Tag: mental illness

Don’t Listen to the Depression

The past couple of weeks have been horrible. I have been in a deep depression that started building around Thanksgiving and just blew up my mind between Christmas and New Year. On January 2nd I started writing a post looking back on 2019 and talking about some hopes for 2020, but it has been too painful to finish on top of my depression and immense physical pain.

“Normal” depression whispers all kind of self defeating things in ones ear. Severe depression is like standing in front of a concert speaker stack, with these negatives thoughts of self, just bombarding all of your senses.

  • You are not enough.
  • You are not good enough.
  • You are not smart enough.
  • You are not driven enough.
  • You are not good enough to be worthy of love.
  • You are not enough to attract the type of woman you want.
  • You are not worthy of love anyway.
  • You will never find someone who loves you for you without intentions of changing or “fixing” you.
  • No one ever stays, so do not connect with anyone.
  • You aren’t good looking enough…
  • You are too fat…
  • too old…
  • too tired
  • Whatever good you may have had coming to you in your life has come and gone.
  • You will always be alone.
  • You don’t deserve to be happy let alone content or at peace.

It’s not just negative and self defeating thought… you can feel the thoughts all around you. You hear them in random movie lines or music. In a state like this thoughts and memories from the past fill my being. I am filled with a lifetime of sadnesses that I can recall as if I was right back there… I remember the good and then the bad. It’s all always there, right below the surface. In times like this these memories take over my existence.

And the whole time I am walking through the playback of my life, I am thinking of various things I should be writing down here for a blog post… the experience is draining, emotionally and physically. Imagine living the collection of your whole life’s best and worst moments all in the matter of a few days or weeks. A lifetime of great moments and a lifetime of pain and loss… all converging and pouring through your mind in the briefest of periods. I spend half the day crying… the other half of the day in excruciating physical pain.

I think it’s dark and it looks like it’s rain, you said
And the wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world, you said

And it’s so cold, it’s like the cold if you were dead
And you smiled for a second

I think I’m old and I’m feeling pain, you said
And it’s all running out like it’s the end of the world, you said

And it’s so cold, it’s like the cold if you were dead
And you smiled for a second

Sometimes you make me feel
Like I’m living at the edge of the world
Like I’m living at the edge of the world
It’s just the way I smile, you said

Dec. 9th Honest and Open Talk About Suicide

My next open and free public talk on issues of mental health, PTSD, bullying, suicide and the stigma of mental illness will be December 9th at 7 PM at the Hampton Volunteer Fire Company #33 in Hampton, NY.

Grief Comes in Waves…

Recently I was chatting with a young mother whose baby died in her arms shortly after being born too prematurely to survive. I check in on her every few days and I told her that grief comes in waves… That she shouldn’t be surprised if she feels better one day, or for a few days, and then the agonizing pain returns. I warned her that this will happen again and again, and may never end; the hope is that the period of time between waves will grow longer and longer as time goes on.

I should listen to my own words. I woke up this morning around 5AM and had a really nice conversation with a young man who has reached out to me because of this blog from South Asia. After showering and having my 2nd cup of coffee I went down to my office with the idea of editing some photos. I turned on my music app and a song that I love but had not listened to in a while came on… by the 2nd or 3rd bar I was in tears. The tears just welled up in my eyes and I could feel my heart expanding in my chest to the point it felt like it would burst. Then the tears just flowed.

The gut wrenching wave of grief struck me out of the blue and I felt like I couldn’t breath. It felt as if it took all of my bodies will to make my heart beat each beat. My brain was awash in sadness and of course, me being me, my initial response was to wish that I were dead. I wasn’t acutely suicidal or in any imminent danger to myself… I just wanted the pain to stop and my old “stand by” reaction to this type of stress is wishing I would just die.

The song was “Forever Young” by Alphaville…

I love this song… I have since it first came out… but it reminds me of Lena. This morning, out of the blue, when hearing this song all of the hurt Lena’s leaving me… pushing me out of her life… and the lives of her children who I helped raise for 8 years… all of that soul crushing, heart breaking pain came rushing in as if it had just happened all over again.

I recognized the stress for what it was and immediately turned off the music and forced myself to run some errands. But the “wave” didn’t stop when I turned the music off. Driving felt almost surreal as I wasn’t aware of consciously deciding to turn the wheel a certain way or press the gas or break… I was kind of on auto-pilot. I still felt like just breathing was taking all of the energy that my body and mind could muster. This lasted for more than an hour! Some quacks would call it a panic attack… but I would not. It was a grief wave.

As I am writing this, now 8 hours later, I am listening to “Forever Young” on repeat and I can feel those feelings without letting them push me to that “wish I were dead” spot and helping me write this post. It never ceases to amaze me how certain songs can provoke certain responses… and as time passes the invoked feelings can change. In the months prior to marrying Lena, I listened to this song alot and thought of it as a happy song. Now different verses of the song provoke very different feelings.

Prior to the marriage the first verse spoke the most to me and it rang as youthfully hopeful to me…

Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while
Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies
Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst

Now, almost 9 years later and fully knowing the whole marriage was a lie… that I was used and abused and then thrown out like a dead work horse… this verse rings truer to me…

It’s so hard to get old without a cause
I don’t want to perish like a fading horse
Youth’s like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever

I have promised myself that I will NOT kill myself over Lena. I just won’t give her that satisfaction. I probably will kill myself some day, but not over her!

OK On the Outside, But Inside…

Watching the walnut limbs swaying in the wind.

Yesterday was a very hard day for me. I have been trying to work on my book a little each day. Yesterday morning I was writing about a relationship I had where I was repeatedly lied to, used and manipulated… much to my significant detriment.

As I was writing I found myself getting angry… muttering things like, “Fucking Bitch!” or worse. However, in typical fashion for me, my outward anger quickly turned into inward anger… anger at myself and feelings of wanting to hurt myself. I had errands to run after writing which had me driving more than 80 miles from here to there.

As I was driving and interacting with various people I looked fine on the outside. I drove the speed limit. I wasn’t driving erratically. I smiled at people when I met them in stores and asked them how they were. On the outside I looked perfectly “normal.” But on the inside… I was dying, or wanting to die or hurt myself. I had thoughts of burning my arm with cigarettes, or cutting my arms with razor blades, or crashing the car, or asking a friend to literally beat the shit out of me. Externally induced physical pain is much easier to “process” and heal from than the emotional devastation I was feeling. A physical bruise heals… my heart, not so much and certainly not nearly as quickly!

So why write about this? Because much of the stigma of mental illness comes from the fact that it is “hidden.” Most of the time it’s an internal condition unlike a broken arm or even cancer that can have visible symptoms. Someone can look perfectly “normal” on the outside but truly be struggling to hold on to life on the inside. You never know what someone is feeling inside by their outward appearance… so maybe cut someone a break once in a while.

Mental Illness is a Thief

Sitting here this afternoon, needing to fill out legal paperwork for my divorce, I found myself thinking of all of the things that have been stolen from me by mental illness.  Mental illness is a silent shrewd and cunning interloper that steels into our lives and before we realize what’s happening, it steals from us.  Mental illness steals opportunities, stability, family, friendships, love and sometimes, even life itself.  Let me clarify that for the sake of this writing I am not using “mental illness” in a clinical sense with exacting definitions and diagnoses.  I am using the term to refer to deep psychological issues that seriously affected the people I am writing about; some have had actual mental illness diagnoses and some have lived their lives without an official diagnosis.

I was born into a family with mental illness.  So, from the start, any chance of a “normal” childhood was stolen from me.  My parents’ mental illnesses made them incapable of dealing with the stresses of life and love, and made them not able to care for or love me in the ways that I needed. 

The combination of my “issues” and my mother’s “issues” led to us not having much of a relationship the first 35 years of my life.  As a little child I didn’t feel loved by my mother and we grew apart.  When my parents divorced, I chose to live with my father and his third wife.  My mother and I didn’t start to be close until about fifteen years ago.  Mental illness stole thirty-five years of a mother-child relationship.

My father also suffered from mental illness and this greatly affected me as both a child and an adult.  As a small child I idealized my father and didn’t see his illnesses for what they were.  I followed in his footsteps; in many ways to my own detriment.  As an adult I saw his actions through the lens of accepting that he was mentally ill, but that did not make his actions and inactions hurt less.  When I moved in with my father and his third wife, she told me, “I married your father, not his children.”  I was fourteen years old.  Natasha’s mental illness led her to being a cruel interfering step-mother and my father’s mental illness caused him to accept her horrible behavior towards me and my brother.  The nature of the relationship between my father and his wife allowed mental illness to steal my father from me the last fifteen years of his life.

By the time I was a teenager my own mental illness was in full swing and often led me to acting like a total schmuck.  In my lifetime there has only been one woman who truly loved me unconditionally, my high school and college sweetheart, Shannon… and I treated her horribly and eventually permanently broke up with her.  I was a dick.  Period.  I have apologized to her and she has very graciously accepted my apology and we are now good friends… but my mental illness stole the only woman who may have ever truly loved me… loved me for me without trying to change me or “fix” me. 

When I was twenty three I married my first wife, Ava.  Like all people, Ava had some issues, but nothing that I would say elevated to the level of being a mental illness.  I think… or I would like to think, that she did love me.  In some ways she tried to save me/change me.  The marriage fell apart mostly due to my acting out because of my mental illness.  At that point in life I was very difficult to live with due to my depression and anger issues.  At this point in life I don’t harbor any ill will towards Ava for divorcing me.  I’m not thrilled with knowing that she cheated on me and ended up marrying the guy… but I was a lunatic at the time and understand her behavior.  Mental illness stole my first wife from me.  With the loss of that marriage I also lost our home in Georgia and everything that connected me to life.  If I had been able to be a different person back then and remained married to Ava, I would have had a much better chance at a “normal” life.  It was during the divorce process that I shot myself in the heart with a 9mm handgun and six months later took 900 pills.

After my “should have died” suicide attempts I ultimately ended up at The Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA.  Austen Riggs is like no other place that I have ever heard of… it’s an open campus mental health hospital, which means patients are never restrained and can and go as they please.  While I patient there I had several romantic relationships with other patients.  One of them, Barbara, shot herself in the head with a rifle up on a hill in Stockbridge.  Barbara was a few years older than me.  She was a lawyer from an extremely wealthy family in California.  She was beautiful.  She was brilliant.  She was an amazing person and had everything going for her.  Mental illness stole this incredible being from the world. 

The CEO of Austen Riggs while I was there was a despicable human being, Dr. Edward Shapiro.  This man’s hubris was so elevated that in my opinion he was mentally ill.  Again, in my opinion, his ego directly played a role in Barbara being able to kill herself.  His mental illness allowed for Barbara’s mental illness to end her life.  I pray Barbara’s needless suicide haunts him.

Due to ongoing legal issues (divorce) I can’t really write about my marriage to Lena right now, let’s just say that we both had serious issues that led to the marriage not working and yet again, mental illness stole love, family and home from me.

At the beginning of this year I started dating a woman, April.  April is a nurse and seemed to be a very caring and loving woman.  When things were good, they were great.  But April suffers from severe insecurity, specifically about infidelity.  I have many female friends.  Several of those female friends are ex-girlfriends.  April’s insecurity led to her acting in very antisocial ways: threatening to beat up women I interacted with, threatening to kill someone and a phone call in which she cursed out an ex, Aubrey, that I have been friends with for more than fifteen years.  April accused me of keeping these ex-girlfriends “on the side” in case we didn’t work out.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  After the phone call, April told me that I had to choose between her and this woman who was nothing more than a good friend to me.  She wanted me to call up Aubrey and tell her that I would never speak to her again.  I refused… and April stormed out of my life.  April’s mental illness stole another love for her and for me.  April wasn’t “the love of my life,” but I did love her and felt very content with her.  It was the first time in my life that I loved someone, without being “crazy” in love and felt content with that.  This was and is a huge deal for me that I will write more about in the future… I thought it was a much healthier form of love, at least for me.  Mental illness stole that cherished contentment and love from me. 

There are many more examples from my own life that I could write about regarding the thefts committed by mental illness, but these were the big ones that came to mind while procrastinating filling out boring legal forms.  The point is that mental illness effects many people in many ways and causes all kinds of loss… real loss… that hurts… and sometimes… kills. 

Misinformation Does Not Help Anyone

Misinformation does not help anyone regardless of the good intentions.  I saw this meme on LinkIn and my comment is below…

 

This  may be true for some mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. It would also be true to say many mental illnesses have a no fault genetic predisposition. However, many mental illnesses do have fault… Not necessarily with the person suffering from the illness… Perhaps their parents, foster parents, spouse, a stranger or a situation out of their control… But someone is often to blame for the expression of the genetic predisposition… This is called epigenetics. This “there are no losers, everyone is a winner, no one is to blame” attitude is part of the reason for the spike in suicides and drug usage in America.

Book Review: “Serotonin: Prevent Depression, Lose Weight, and Improve Your Health and Happiness”

Customer Review

1.0 out of 5 stars Don’t Waste Your Time
By Richard D. Cole on June 26, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
Very repetitive. The author states the same things dozens of times in a row. The book reads more like a stream of consciousness than a thought out and planned book. The author offers many OPINIONS about serotonin but offers no references to back up claims.

Misnomers on Impulsive Suicide

The Last Person on Earth

A mother considers her son’s final thoughts and a type of suicide we don’t fully understand.

By 

https://www.thecut.com/2018/06/a-mother-considers-her-sons-final-thoughts.html

 

Firstly, let me say how sorry I am for this mother’s loss.  Losing a child is always a heart wrenching experience, but especially to suicide.  That being said, there are so many erroneous or questionable aspects to this story.

 

The author states that there were no red flags prior to her son’s suicide, yet she mentions several in her story.  According to Ms. Greene, Sol went to college specifically to play soccer and then didn’t get off the bench.  Sol also asked his parents to stop coming to the soccer games.  These would be two big red flags to me.  I also have the feeling that there must have been some other “impulsive” activity in Sol’s life that is being left out of the story.

 

Ms. Greene writes about Anthony Bourdain and how his mother said she would never think of him as committing suicide.  Bourdain was an addict… who still drank alcohol.  Substance and alcohol addictions often start as maladaptive stress responses… and I would argue that suicide is also a maladaptive stress response.  Through the view of this new paradigm, so called “impulsive” suicides can be seen less as outliers of behavioral patterns.  Also, most of what I have read regarding impulsive suicides deals with young people, mostly teens.  I can’t remember reading anything about people in their 60’s committing impulsive suicide without a pattern of impulsive behavior.

 

Ms. Greene quotes Kevin Hines regarding his suicide attempt… “Kevin climbed over the railing, leaned back, let go, and felt, he says, ‘instant regret, powerful, overwhelming. As I fell, all I wanted to do was reach back to the rail, but it was gone.’  He plummetted [sic] 220 feet in four seconds, going 75 miles per hour and wracked by the thought all the way down: What have I just done? I don’t want to die. God, please save me… He wants everyone to know that the act of suicide leads not to a final sense of satisfaction and relief but to panic-stricken sorrow.”  When I shot myself through the heart with a 9mm handgun in November of 1998, it was one of the most peaceful things of my life.  After I shot myself, I fell to the ground.  I reached out for someone to hold my hand because I did not want to die alone… but I still wanted to die.  I was not sorry I had shot myself.  I was not “hanging on to life.”  Laying there on the ground bleeding and gasping… in the 60 seconds before I passed, was very calm and peaceful.  This fact always scared most therapists from working with me afterwards.

 

And I am the Mentally Ill One?

A wide variety of people keep telling me that I should “just get over” Lena.  They act as if there is something wrong with me because I am “still” sad about our marriage ending.  I was with Lena for eight years.  What is an appropriate amount of time to be sad over the marriage ending?  Is there some cut off date after which I should not cry when I hear a love song that makes me think of her?  Is there some predetermined amount of time, that no one has told me about, when it is no longer socially acceptable to be sad over such things?

A friend of mine even suggested I watch a TED Talk by Guy Winch entitled, “How to Heal a Broken Heart.”  Winch says that brain imaging studies have shown that suffering from a broken heart is physiologically the same as drug withdrawal.  Winch continues on with his advice for healing a broken heart: make a list of all of the bad things about your ex and keep them on your phone… Every time you start to think positive thoughts about them, which he calls “romanticizing them,” look at your phone to remind yourself of the truth — all of the bad things.

Based solely on this video, I think Guy Winch is an ass.  I have heard others make similar claims about brain scans and breakups drawing analogies to drugs.  I, personally, don’t think everything can be broken down to biological explanations.  If we take this assertion at face value, we would have to draw the conclusion that love is bad and should be avoided.  If being in love can lead to “withdrawal” on the same level as illicit drugs, it seems rational to avoid being in love.  I have argued many times with other “experts” about the biological basis of psychology… I don’t buy it.  My second issue with Winch is his advice… write a list of all the horrible things about your ex to help you get over them.  This idea totally discounts the fact (at least I think it’s a fact) that love is not logical.  I wrote out a list of all of Lena’s “negatives” and all of the reasons we were “not right” for one another.  You know what?  It did not change the fact one fucking bit that I loved her!  Love is not logical.  I am sure it was not logical for Lena and I to get married.  I know for a fact that her mother gave her many reasons why I was a bad choice for her.  I could easily come up with a list of why I am a bad choice for anyone.  I was perfectly aware of reasons why she wasn’t “perfect” even when I was actively falling in love with her.  If healing a broken heart was as easy as making a shit list about the ex… then maybe it wasn’t really love to start with.

I fully realize that we live in a disposable society.  Your TV breaks, don’t fix it… throw it out and buy a new one.  Your oven breaks, don’t fix it… throw it out and buy a new one.  Many people, who can afford to, even treat cars this way… Oh the car has 50,000 miles… better get rid of it and buy a new one.  And… now… we treat relationships the same way.  Your marriage is “broken,” don’t worry… throw it out and get a new one.  Think I am over simplifying?  Look on Amazon for books on divorce.  They are almost all written for women… and they all seem to be saying that divorce is the woman’s answer to all of life’s ills.

This first book almost made me want to commit hara kiri!  It’s all about the “sisterhood of divorce.”  Seriously. Vomit.

“For the more than one million women who get divorced each year, welcome to your support group… Wise, comforting, and uplifting, The Optimist’s Guide to Divorce captures the experience of sisterhood through the voices of its authors and their community of women in the Maplewood Divorce Club”

“Crazy Time offers a sense of hope and confidence that this transition is not only an ending but can also be a valuable beginning.”

Here’s a guide on “protecting your financial future,” i.e. How to screw your husband financially.

“Begin your single life knowing you have made the thoughtful decisions required to help establish your long-term financial security.
Think Financially, Not Emotionally® as you look ahead to a bright future for yourself and your children. ”

I have always said that unfortunately we humans only grow through the negative experiences in our lives.  But, does that mean we should create negative experiences just to grow?

“Deb Purdy provides a welcomed road map for transforming the trauma of divorce into a positive, life-changing experience. As a marriage and family therapist, I highly recommend this book to anyone dealing with emotional challenges after divorce.” Dan Valentine, Ph.D.

What ever happened to the value of working things out?  Is there no value in staying with someone through the good times and the bad?  Why do we even keep those words in wedding vows when they seem to have no meaning what-so-ever today.  I don’t like our throw away society whether it’s about material items or especially people.  I don’t want to be the kind of person who can just get over an 8 year relationship like it’s a busted toaster.  Seriously… that’s how people talk to me… as if I should just move on as if it were nothing.  Many people in our society seem to act like this.  Half of all marriages end in divorce.  Sixty percent of second marriages end in divorce.  The majority of kids I know are the kids of divorce.  All of this despite research showing that marriage makes for healthier adults and healthier children.  But I am the mentally ill one because I don’t want to “just move on.”