In a Month…

Trigger Warning: suicide mention, medicine mention, sexual abuse,

In a month’s time I have seen my lowest low and an unnatural high. For the past year I had been off my medicine after I stopped going to see my old psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist I was seeing was a very soft speaking and kind woman. She had a very calm demeanor which sometimes borderlined on seeming distant or dismissive. For someone like me, who has been reading people’s body language/vocal tone/facial expression/eyes, it was a bit strange and off-putting somehow. Given the extreme anxiety I had I guess it isn’t abnormal that I would read her aura as something that reflected on me. I thought “It must be me…maybe I am a bad or difficult patient. Am I saying weird things? Am I making sense? Is my frustration coming out too strong? Maybe she is writing down that I am a huge fake…” and so on and so forth. Eventually I began having issues with a medicine I had been prescribed, Trazodone, and it was giving me immense stomach pains when I would wake up in the morning. I deal with general sleep issues and insomnia so I was prescribed Trazodone to help with that. The first few months were great and I was getting about 6 hours of sleep instead of the 4 or 3 I would be normally getting. However as the time went on I was waking up early in the morning with pains like I had been stabbed in the stomach. It seemed like it was triggered when I would stretch or tense my muscles. I have a pretty high pain tolerance so I didn’t bring it up to my psychiatrist until I was really upset about the constant pain. I went in a told her what was happening; that I was experiencing horrible pain and wanted to try a different sleep aid. I also mentioned that I was worried my antidepressant wasn’t working as well anymore.

Well…three visits later (aka 3 months later) I’m still taking both medications and she either isn’t listening, doesn’t believe me, or she isn’t understanding. By this time I was so frustrated and anxious to be around her that I just didn’t ever show up there again. I was so devastated about the whole experience and I had many voices in my head telling me that I had done something bad to bring this whole experience onto myself. That’s a pretty common path for my thoughts to take. After that I decided I would try to continue my recovery without the use of medicine…and it took me until a month ago to realize just how far down my mental health had fallen. My temper and anger flares were destructive and extreme (one kicked hole in the wall and one twisted cell phone later…oops), I was experiencing major mood swings at least 15 times a day and I was extremely suicidal. It felt like my mind was way more out of my control than usual and I was becoming extremely scared. I’ve always been an angry person because of my childhood sexual abuse but I had never been the type to show my anger violently. My OCD quickly latched onto that fear and all the sudden I was obsessively imagining myself hurting other people. My anxiety went through several roofs and I became absolutely terrified of my emotions. I was shutting down to how I dealt with things as a young child and I was risking all the progress I had been making in my recovery.

My therapist recommended a new psychiatrist that many of her other clients see and like a lot. There was a lot of apprehension on my side because this psychiatrist, though he was the most empathetic psychiatrist my therapist knows, is a man. I am very distrustful and scared of men. In my life I haven’t had a consistent positive male role model and growing up men were part of my active abuse so I never knew how to form healthy and safe relationships with them. I was almost certain that I wouldn’t be able to talk about my past of sexual abuse with him, but at the same time I was in such a critical condition and I didn’t want to give my anxiety priority. One day I sat down and wrote an organized list of my illnesses, symptoms and concerns. Psychiatrists make me nervous already because I have a lot of paranoia around being seen as a faker or someone who is just trying to get pills I don’t need (yet another one of my OCD thoughts) so I wanted to make sure I was as prepared as possible to make a good and responsible first impression. I wanted to find ways of decreasing my anxiety rather than do what I normally do; avoid. I ended up writing 5 pages that detailed everything along with symptom severity, frequency and how debilitating I find it on a daily basis. I felt a little like the class geek who writes over the page limit on a paper but it did help me feel more organized and I went into the office feeling like I was prepared for any question. In the end I had a great first meeting with him and after two visits I feel like we see eye to eye on many things.

I feel proud I was able to do a lot of things I haven’t been able to do in the past. I found ways to work with or around my anxiety, I faced a big fear and I ultimately put myself first instead of my anxiety. It is a small accomplishment in the larger spectrum of life, but knowing how different I feel now on medicine…it’s so amazing. I feel so proud of myself and I feel proud for being proud of myself. Sometimes I need to sit back and give myself credit for my small steps too. My life right now is made up almost exclusively of small steps and I need to adjust to welcoming that with kind and accepting arms. I love that I wake up and feel excited or curious about the day…those are things I think a lot of neurotypical people take for granted. My passion and my curiosity are two things I hold dear to me and I enjoy those aspects of my personality most so it is devastating feeling like you’ve lost that; like you’ve lost part of yourself.

Mental illness is part of me and I am slowly learning to incorporate it into my identity rather than isolating it from the rest of me. If I want to accept and validate myself then I feel like I need to accept my past, my issues, my illnesses and my limitations. I can be frustrated, angry, sad, excited and curious – I can be anything while also being a mentally ill individual. I can coexist with myself!

-M