On Self Revelation and Its Risks
Posted on March 18, 2014 in Disappointment Reflections Stigma
Self revelation is the most dicey thing that a blogger can do. You put yourself out there hoping for help and support, risking being attacked or ignored. Mental health bloggers have perceived this, I think — as well as sensed opportunities for fame — and made a transition to writing advice columns for people with their illness. (I’ve remained stubborn and keep writing about how my mind works.) There are those vagabonds who come by a page for the purpose of harassing you because you have a mental illness. These are easily dealt with. The silence is worse. Your words disappear onto a hard disk and are never removed. Worst of all are the people who read what you write and then make a comment like “Well, you told us how you feel.” Behind remarks like that I hear a resounding “shut up”.
PTSD and Bipolar: Vampires in the Warehouse
Posted on March 17, 2014 in Encounters Mania PTSD Stigma
I’ve been dreaming of vampires lately. The vampires work normal jobs as clerks in huge warehouse stores. You pass through the aisle and then come to the checkout stand where the vampires are waiting for you. There are people who kill the vampires, but when they do, they turn into vampires themselves. Nicholas Gage is one of the vampire hunters. This is never a good sign.
The stigma I have experienced for being a sufferer of PTSD is worse than that I experience for being bipolar. Though bipolar disorder is not what some call a “casserole illness”, I can at least talk about it without people telling me that my symptoms are figments of my imagination. Standing up for the reality of my bipolar disorder was hard with my mother to be sure, but it was harder to speak about what my childhood had been like. Like many abusers, she denied her part in the emotional and physical abuse perpetrated against me to the very last day of her life. After she died, her friends told me what a great person she was. They did the same for my father. I have learned that the most beneficial salve for this is simply to remind myself that there exist as many different perspectives on each of us as we have relationships. But this comes dangerously close to buying into the denial about what was done to me.
Things continue to trigger me. The other night I was facilitating a support group when a man walked in from the street. We were mid-meeting and were about to listen to a fragile member. “Do you understand what the group is for,” I asked. “I saw the sign that said ‘Quakers’ and thought this is where the Universe wants me to be.” “This is for people living with depression and bipolar,” I said. His eyes lit up. Had he lucked into the right place? I asked him his name. He started bragging that he was a certified NLP ((Neuro-linguistic Programming — a scientifically discredited therapy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming)) therapist.
I held up my hand. “You’re trying to control me,” he protested. “We’ll get to you in time. First we listen to Regina. ((Not her real name)).” Our NLP therapist took a seat and leaned forward hungrily. I focused my attention on Regina so that the other members of the group would do the same. When she was finished, I made a remark or two, then asked if other members of the group had feedback.
Mr. NLP rattled off a series of probing questions that, in his mind, established him as creditable. The look on his target’s face suggested that she was overwhelmed. Other people looked scared. I held up my hand. “This is inappropriate feedback,” I began.
“You’re trying to control me,” he shot back. “I’m the facilitator of this group,” I replied. “I’m supposed to do that.”
Insert the standard paranoic lecture about people who get off on having a little power into the mouth of Mr. NLP here.
I pointed to the door. “Out.”
His protestation that I couldn’t make him leave was drowned out by five angry women telling that, indeed, he had to go. My wife rose up and crossed the room to hover over him. “You have to leave now!” she said. He stood up and started accusing us of being a bunch of whiners who he could cure. He called my wife bipolar. I followed them to the door where he made his exit. There was shouting, yelling. I saw that the affair was over, so I went back into the meeting room where one member sat calmly in her chair.
“We can just talk you and me if you want,” I said, craving calm.
Lynn came back. Then Regina showed her face at the door. The two other women came back. They requested that we secure the Meeting House so he couldn’t sneak back in. Lynn locked the doors.
I held a moment of silence, then let people talk about what had happened. Many expressed their fear that he was going to be violent. One woman needed to use the bathroom. Lynn went with her. A frantic feeling filled my gut, one of panic not anxiety. I returned the focus to Regina, then continued through the circle. When it came to me I reported that I was shook up and scared. The other members made it clear that they did not fault me.
Afterwards, we gathered in shocked silence in the foyer. Everyone had brought out their cellphones and studied the keypad as if memorizing the correct configuration for Nine One One. I told people that we would all leave together. We went from car to car, checking the back seats as I had learned to do on a college campus years ago. I was the last to leave.
The people in whom I confided my feelings of being scared laughed them off. One person spoke of how she would have liked to have handled the guy and implied that my accompanying people to check the backs of their cars before they left was “oh so American”. “I don’t have that problem because I have a bicycle,” she said.
It has been a chore to write about this in the aftermath of the event itself and the facetious commentary. One fellow survivor of abuse observed on Facebook that people will often shut down the victim relating their experience by outright denying the abuse or otherwise belittling the telling of it. He writes:
It closes the doors for someone to talk about their feelings and forces them to keep it inside. This can destroy a person’s life. Many suicides result from this. Once any of these lines are used, the person may loses trust with the person who used one of these lines. Unfortunately much of this comes from family. The ones who we are supposed to trust to talk about our feelings are the very ones shutting us off. This forces us to seek friends or even strangers to talk to. This type of abuse is worse than the original abuse we went through.
I am worried for myself. I’ve detected faint flashes around the rims of my eyes. I feel the panic of the dream — that there are vampires around me and people treat it as a joke. Worse, I fear signs that I am becoming abusive. Or that my confessions will brand me as untrustworthy.
The final stigma of PTSD that haunts me is the implication that because I don’t have “a thick hide” I am unfit for being in a leadership role among people enthralled in the suffering of mental illness. My sensitivity is a mark against me even though I feel and others have told me that I am more empathetic because of it. This feels like the final revenge of my dead parents: when I was young, it was always my protests that were the problem — not their considerably more violent rages. For the longest time, I have not stood up for myself and when I have done so, I have done it badly. Now it is my sensitivity — my feelings of upset by encounters with aggressive people — that is labeled the problem. Don’t feel. In cases like the one I have just described, I have felt a distinct uneasiness and shame for having allowed the situation to develop. As I told Lynn: “I am sorry that I put you in a situation where you felt you had to act the pit bull.” After all of this, I am the vampire. So far those with whom I have talked about this have not gainsaid me.
The Same Places
Posted on January 29, 2014 in Bipolar Disorder Reflections
I’ve been thinking less about what it means to live with bipolar disorder and more about what it means to be human. But I have not yet stopped looking at what is wrong with me — damn those memories that strobe in my brain at the slightest trigger — and moved on to being the kind of person that I could be given the burnishing of my life history. I do things to fill the time. My steps on the trail resound with classical musical, my eye finds fresh subjects for the camera, but I end up in the same places, seeing the same things. And I haven’t dreamed in weeks.
Boadicea
Posted on January 12, 2014 in Cats
There in the half darkness sits a cat, the white fur of her neck mounded like a cravat, a tabby shield over her heart. A loud, uneven purr pours out of her nose. She waits for my service, first as waiter, then as warmer on the bed. This is my companion when the disturbances of the night interpose themselves between me and the equanimity that I covet. I am a bore, but she is a cat and requires no conversation.
A Cage for my Chaos
Posted on January 2, 2014 in Bipolar Disorder
People talk about being shocked by the diagnosis: The diagnosis did not throw me for a whirl — all the confusion stemmed from the sense of being different but not knowing how. When the hospital psychiatrist looked at me across the table and asked me if anyone had ever suggested to me that I was bipolar, I began constructing a cage for my chaos.
Walking with Trail Bikers
Posted on December 9, 2013 in Encounters Hiking
A red jacket or shirt serves to show them that I am there. My ears stay pricked for their sounds: snatches of rapidly approaching conversation, a circle of clicks from their wheels, and a whine not unlike the wind blowing through electrical lines. I watch out for them and they watch out for me. One hit me a few weeks ago. A shout and the scream of brakes told me that he was coming in an uncontrolled sloping fall down the trail. I stepped up to the raised dirt siding to avoid him. Alas, he had the same idea. His handlebars punched my lower back. He fell sideways. I took two steps forward and bit down so hard that I cracked a temporary crown. There was no animosity between us afterwards. The day was hot and salved my spine. I walked off the pain and the surprise.
Black Beast
Posted on December 9, 2013 in Creatures Hiking
I stopped in the middle of the road to shake my pack off my back and look in it for the red self-charging flashlight so I’d have the torch in hand should night fall before I was off the hill and out of the canyon forest. As I re-shouldered my bag, I looked down the dirt fire road. A small black creature which seemed in my hasty glance to be a dwarfish black bear cub scurried to the right ahead of me and climbed the steep road cut. What was it? I considered many possibilities including a bear cub, a badger, and a tail-less skunk. Then — could it have been a bobcat? I did not know if jet bobcats existed: the size was right if the shape was ambiguous. I cursed my distraction — I had had a camera. The mess that entangled me prevented swift action. The animal had got away and with it the hope of a picture. Several hours later, I checked the facts: black wildcat was a real probability. A photo could have proved the rare sighting and given me a gloat.
Questioning the Whirlwind
Posted on December 1, 2013 in Anxiety Bipolar Disorder Frustration
Who is this darkening counsel
with words lacking knowledge?
Job 38:2
Saturday is the night when I lay out my morning meds for the week and I nearly always find that I have misplaced one of the bottles. I mark that it is my Effexor once more. Frantic digging in my medication box and begging Lynn for assistance help find it inevitably — if it is there to be found. The Universe seems particularly keen on hiding it from me. If I am well, I curse the coincidence and forget about it until the next time; if not, I go even more mad.
Most of the time, I don’t pay much attention to the random patterns of life. But when I am in an episode, a motif like the Effexor that goes missing week after week without any sign of the mechanics that cause its disappearance obsesses me. How come it is always the Effexor? Why do my hands and my brain conspire to hide it from me every time? I ask the question repeatedly until my neurons deflate beyond exhaustion. Someone must know the answer. So I ask the people around me to shed light on my finding, but either they don’t know or don’t want to be bothered with my question. Why is this? Are they cruel? Are they out to get me? Is it part of a greater plot to reduce my brain to a loose mass of gummy worms?
I constantly question the whirlwind. There must be an answer. And that takes over and diminishes the mind.
Thanksgiving at the Restaurant
Posted on November 29, 2013 in Appearance Festivals
I was seriously misdressed in a last detail. The dark Old Navy khakis could pass a rudimentary inspection. The dark blue wool shirt was arguably seasonal. No one would dispute the cuteness of the red suspenders. But when I looked down at everyone’s feet, I knew I was a bane to the fashionistas. All others wore something made of black or brown leather, stylized with waxed shoe laces or brass clips. My feet were shod with walking shoes of white plastic, dirtied white mesh, and gray cloth. I had sinned.
Tip of Dreaded Hill
Posted on November 29, 2013 in Biomes Hikes and Trails Photos
I wonder if Ansel Adams and Edward Weston produced photos that they loved but others just did not get? When I look over the photos that other people have taken of Whiting Ranch Wilderness, they all seem pretty much the same. They hike the same trails, see the wildlife in pretty much the same way. Deer have to look like the stag on the old Hartford Insurance Company seal. Landscapes must have blue skies. The brown and the yellow by themselves must be avoided.
This photo ignores those conventions and I am happy that it does. While I label it with the name of the promontory in the background, it is really about the rough, yellow ridge. And as someone who has hiked Whiting quite a bit, that tells a new story about the park, about wild California.
Perhaps people skip it because it reminds them of that long terrible season when the foothills lose their green. Perhaps they’d prefer that I wait to capture the easier scenes of the late winter and the spring. I love this photo because it reminds me of the heat and the dryness, the long intervals when the climate desiccates the land nearly to a desert.
The Myth of Efficient Private Industry
Posted on November 26, 2013 in Accountability Strange The Phone
I always get a kick when people tell me that private industry always does things better than government. Consider this true story: A couple of weeks ago, our microwave began acting funny. First, the clock slowed down. Then the timer began exhibiting one of three behaviors: Sometimes it would operate correctly. Sometimes it would turn on the timer, but not microwave. And sometimes it would start to microwave but then become stuck somewhere in the cycle — if you weren’t looking, it would burn the food. So we called our insurance company to see about fixing it. A repairman came, checked things out, and told me that he had to order an inexpensive part.
A week later, I get a call from Sears informing me that the part was no longer being made and therefore the microwave was unfixable. My insurance company was buying me a new one. OK, if you insist, we thought and agreed to their selection for the replacement. Now, I know what you are thinking: they came with the microwave one day, installed it and hauled the old one away. No, it doesn’t work like that. First, Sears delivered the microwave today. They put it under our dining room table and had me sign for it. The next step is for the installer to come in tomorrow — always “sometime” during a four hour long block of time. Once they have done their job, the old microwave goes into the box that the new microwave came in — to wait. Yes, wait until a third party comes to haul away the old microwave for a fee of $30.
The moral of the story is this: Any organization run by accountants and/or Republican politicians is going to take the least efficient route to getting the job done. Corporations want us to think that they will do it better, but examples like this and like the privatization of things like toll roads, prisons, and parking meters show that their rules can be even worse. You may not have much say over the quality of service in private industry but you can choose representatives who don’t pull tricks like Darrell Issa did on the post office so his pals in UPS and Fedex could seize some of its market. Insist that government is run right and run well. Don’t let things get managed in the public realm like they are in business today.
No Politics at Thanksgiving Please
Posted on November 21, 2013 in Accountability Citizenship Festivals
It never fails at many homes across the nation. We are ostensibly brought together to experience gratitude as families. We sit down at the table, watch as the turkey is carved, pass the cranberry sauce and the stuffing, eat, and then listen to a harangue by one member of the family about the current state of politics in our country which, inevitably, is countered by another, driving many to the kitchen or the living room while the dinner table was dominated by the venomous talk. Some people stay away from their families at this holiday precisely because of it. It is even worse in households where one party is outnumbered. A pack mentality emerges and that one person is battered by words and quotes from Fox News into silence. When the person fails to come at future Thanksgivings, either nobody notices or they are excoriated for not wanting to be with the family. So much for this family holiday, when the ties that bind us are severed in the name of our own political egos.
While I still enjoyed thanksgiving at my mother’s house, we had a rule: no politics at Thanksgiving. This didn’t make certain people very happy because they seemed to live for strife or the sound of their own voices having little or no effect on the state of affairs in the country, but I enjoyed the feasting more. So did others.
This year try no politics at Thanksgiving and see how much better a time you can have.
