of risks, putting myself in a position that I’ve never been in before.  But I’m a fighter.  I’m building myself back up after being shattered for the last 29 years.

Therapy

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but I want to be a therapist.  I’m in my last semester of school and writing my undergrad thesis so I can graduate with my BA in Psychology.  I plan to start grad school as soon as possible to get my MS in Mental Health Counseling.  Part of what drove me to want to become a counselor, aside from my life experiences, is my previous experiences in therapy.  They were not the best; at times, they were actually counterproductive.  Those experiences made me want to work to become a great counselor so clients didn’t have to go through the experiences that I did with my therapists.

My first experience with therapy happened in high school.  It wasn’t my or my parents’ choice.  My guidance counselor had told my parents that if they did not put me in counseling, I would be expelled from school (I went to a private high school, so they had the right).  I went to therapy once a week until the school backed off, and then my mother pulled me out.

It’s not like anything was getting accomplished anyway.  My mother sat outside the door of the therapist’s office at every appointment.  It was her way of reinforcing her “don’t tell anyone anything” policy – and it worked.  I never talked about anything that was bothering me, or about any of my experiences.  The therapist didn’t even pick up on my fear; she actually enjoyed talking about her own experiences so much that she didn’t notice.

My second therapy stint occurred when I was 19.  My job was concerned with my emotional health, and being the unprofessional and unethical establishment they are, involved my mother.  They told her if she didn’t get me help, that they were going to call the police.  Looking back, all of this was bullshit in more ways than one.  But I ended up in therapy again.  And my mother still sat her ass outside the door. I remember the therapist asked me one day why my mother looked so angry.  I hadn’t even noticed; that was her normal look.

I think I ended up going for two months, if that.  Once again, nothing was getting accomplished anyway.  This time, whenever I brought up something like self-injury, the therapist avoided the topic altogether and it made me feel horrible.  I could only imagine what his reaction would have been if I brought up more serious issues.  Thank God I didn’t.

I managed to keep myself out of therapy until I was 28.  This time, I wanted to be in therapy.  My issue was that I couldn’t leave the house to do anything other than work.  So out of desperation, I sought out an online therapist.  It was a little expensive, but I used my credit card and took a chance.  It was much easier for me because I could type whatever I wanted and didn’t need to worry about my mother finding out about it.

I finally spilled my guts out to somebody who listened (or read, if you want to get technical).  The only problem was that she was limited in what she could do, since therapy consisted of e-mails viewed on a computer screen.  I understood that limitation when I started.  I just needed to tell someone, and at that point, I didn’t care who or how.  I actually still communicate with this same therapist online.  It’s been helpful to have someone consistent when my life seems to have been a whirlwind over the past year.

In November 2014, I was hospitalized for two weeks in the behavioral health unit.  Ten days later, I was hospitalized again due to a mix-up (I had no care plan in place after my initial hospitalization).  After that second hospitalization, I was set up with a MSW at a county facility.  I don’t know how much experience she had, but she was fucking terrible.  Excuse my language, but there’s just no other way to express it.  She was older than me, so she should have had some experience.  It scares me to think of how many clients she’s had and how many she fucked up.

My first clue to her incompetence was her diagnosis of me.  She diagnosed me with depression secondary to asthma.  My hospital discharge papers didn’t even list depression.  The psychiatrists in the hospital told me depression really wasn’t my main issue at all.  And then, asthma?  I’m depressed about my asthma?  By this point, I had been living with asthma for 14 years.  Asthma was the least of my problems.

I only saw her every other week, thankfully, but that was enough for her to still fuck my mind up.  During one session, she suggested that I try drinking alcohol to help relieve stress; she even mentioned that it was something her and her boyfriend did.  Not only was this a horrible suggestion to make to any client, but I had a documented history of alcohol abuse.  I was speechless.

For a few weeks, I felt myself slipping into suicideality again.  I admitted this to my therapist, who told me that feeling suicidal was normal.  I wanted some kind of help.  At this point, it had been nearly two months at the county facility and I had yet to see the psychiatrist for an evaluation.  But she did nothing.  She brushed it off as normal.

I ended up admitting myself to the hospital shortly after because I had recurring thoughts of walking out in front of a bus, to a point where that was all I could think about.  I also had access to an enormous amount of medication.  I was hospitalized for just under a week…and sent back to the same horrible therapist.

I told myself I would really try to make it work this time.  I couldn’t do it.  When I expressed anger over my mother’s extreme control of me, she downplayed it and told me that my mother was just concerned for my well-being.  When I discussed my mixed emotions about my mother because of my past, she said “I get it, I have problems with my mother, too.”  Really, did your mother abuse you?  My anger shifted from my mother to this woman parading as a therapist.  She went on to defend any action my mother had ever taken.  It made me sick.  I left therapy feeling worse than I did going in.

I made the decision to stop seeing this woman.  I had to, for my own sanity.  During what ended up to be our last session, she gave me a book on attachment disorders.  She told me she believed that I had an attachment disorder based on my relationship with my mother and that I should read the book to learn more about my problem.  During the same session, when I expressed my desire to move out-of-state and leave my family, she told me “you can’t do that, you can’t just abandon your own family.”  I knew that was it.  I never went back.

My coworker suggested (while I was still seeing the woman I have dubbed as SSW – shitty social worker) that I start going to counseling at a place where he had been going.  It was far, but he offered to drive me there and back home.  I was desperate, so I took him up on the offer.  I went right after work, so my mother never suspected anything.  This therapist was young – younger than me for sure, and I suspect not out of grad school for very long.  But I gave it a shot – at this point I had no other choice.

I decided to take a different approach and let it all out in the first two sessions.  I didn’t want to have to waste my time with another therapist who wasn’t going to acknowledge my issues.   I don’t think she was quite prepared.  It took her some time to come up with responses.  But she tried, and I appreciated it.  I continued seeing her every week up until the week I moved out, mostly so I could just have someone to talk to.  I admit I wasn’t a good client; I often shut down and would sit in silence.  I don’t think she knew how to respond to that, so very little progress was ever made.

My hope for humanity finally came when I met two therapists at a retreat for my support group back in April.  They were knowledgeable, experienced, and caring.  They were down-to-earth and spoke to you like you were just a normal person.  At one point in the retreat, I had broken down and one of the therapists sat next to me and held me while I cried.  This…this was something I never had before.  Someone who wanted to help.  Someone who actually cared.  From that point, I knew that I could find a therapist that would work for me.  After 14 years of shitty experiences, I finally found a positive.