To Come To Terms

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disability, mental health, mental illness, Mental Illness Awareness Week, NAMI, neurodiversity, personal, schizotypy, self acceptance

This week is Mental Illness Awareness Week in the United States! Started by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, its a week dedicated to help bringing awareness about the effects of mental illness and support for loved ones that live with it. I hope to be able to write something about living with mental illness each day this week, spoons permitting – fingers crossed!

Sometimes I find myself questioning my own diagnoses. I go through this process every year or so, sometimes managing to last a couple years. When it happens tends to vary – sometimes it’s during the winter, other times it’s during the fall, basically any time that stress is high and I find myself confused and wishing for answers I do not yet have. And considering I do not have stable access to medical care, these answers are hard to come by. They’re dependent on my own research abilities and the clinical studies I have access to (which are pretty much jack shit, short of abstracts).

I’ve been in that period of self-questioning again. Which is probably why my posts on here and on tumblr seem so contradictory when talking about things such as mental health. Physical health aside, that is the one I have been questioning the most because I never actually got much treatment for it, let alone investigation for diagnosis. My current one was done within two days, after seeing a psychiatrist I’ve never seen before for about 30 minutes at a time, over a subject he had no experience with and had to research himself for possible answers, and during a period where I had relapsed so much that my connection to the world (and thus language) was so incredibly strained that I barely knew to get help (I actually had to be convinced by my partners) – let alone how and what to say. So of course I find myself questioning it, because the situation is very open to inaccuracy.

But as I have in the past, even over this very struggle, I come right back to the same diagnosis. Even if the situation itself was questionable, the diagnosis seems to fit through all of the possibilities. Perhaps it was out of sheer luck. I don’t know. But as much as I question it, it does seem to match up.

I tell myself that perhaps I shouldn’t be questioning it so much and instead I should be looking into more information about the spectrum, to find out more and that would probably answer my various concerns. But I also realize that this questioning has been providing me with a lot of answers and the drive to seek them out specifically, instead of this huge web of possibilities. The more I focus on the spectrum as a whole, the more daunting it seems to be because of just how much information there is, with so many different directions. It’s incredibly intimidating and makes it very hard to find information that I can identify with and understand on a personal level.

So for now, the questioning of myself seems to be serving a purpose. It allows me to find specific questions or concepts that I wish to find information for, and then the drive to look for it in that vast web. Though this process seems to be causing me a lot of stress in itself, when it’s supposed to be helping alleviate it. Perhaps if I look at it from a different angle, thinking to myself “okay. So there’s the possibility that this symptom points to another spectrum or condition. But is it also possible that it’s present in the schizotypal spectrum and I’m simply unaware of it?” And then research further from there. If I look at it from a more clinical perspective, while also acknowledging that I’ll be gaining personal information I can use throughout my life and for intimate understanding of my self, it may help alleviate the stress that it would otherwise cause.

I think this is one of the reasons why I’m so interested in psychology. Many psychology majors talk about how they want to help people, to connect with them and provide them with resources that they wouldn’t have available to them otherwise. This is only partially the case with me. I want to help them, yes – but in the way that wasn’t available to me. I know this personal struggle well, perhaps a bit too well, and because of it I gain a much closer understanding of the spectrum than many others do. I can bring that into the field, to help provide them with a perspective that they otherwise would not have access to, because people are more often than not neurotypical. The medical fields need this level of understanding because otherwise, they cannot connect with the very people they seek to help. We can’t connect with them in turn.

Then with that, I’d be able to take this intimate understanding and connect with the people I work with on a level that few others can, working with them in a world we both understand. And then together, kin and I, we can learn more about ourselves and grow to accept who we are.

Sometimes One More Disorder Isn’t Such A Bad Thing

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disability, mental health, mental illness, Mental Illness Awareness Week, NAMI, neurodiversity, OCD, self acceptance

This week is Mental Illness Awareness Week in the United States! Started by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, its a week dedicated to help bringing awareness about the effects of mental illness and support for loved ones that live with it. I hope to be able to write something about living with mental illness each day this week, spoons permitting – fingers crossed!

Got to watch an awesome live interview with RMJ of Deeply Problematic over at HealthyPlace TV yesterday, where she talked about her experiences with OCD. And it kind of got me thinking about my own experiences.

I feel like an odd one at times. I developed my OCD as a way to cope with other other disorders – namely, the Schizotypal and DID. Dealing with both of these, even when I was younger and didn’t fully know what was going on, left me feeling like my life was completely outside of my control. So I fought to take it back. I found little things, anything, that I could have a level of control over. And if I lost control over that, I’d break down because it was all I had.

Later in the years, I explored various coping methods for my disorders. And some of these coping methods became my new obsessions, either out of that feeling of being without control or paranoia – sometimes both. Other obsessions and compulsions have stayed, but for the most part they’ve shifted so that I may function in life with the chaos that all of my conditions, physical and mental, combined creates in my life.

Organization and the order of things helps me keep track of where things are. My room and desk are still a mess, but if I organize books or game cases, it’s always by alphabetical order (unless it’s a series, in which case it goes in the order of the series, regardless of the name of each release, based on the name of the series itself), and in terms of books they must also be arranged by size. I cannot have books of different heights mixed up, and I will sit there for hours if necessary to make sure that they’re placed properly, even with differences as small as a fraction of a centimeter. That way I can reliably find any game or book I want to find, without having to worry about “okay, where did I place this last?” like I usually have to do with my memory loss issues. Clothes hanging up are arranged by color, length and fabric weight. Length and fabric weight for the temperature and weather differences in the seasons, and color because of identity shifts and likes/dislikes. Since not all of us are comfortable wearing the same clothes, being able to find the ones we are comfortable with wearing at the time makes it easier for us to interact with the rest of the world.

Another good example is how I have to deal with counting things, especially things like money when I’m at work. Due to cognitive disorganization things that are “out of place” can leave me feeling a bit frazzled, causing a pause in thinking as I try to register what’s happening that’s hard to come back from. I compensate for it by making sure that all of the bills are facing the same direction, and that all of the papers are in specific places so I can find them if necessary. I’ll do this with any inventory that’s shifted or turned over too, since it makes my brain think “that’s wrong” and stops, so I fix it. I just make it look like I’m doing it for customer service and presentation, when in actuality it’s just so I can keep thinking.

I also have an obsession with time. When I don’t need to wear my braces, I always make sure to have a watch on me and I check it compulsively, even multiple times within a short interval, because I’ve lost my ability to perceive time the way most people do. Clocks, watches, calendars and planners are the only way I can keep track of time. Without these I can lose months at a time, not having any idea what happened because I’ll think it’s only been a few weeks at most. I miss appointments, I arrive late, I won’t even know what day it is. So I make sure that everything is logged, things have time stamps on them, I’m always within sight of a clock. Anything so that I can know what day and time it is. People talk about how we’re too controlled by our schedules and time – but sometimes, that is the only structure available and without it, everything can fall apart.

On top of that, I use obsessing and repetitive behaviors to wind down and relieve anxiety. The game Harvest Moon on the Super Nintendo is awesome for that – I can sit there and clear everything on the farm until it’s completely empty for hours upon hours to take myself away from the world. My mind says it has to be completely empty, and I take advantage of that. While I’m doing that, the outside world doesn’t matter anymore. All stress starts to melt away and I become more grounded.

Can it be debilitating? Absolutely. Like when dishes pile up and I’m sitting on the ground, freaking out and trying not to cry because I need to clean them but physically my body can’t handle it anymore. Or when loved ones are late and I worry, not just for their health but because I can no longer rely on that event happening at that specific time. It screws up my thinking for the rest of the day and leaves me obsessing over it. Or when I’m sitting on that floor trying to make sure that the books are arranged properly for hours without any regard for whether or not I’ve eaten.

But overall? I think it actually helps me function. Things would be all over the place for me without it. I wouldn’t be able to cope with my other mental disorders if I didn’t have OCD to help. Their impacts on my life would be too extreme. And I know it’s not a perspective people are used to. But that’s okay, I don’t mind being the odd one once in a while.

A Butterfly’s Transformation

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ableism, assumptions, disability, mental health, mental illness, Mental Illness Awareness Week, NAMI, neurodiversity, personal, psychophobia, schizotypy, self acceptance, social conflicts

This week is Mental Illness Awareness Week in the United States! Started by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, its a week dedicated to help bringing awareness about the effects of mental illness and support for loved ones that live with it. I hope to be able to write something about living with mental illness each day this week, spoons permitting – fingers crossed!

Despite all of my current financial and employment struggles, I stepped back and took a moment to do something for myself that I’ve been meaning to do for some time now. I bought myself a necklace.

I’m not exactly a jewelry person. I can’t wear watches on a regular basis (despite my obsession with time) because of my various wrist braces, none of which get along well with neighbors. I don’t wear rings, partially because they’re cumbersome and prone to damage (or damaging other things) with my job, and partially because I’d probably lose them. And I haven’t worn necklaces in a long time because they keep getting caught on things unless they’re chokers or just as short. I had to retire a necklace that I wore every single day for religious and personal reasons because the chain kept breaking when it would get caught on things and I didn’t have the spoons to repair or replace it continuously. Since then I’ve stepped away from those beliefs anyway, so there’s no point in fixing it.

But I found a necklace that really resonated with me, and I knew in the back of my mind that I had to have it. Not only was it pretty and yet simplistic, but it included a symbol that has a lot of special meaning to me due to my experiences with psychosis.

When I was in high school, I saw a lot of things that people would probably consider creepy. It was probably a reflection of the stress I was under at the time, the result of the haunting and invasive cruelty of my peers. But there was one hallucination that flipped off all of these and went about its way, fluttering through the world with rays of positive energy and hope: a bright blue butterfly. Granted, butterflies probably don’t seem like a very noticeable hallucination, but bright blue ones aren’t exactly native to this area. Not only that, but last I checked they don’t usually glow. This one very much did.

It’s not one that I typically tell people about because they don’t ask about it. More often than not they’re interested in the darkness, the negatives of mental illness and especially psychosis because that’s what they’re familiar with. They see on TV the characters with their breakdowns that leave them paranoid and thinking that there are men in suits and sunglasses out to get them. They hear about the people who are afraid of their delusions and hallucinations. They hear of these stories and think “oh, that’s so sad”. They don’t stop to think that maybe, just maybe, someone may find some good in their psychosis. That maybe an aspect of it gives them a feeling of hope or peace in a world of chaos.

Our society thinks of psychosis as an ultimately bad thing, something that should be eliminated or cured, never embraced. For centuries this idea has been reinforced both within the medical community and outside it, through media depictions and misinterpretations and the othering of those experiencing psychosis and/or mental illness.

What we don’t tell people is that psychosis and mental illness can influence a person’s perspective on the world in a way no one else could imagine. As a personal favorite example, remember John Forbes Nash, Jr., a world-famous American mathematician diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. During an interview with PBS he pointed out that the effects of mental illness can be an escape from the world, stating “People don’t develop a mental illness because they are in the happiest of situations usually. [...] If things are not so good, you may be one to imagine something better.” But one statement that resonated with me especially was that “people are always selling the idea that people who have mental illness are suffering.” Because it’s true – they are. They other us, focusing on this built-up concept of demons and don’t take into consideration the fact that aspects of it may be benefiting us.

I don’t see my butterfly anymore. The years have past and I’ve gone through other breakdowns and periods of remission, with my own demons. The butterfly didn’t come back to give me that hope I needed during those moments, but I found other ways to let my mind help me. Primarily, through art. I’ve been turning the things I see, the symbols that my mind develops through its abstract thinking, into pieces that I can show my loved ones to try to connect with them on a level that I never would be able to otherwise. I use it to communicate with them during times of need, should I not be able to effectively with language, to the point of giving prints of some of my pieces to my mother for holidays. I’ve even depicted the blue butterfly as that symbol of hope. Because honestly? I kind of miss it. And I know people don’t understand when those who experience psychosis miss their hallucinations or delusions. But it’s true. I miss it.

So when I found that necklace, I knew I had to have it. It took me months but I finally bought it. Like many other symbols throughout my life, blue butterflies have a distinct meaning for me now related to how I perceive the world through the lens of my mental illness. I want to reclaim that, keeping that hope and peace close to my heart so that even though I don’t see it anymore, it’s still always with me. Just much smaller and made of crystal, hanging from a sterling silver chain.

Of Video Games and Reclamation: Let’s Get a Little Insane in the Membrane

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ableism, assumptions, disability, gaming, mental health, mental illness, Mental Illness Awareness Week, NAMI, neurodiversity, self acceptance, social conflicts

This week is Mental Illness Awareness Week in the United States! Started by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, its a week dedicated to help bringing awareness about the effects of mental illness and support for loved ones that live with it. I hope to be able to write something about living with mental illness each day this week, spoons permitting – fingers crossed!

So, I grind achievements. It’s relaxing for me, giving me something to concentrate on for a goal instead of just grinding experience. I’m also a massive completionist, so seeing those little green checks of completed criteria makes me really happy. I do the same thing for reputation too – to the point where I can get really, really upset if the reputation for a faction isn’t at 999/1000 (the cap) once I get exalted with them.

Sometimes this goes hand in hand. There’s a lot of achievements that require you to get exalted with various factions, such as They Love Me In That Tunnel for Timbermaw Hold. Yeah, you can only imagine how much I love these.

There’s also Feats of Strength, which are similar to achievements but are considered to be notably harder. Many cannot be accomplished anymore as they have been removed from WoW in various patches. Others are still available though, or at least until further notice, and one in particular I’m interested in is Insane in the Membrane.

This sparks my interest for a couple reasons. One, it requires exalted reputation with seven different factions, as well as honored with an eighth. Even more interesting is the fact that to gain reputation with one of these factions, you have to kill members of the Steamwheedle Cartel, four of the factions you need to be exalted with. Well, that doesn’t exactly go over well with them, so doing so reduces your reputation. There’s still talk about whether or not you need to have exalted with the Steamwheedle Cartel at the same time as their enemies, the Bloodsail Buccaneers, but the general consensus is that the only truly guaranteed way of accomplishing this feat is to have all of the required reputations at the same time. Not only that but with the way my mind operates, I need to have both of them as high as I can. Which means getting a little creative and turning in quests for the Cartel that won’t reduce your reputation with the Bloodsail, to repair strained relations after you went off and killed them all. And that’s not touching into the other factions you have to grind with – the Shen’dralar, which are only available in a dungeon and will only give reputation in exchange for librams that count as unique when you pick them up (so you can only have one on a character at a given time); the Ravenholdt, asking for the deaths of their enemies and lockboxes that can only be looted by higher level rogues; and the Darkmoon Faire, who accept decks of cards gathered from a scribe and/or rare drops from mobs, depending on which decks you plan on turning in. Managing to get all of these requirements at the same time is really fucking hard, let alone individually.

Which brings me to the second reason: society’s perception of those that are really dedicated to something they find interesting, to the point of labeling them as crazy or insane for trying to do something so ridiculous by their standards. Because clearly, only the insane have that much dedication to something so arbitrary, right? This seeps into the gaming community too, shown through the conflict between casual and hardcore gamers: casual gamers often feel that hardcore gamers are taking the games too seriously and look upon their dedication with the same disdain that the rest of society does, and hardcore gamers often feel that they’re not being taken seriously and that other gamers aren’t serious enough. And all the while the obsessive and irrational behaviors of what society deems “the insane” (oh hi there) are used to ridicule or awe at these fans, marveling at why someone would put that much time and effort into something they consider to be so pointless.

This is further reinforced by the game itself, considering the name of the feat and the title granted after achieving it is, well, “the Insane”. So Blizzard’s problematic word choice created the foundation for the ridicule of not only people within their own community and demographic, but also those with no other association but the fact that they are mentally ill.

Here’s the thing though. There’s lots of different reasons why someone may have such an intense level of dedication to a given subject or hobby. In some cases such as my own, it may be related to mental conditions or neurodiversity. In other cases, maybe they just really, really like it. Is that so wrong?

Apparently so. But you know what? I don’t care. I’m going to go ahead and take back this slur that Blizzard inconsiderately integrated into their system. I’m going to let the neurodiversity of my mind help me in accomplishing this ridiculous task, because that is something it is awesome at – sure, OCD has its debilitating moments, but in other situations it can help provide a lot of drive and ambition that I may not have otherwise. I am going to seek out these factions, get to exalted with them, and get the title to wear throughout Azeroth in proud declaration. Yes, I am insane, and I used that to be able to show it to you. And fuck you if you look down on me for it.

I can’t vouch for the availability of this feat after Cataclysm comes out. There’s still little to no word on the fate of some of the NPCs needed for quest turn ins. But hey, I’m going to give it a shot anyway – even if only so that’s less reputation to grind later when strategies need to shift. And then I’m going to grab a Piccolo of the Flaming Fire and make everyone in Dalaran around me dance. Booyah.

Kinky Disability: Getting My Life Back On Track

Tags

BDSM, disability, mental health, mental illness, Mental Illness Awareness Week, NAMI, neurodiversity, personal, self acceptance

 

The circular logo for Mental Illness Awareness Week. It has an orange-yellow gradient background with blue and white accents, the logo for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and blue and white text. The text reads: "Changing Attitudes. Changing Lives. Mental Illness Awareness Week October 3-9 2010"

 

This week is Mental Illness Awareness Week in the United States! Started by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, its a week dedicated to help bringing awareness about the effects of mental illness and support for loved ones that live with it. I hope to be able to write something about living with mental illness each day this week, spoons permitting – fingers crossed!

Kinky Disability is the start of a new series about the intersections of being kinky while disabled, offering support and safety advice for those with physical or mental health concerns not typically addressed by the BDSM community. This series is open to guest posts to talk about all sorts of disabilities, concerns and workarounds for various kinky activities as well as personal stories and experiences. If you are interested in contributing, feel free to shoot me an email at staticnonsense at live dot com.

Life has been very stressful lately. With a work related injury in August that I will likely never fully recover from (like pretty much all of my injuries) and an ER trip in September after collapsing on the job, it’s starting to get to me. I’ve had to drop from 33 hours a week to 20 to reserve what is left of my physical and mental health. Fall has hit and with it comes the start of hell season in retail, from back to school sales all the way through the beginning of the next year. And with fall comes colder weather and rain, pushing me into a fibro flare that’ll only get worse as winter nears. Stress has a serious impact on the state of one’s mental health, especially if one has a reduced capacity to handle it due to things like having schizotypal personality traits [1] or mental illness. It’s starting to get to me – obsessive-compulsive urges get stronger, psychosis kicks in, sensitivity to stimuli picks up, and emotional stability becomes erratic. If I don’t have something to ground me, to keep me on track, the train falls right off them and I relapse.

A large part of this for me is the fact that it feels like I’m losing control over my life, so my mind panics. The OCD tries to get it back, while at the same time fixating on the fact that it’s slipping from me. The Schizotypal provides paranoia and emotional instability.

This year is different from past years though. Instead of struggling to keep a grip on everything even when it feels like it’s fading, I chose to give that control to someone else.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the terms or concepts, I’m in a D/s relationship. Short for dominance and submission, it’s a dynamic where one who identifies or feels at peace with submissive inclinations offers control of various parts of their life to another with dominant inclinations. Be it through love or a simple arrangement for the exchange of services, the submissive serves the needs and requests of the Dominant [2], while the Dominant provides the submissive with guidance and leadership.

Having someone I love and trust to turn to puts my mind and heart at ease. When I feel pressured to make a decision and I’m unsure of which direction to go, I can look to Him for input. If I have a craving for something that may be unhealthy to me and I’m unsure of my own judgment, He makes that judgment for me. When out in public, I’ll walk behind Him, so He may shield and protect me from the world.

And when the world tears away my structure and routine, leaving my daily life and activities sporadic and spiraling further out of control, I don’t have to rely on my own will power anymore, the very will power that’s slipping away from me. He establishes those rules and structure, and my mind naturally holds His word in higher authority, even if I’m not doing well at the time. My sleep schedule is stabilized and I find myself waking up around 9 or 10 in the morning on a regular basis instead of laying in bed until noon or later. Since I work evening and night shifts having a specific bed time is difficult, but He still makes sure to determine an appropriate time for me depending on my schedule the next day and how I’m feeling. And if a time hasn’t been established, I default to 1:45 AM since that’s a common pattern I’ve come to rely on. Smoking and self-injury are prohibited, even when urges or cravings haunt me. I’m to ask for His permission if I want certain types of food such as ice cream since it has milk products and I react very badly to those due to IBS (that and, well, it’s dessert >>). Same thing with caffeine, due to my problems with insomnia, and alcohol since it can amplify emotional instability. This is in effect even if I’m out in public on my own. In situations where I would normally break down and do it anyway (such as buying Mountain Dew or coffee while I’m at work because I’m tired), I don’t because I don’t have permission from Him. All of these little things for my health that I would otherwise ignore for myself, even if I tell myself it’s something I need to work on – eventually, my will power alone isn’t enough and it falls apart.

But on top of all this, the most noticeable effects are emotional. Knowing that I can rely on His strength and guidance means I don’t fret and panic as much about things that would otherwise cause me to shut down. When I’m going through a fit of obsession or I’m severely dissociated, He can pull be back to Earth, soothing me and calming me down. He’ll purposefully instate rules meant to boost my self-confidence. So even if I’m questioning my own worth and attractiveness, be it due to internalized ableism or bouts of depression, if He calls me beautiful the only appropriate response is “thank you, Sir”. That leaves a serious impact.

During all the hardships in life, He gives me strength and confidence. Even when I’m alone I feel His presence and influence, guiding me through tough decisions and social anxiety.

I only wish I could offer Him more in return. Since we’re long distance cooking and cleaning is limited to visits, and again on the spoons I have available to me. For now, all I can offer is my never-ending love and compassion, companionship through hard times and snuggles for cold nights when He visits me during the winter. I also give Him open availability to me for whenever He’s in the mood, a privilege I’ve never offered to anyone else, as a demonstration of my trust and faith in Him. That and okay, it’s really hot.

I can only hope that one day I can show my gratitude by dedicating my life and services to Him alone, without concern for the viewpoints of the rest of the world.

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1. Note that when I say schizotypal personality traits, I do not necessarily mean Schizotypal Personality Disorder or any other disorders on the spectrum. In psychology schizotypy is a description of a collection of traits, a general spectrum that can include disorders on the schizotypal spectrum but also include personality types of many of the general population. I apologize for any possible confusion – I’ll admit, when I first came across the different usage in studies I got majorly confused too.

2.  Within BDSM it is fairly common for people to capitalize the nouns and pronouns of those who identify as Dominant, be it out of respect or a subconscious reminder of who is “in charge”. It is by no means universal. Some will go to the extent of using slashes for things like “U/us”, “T/they” and the likes but I won’t be doing that here or elsewhere because it messes with my brain way too much. So no worries, you’re safe from that confusion at the very least!