Trauma from Depression

    Ok everyone, I am writing this post unexpectedly because the next post has a photo and I am trying to make that photo move down on the screen so there aren't two photos of myself right next to each other.

   This post is about something that I have not ever thought about until today and it might be something that is either common knowledge in most mental health settings or something that there is at least a lot of research about, but I don't think I have ever heard anyone talk about it before.

   The thing I am wondering is if people ever get PTSD from depression.  Well that seems messed up like by definition PTSD happens from life threatening situations, but okay, there we have it.  Depression is very life threatening and is also a threat to all kinds of other stuff, which I don't think always get taken into account when assessing trauma.  Like other stuff matters in life besides life itself, and those things can be at risk in ways that cause all kinds of hypervigilance and other symptoms.

   I think my personal experience with depression a long time ago is that it was something that traumatized me but did not give me PTSD.  That is another interesting topic, because there can be trauma that people resiliently recover from without any PTSD, and trauma can also hurt people in extreme ways other than PTSD. But anyway I just mention it because I think depression is more commonly expected to set in after PTSD and not the other way around, but it is also likely that people are traumatized by the confusing and terrifying experience of having your mind make you feel bad no matter what you do that is good. And especially for beginners at depression, even one suicidal thought can feel like such a permanent moral crisis.

Using a crutch as a crutch

Hi everyone, I have a few mental health blog posts to write, and I am aware that I only occasionally write on this blog.  A lot of people write about mental health so I might only share my most extreme thoughts.  Something I was thinking about that I think is a common topic is about the way the severity of emotional pain from depression or other mental illness is often impossible for other people to understand.  In fact, during the times I feel okay, I almost even can't remember or have any concept of how bad I have felt before.  So I know that it might not be reasonable to expect people who have never had depression to understand when someone is right in front of them with a disorder.  But I have an idea that I think could help all of us, which is for people with depression to consider wearing an arm sling or using a cane or crutches when they are depressed, as kind of a visual representation of the medical nature of the problem.  In a way, it could still add to the underestimation of the pain, but I think it would at least make the existence of the issue be less invisible.  It seems like I am joking, but if people wore a sling and then people asked them about their injury and they said "I can't talk about it," I think people's reaction might be closer to matching the level of sympathy that is warranted and the compassion that is hard to convey when the amount of pain literally is unimaginable.

A theory about Autism and humor

  There is still a lot to learn about developmental disabilities, and people who actually have Autism or similar conditions are often very different from each other and have a lot more aspects of their life and personality mixed in with whatever has made their brain work differently. I want to minimize it and say "made their brain work a little differently," but for some people it is much more extreme than that.

    But some people are mildly autistic, or have some kind of "high functioning autism," which allows them to function almost like everyone else, so they end up with all the usual life stressors but aren't quite able to adapt to everything, which can actually result in chronic suffering that is anything but mild.

    I am saying all that to acknowledge that there is a wide variety of experience, but I wanted to share a theory that I think has some truth for a lot of us who have some kind of developmental difference and have an uneven profile of gifts and weaknesses.  It is common, I think, for people with Autism or Aspergers to have some gift mixed in with their disorder, whether it is a full-fledged savant skill or simply some abilities that are really strong. And I think that many autistic people seem to have some kind of special humor ability or deficit, or both, and I wanted to share my simple theory about what might contribute to the gift, which I think can be common among both girls and guys with autism.  The fact is that some people with Autism are really funny, and I have thought about it and wondered if it might have to do with the uneven intelligence profile that people have.  Many people with Aspergers especially have some extra reading abilities or similar verbal skills, but have major impairment with social ability or other competencies.  And my theory is that as we think of stuff that isn't smart, we have a smarter side to us that sees it for what it is, and turns it into a joke.  Like we are able to genuinely think of both stupid and smart things, and our prevailing mastery and self awareness can turn it into jokes under the right conditions.  I mention the right conditions because I think that this exact situation where we are simultaneously smart and not smart might also make us more hurtable.  We can see our weaknesses for what they are when people hurt us, and we crumple when our awareness makes us have an extra appreciation for the insults people bully us with.

   But a lot of people don't bully suffering people, and with encouragement and love, a lot of us think of funny stuff and crack some funny jokes about all kinds of things that we think of but have learned intellectually are absurd.  When you add that to the playfulness that comes from the youthful heart that is itself the core of a developmental delay, and the obsessive faithfulness that also characterizes autism, it means that a lot of us can pretty perpetually be counted on for joke after joke. It's just a theory, but the fact that people with autism have a lot to share when they aren't mistreated is not a theory, and I don't know why anyone would decide to provoke a group of such sharp-witted people.

The Worst Diagnosis: Depakote

   I have taken Risperdal for 20 years now, and I am very thankful for it.  Trileptal is the other medicine that I think helped me be safe and functioning as a mentally ill person.  I take minimal amounts and still have a lot of symptoms to manage, but I can sit in a room and think all kinds of thoughts and feel peaceful and happy, which is something that for several years I thought I would never do again, even after dying someday.  In fact, for a while I felt so awful that I thought it was too much to even expect having one restful nap before my eternal damnation.  Part of why I felt that way was because I was on the wrong medicine at the time, and I was unable to get even a fraction of adequate sleep on any night at all for about four years.

   I am saying all that just as background information to share the idea for this post which is that I think it could be a good idea for people to see two tragedies when someone is diagnosed with mental illness, and for a lifetime of psychiatric medicine to carry the same weight of grief as the mental illness itself.  Some people are completely opposed to the whole psychiatry field because of all the suffering, which for some has included bad experiences in hospitals.  For me personally, I love going to hospitals and I also have had a lot of safety because of medicine that I did in fact need and did help me in some ways.  But I do want to say that my bad experiences with medicine, my dependence on it that requires responsibility and vigilance, and especially the horrible side effects that always overlap with the benefits, have made me certain that the medicine is in fact as much a part of the life suffering as the illness itself.  This isn't a groundbreaking opinion, and everyone knows that many people refuse medicine for all kinds of reasons.  But I really think that for me it is something new to look back and think, okay, I should see my experience as two illnesses: Schizoaffective Disorder, and medication for Schizoaffective Disorder.  And when I tell people what has happened, I should say, yeah, I have Schizoaffective Disorder, and I have to take medicine for Schizoaffective Disorder.

   I can anticipate people saying that is ungrateful of me, and asking if I would rather be one of the people in a country that locks its mentally ill people in cages and lets hyenas attack them, and I think that I would say yes, that might not have been as bad, and this exact scenario is one of the intellectual limitations of the privilege concept that people these days like to use to spread the guilt and shame that probably causes half these problems anyway.

Mean Dopes and Dopamine

     Well everyone, this blog post is going to be about one of my priorities in life, which has to do with meaning. I just called my Dad to see how he was doing because he started having some dementia after an aneurysm.  He was doing okay and I asked him a question about rental car insurance, which is kind of a dad question to ask, and I felt good about the conversation, even though I still am hoping for the right time to make sure he has a true concept of how great a dad he has always been.  But anyway, as I was sitting peacefully on my couch after the phone call, my mom texted me to let me know that she was fretting about me driving a rental car after not driving for a few years.  Well for my last trip, she fretted about me not renting a car.  So I think that what is really happening is that she is finding reasons to fret.  And though I have always attributed that problem of hers to anxiety, I think it might be a little different.  I think that really she knew I just had some peace of mind and she wanted to take it away, so she sent me a text about worrying.  And her goal very frequently and possibly with every interaction is to take away my happy feelings as soon as I get them, whether it is from reaching long term goals, maintaining friendships, having some kind of stability, or literally any other kind of circumstance or mental work that can result in a positive feeling. I have known this before and thought it was getting better, but I think that the recent relief and break from it was just so I could accumulate enough happiness for her to take bigger chunks away at one time.  Is it bad to share a family problem like that?  I am going to share it, because something I value in life for me and everyone is meaning, and I think people need to understand how all of the meaning thieves out there get away with making people's lives lose all joy and purpose.  It might seem like this whole emotional abuse dynamic, which is mild compared to some people's experiences, might really have to do with happiness and not meaning.  But I do think it is things like this that can erode people's sense of meaning, because basically everything you work for becomes irrelevant in at least one realm, which is your own emotional experience, which is both subjective and objective.

     There are a lot of articles now about dopamine, and some people make it sound like everything in life basically translates into a bunch of meaningless dopamine transactions in the brain.  Well people had this same discussion about serotonin twenty years ago before the doctors and drug dealers teamed up to rape our country with prescription painkillers and heroin, and it can be an interesting topic.  Because if eating a taco can make you as happy as buying a new car, then maybe it is smart to go for the taco.  And if taking an antidepressant can keep you from bar-hopping your life away, then maybe some intervention directly with the brain chemicals is a good option.

     But I think that at some point, some of the complex aspects of reality, human goals, and actual blessings from God have to be seen as something real that has meaningful impact on not just our lives but our hearts and minds.

     I personally think that a lot of Christian teachers also threaten to make things meaningless, too, by saying that all of our joy should come from God, or what they really mean, which is our imagination of God based on their teaching so they can get credit for our heroic stoicism.  It is really sick, and I think it is just as bad as what my mom does to take away my happy feelings. What these teachers do is say you are not allowed to have some happiness from things like hamburgers or safety, so you prevent the feelings yourself ahead of time either through excessive self denial or by controlling your mind to reject the psychological rewards from good living.  But I think that those teachers are wrong, and that calling all enjoyment and responsibility "idolatry" is a rather ungrateful way to live. Hopefully it is just a phase for most people, and they aren't completely robbed of all blessings in life like friends and jobs and good food and books, but I do think a lot of people are swindled pretty thoroughly before they figure out that the preachers are sustaining their own dopamine levels by controlling everyone.

     To me it is not just about feelings, but about meaning, truth, and reality that gets blocked, with the greatest part of reality being God himself and his great love.  All these dopamine robbers I am talking about are basically forms of abuse, and all can originate with people who might have seemed trustworthy at one time.  The preachers will say they have taken nothing, the bad doctors will say they just took a few drops of brain chemicals, and the emotionally abusive family members will say they were actually giving you something, but to me there is a loss that is too great to be measured. To me, the loss is more than just brain chemicals or a life that wasn't worth experiencing anyway.  The cruelest people of all have figured out that you can block out so much more of the world by torturing people at close range.

Honestly I just want to recommend the spinach dip

This could go on any of my blogs, but I have decided to put it on my mental health blog.  It has to do with how I just ate some of the yummiest food I have ever had but also just read some news that reminded me of people suffering, and not just suffering, but suffering because of evil and lack of service and wisdom.  And it makes me feel a little bit bad about eating some yummy spinach dip right now.  But I think that I am going to have some peace about it because basically one of the things I am sad about is how thirteen medical centers got bombed by Russia and Assad's bad people, and I am going to say to myself in my happy food moments after cleaning my safe but messy apartment all day, that Russia is not going to take me down with those people.  Sometimes I do think it is good to share people's sorrow, even down to actual on-site sacrificial living that makes people experience literally the same plight of anyone with certain pain or hardship.  But I think that today I will be one less targeted soul that Russia gets away with hurting, and I will be happy about having such a yummy meal.

A Revolutionary Therapy called "Sanity"

You know how they have therapies called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and other mental health strategies like "mindfulness?" And things like "psychodynamic" schools of thought or very specific concepts like "radical acceptance?"  Well I have an idea for a new therapy called "sanity." It is where you just decide not to be mentally ill.  People say I should not joke about that and people are hurt all the time by authorities who do no believe in mental illness or people who think you can will your way out of depression, or even some mental health people whose therapies actually boil down to just telling people to stop being crazy.  But I do think it is funny to just invent a therapy like that, which actually could help a little bit if it is combined with other treatments like medicine, or counseling, or teaching a cruel society to stop hurting everyone and driving everyone to the brink of madness.