World Mental Health Day
Oct. 10th, 2020 09:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
falcongrrlStealing the title of this entry from jakebe . Embarrassingly I just realized that it may not make sense to make the date my subject line when there is already a field right there with the date. So I'll have to start getting slightly more creative.
I've talked about my mental health issues here, before, but since it's the day for it, I guess I'll do so again.
My official diagnosis is major depressive disorder with generalized anxiety disorder.
Lately, I've had a smidge of OCD just to keep things interesting. By this I don't mean the super neat kind (I'm hopelessly messy) or the organized kind (ditto). It's complicated to explain.
Backing up some...my husband had major surgery in June. He ended up having a lot of complications along with the surgery and had a couple of re-hospitalizations. We/I had to give him IV fluids at home for 6 weeks.
So, for me OCD looks a lot like the proverbial step-on-a-crack-break-your-mother's-back rhyme. If I think something bad will happen to my husband, will it? I shouldn't think about anything bad happening then. Unless, by thinking about it happening and worrying about it, it will actually not happen. So should I think about it? Or not think about it... It's mostly a type of obsessive thinking, although the compulsion part is that feeling like if I do (or don't do) everything correctly then he might/might not die.
I know as I type this out that the thinking is illogical. I'm not psychotic, in that I can look at this and go, okay, this is pretty messed-up. I feel like it's related to not having control over a situation. The day of D's surgery it was particularly bad. I talked to a friend - herself diagnosed with OCD - and she would help me out, saying things like, "You can't control the outcome just by thinking a certain way." Obvious, yes, but I needed to hear it.
The other thing I think I have but haven't been officially diagnosed with is ADD. I'm pretty sure I have the inattentive kind. I can hyperfocus amazingly, which served me well when I was doing copyediting...except when I couldn't get that particular superpower to work, and then trying to edit was a kind of hell, where anyone walking by or talking would pull me right out of the text.
So, what about the illnesses I have been diagnosed with?
I have the kind of depression that makes me feel suicidal if it's not treated, and the kind of anxiety that ties me up in knots. They often work together: sometimes my anxiety makes me unable to perform well, which convinces me that I'm worthless, which causes my mood to dive into depression. If my anxiety isn't treated, I feel adrenaline coursing through me. I walk and pace a lot. I retch and vomit. I stop eating.
I did a few of those anxiety symptom things when my husband was in the hospital, even with being on medication. But being on medication is still 100% better than being unmedicated. Being on medication meant that I wasn't able to eat when my husband was really sick, but I could sit still enough to read and do guided meditations and stitch embroidery off and on.
Being on medication has meant that my suicidal impulses are gone. I don't want to say forever - maybe they'll come back and we'll need to try something new. But lately my "black dog" or "wolf at the door" has been much, much quieter. I know it's there, but it doesn't affect me. I still have days when I'm down or in a low mood, but they don't persist. I'm tremendously grateful for that. I remember times when I was journaling (back when I was on LJ) when that wasn't the case. It's hard to explain how painful depression is to someone who doesn't have it. But it is very painful.
I'm tremendously lucky in that through Dave's employer, we have decent mental health care benefits. We can (mostly) afford the psychiatric appointments, prescriptions, and therapy. However, that's not true for far, far too many people. Just as I'm for Medicare for All, I want everyone who needs it to have access to mental health care. I know firsthand that dealing with mental illnesses can be hard with treatment, and next to impossible without it.
jakebe . Embarrassingly I just realized that it may not make sense to make the date my subject line when there is already a field right there with the date. So I'll have to start getting slightly more creative. I've talked about my mental health issues here, before, but since it's the day for it, I guess I'll do so again.
My official diagnosis is major depressive disorder with generalized anxiety disorder.
Lately, I've had a smidge of OCD just to keep things interesting. By this I don't mean the super neat kind (I'm hopelessly messy) or the organized kind (ditto). It's complicated to explain.
Backing up some...my husband had major surgery in June. He ended up having a lot of complications along with the surgery and had a couple of re-hospitalizations. We/I had to give him IV fluids at home for 6 weeks.
So, for me OCD looks a lot like the proverbial step-on-a-crack-break-your-mother's-back rhyme. If I think something bad will happen to my husband, will it? I shouldn't think about anything bad happening then. Unless, by thinking about it happening and worrying about it, it will actually not happen. So should I think about it? Or not think about it... It's mostly a type of obsessive thinking, although the compulsion part is that feeling like if I do (or don't do) everything correctly then he might/might not die.
I know as I type this out that the thinking is illogical. I'm not psychotic, in that I can look at this and go, okay, this is pretty messed-up. I feel like it's related to not having control over a situation. The day of D's surgery it was particularly bad. I talked to a friend - herself diagnosed with OCD - and she would help me out, saying things like, "You can't control the outcome just by thinking a certain way." Obvious, yes, but I needed to hear it.
The other thing I think I have but haven't been officially diagnosed with is ADD. I'm pretty sure I have the inattentive kind. I can hyperfocus amazingly, which served me well when I was doing copyediting...except when I couldn't get that particular superpower to work, and then trying to edit was a kind of hell, where anyone walking by or talking would pull me right out of the text.
So, what about the illnesses I have been diagnosed with?
I have the kind of depression that makes me feel suicidal if it's not treated, and the kind of anxiety that ties me up in knots. They often work together: sometimes my anxiety makes me unable to perform well, which convinces me that I'm worthless, which causes my mood to dive into depression. If my anxiety isn't treated, I feel adrenaline coursing through me. I walk and pace a lot. I retch and vomit. I stop eating.
I did a few of those anxiety symptom things when my husband was in the hospital, even with being on medication. But being on medication is still 100% better than being unmedicated. Being on medication meant that I wasn't able to eat when my husband was really sick, but I could sit still enough to read and do guided meditations and stitch embroidery off and on.
Being on medication has meant that my suicidal impulses are gone. I don't want to say forever - maybe they'll come back and we'll need to try something new. But lately my "black dog" or "wolf at the door" has been much, much quieter. I know it's there, but it doesn't affect me. I still have days when I'm down or in a low mood, but they don't persist. I'm tremendously grateful for that. I remember times when I was journaling (back when I was on LJ) when that wasn't the case. It's hard to explain how painful depression is to someone who doesn't have it. But it is very painful.
I'm tremendously lucky in that through Dave's employer, we have decent mental health care benefits. We can (mostly) afford the psychiatric appointments, prescriptions, and therapy. However, that's not true for far, far too many people. Just as I'm for Medicare for All, I want everyone who needs it to have access to mental health care. I know firsthand that dealing with mental illnesses can be hard with treatment, and next to impossible without it.