When I was ill, I was told to write things in my head down to resolve the issue. I used to just do this on paper but I’ve since stopped. However in the past year I find myself rethinking issues over and over, so I’m starting it up again. I thought I may as well blog it. Maybe someone out there will get something from it, or someone will have some input for me!
These posts will be my train of thought so they might be quite tangent filled and fleeting. The random pictures are just stuff to break up the wall-o-text. And for music to break up the wall-o-silence I’m listening to:
Lets’a Go
I don’t feel like going into backstory too much right now, so l’ll just let wiki give some context for what was wrong.
“Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a “loss of contact with reality“. People suffering from psychosis are described as psychotic. Psychosis is given to the more severe forms of psychiatric disorder, during which hallucinations and delusions and impaired insight may occur.
People experiencing psychosis may report hallucinations or delusional beliefs, and may exhibit personality changes and thought disorder. Depending on its severity, this may be accompanied by unusual or bizarre behavior, as well as difficulty with social interaction and impairment in carrying out daily life activities.”
Which pretty much describes me for a few months in late 2009 and early 2010. I had several sessions of Cognative Therepy and huzzah, I’m a functioning person again! But recovering from my psychosis and my reflection on events is taking longer than I’d imagined. I tend to worry, or be interested in, what’s ‘normal’ and if I’m ‘normal’.
Me trying Beans for the first time in years. After my recovery I lost most of my sense of taste or things just tasted different. Now food tastes normal again - I'm not sure if thats because my old sense of taste slowly came back or I've just gotten used to my new one! Whatever the case, Beans are not as bad as I remember.
I guess the main thing that sticks in my head is how it could happen to me so rapidly and that with almost the flick of a switch my mind could be turned to mush – which makes me feel pretty insecure about how solid the human psyche or maybe just my psyche is. In a positive aspect I learnt through therapy that I can just as easily fix my mind by controlling my outlook on life and making sure I think in certain ways, which I’d call ‘guides’ on how I should think.
The worry comes from, what happens if I let little things slip from my ‘guides’. One thing I’m not allowed to do is think in extremes. Though saying that as an absolute is breaking my guide – ha! So l’ll rephrase; One thing I should try to not do is think in extremes (black and white thinking). In my opinions there must be more than just love or hate, good or bad. I have to see the shades of grey; like, dislike, enjoy or ‘not fond of’ etc.
But occasionally I do say ‘I hate that’, more often I find myself wanting to say ‘I love that!’. I almost always notice before or after I’ve said it, and correct myself – as I just did in the paragraph above.
The worry I mentioned before is if I didn’t correct myself those times I think in an extreme, would it really be that easy for me to fall into a psychosis again? Am I fixed for good or will my mind always be so fragile that I could slip into it again? That uncertainty bothers me.
A Mercedes advert I have saved
I think by myself I’m pretty good at remembering to try and not think in extremes. People around me have no restraint though since they don’t really need to limit themselves. Many people I know use the words ‘hate’ and ‘love’ so freely it sometimes feels like they may be eroding my barrier against it. What if I get too accustomed to the idea of extremes since everyone around me is so trigger happy with them?
I can’t control other peoples ways and thoughts though so I just have to deal with it. I guess the fact I’m aware and notice they use extremes of thought is good, as it shows I haven’t forgotten my ‘training’? (I have no idea how to refer to my therapy or what it taught me, training will do :P)
I do genuinely think peoples lives would be better if they also didn’t think in extremes, even if they’re ‘normal’, so I generally as a friend say they shouldn’t use those words! But I don’t expect them to change seriously since they have no desperate need to do so.
What specific Psychosis?
One of the issues with my past psychosis is I was never given a specific diagnosis as to what was wrong with me. Psychosis is a broad all encompassing term for many types of illness. “Psychosis” is all I got because the medical community at the moment (apparently) doesn’t like to label patients illnesses, as each person is different and so shouldn’t be grouped under one illness banner. Which is fine and dandy but for me personally I feel like it leaves a gap in my understanding and feeling of completeness at the situation? Psychosis is such a broad term and even Wiki says ‘Some professionals say that the term psychosis is not sufficient as some illnesses grouped under the term “psychosis” have nothing in common’.
One of my favorite scenes in Evangelion.
Someone who was depressed can just say ‘Oh yeh, I was depressed’. You instantly have a point of reference to understand what they went though, what the likely symptoms were, how it effected them etc. I don’t have that easy frame of reference at the moment. To say ‘Oh I was psychotic in my second year of uni’, first off; it doesn’t really give much explanation or frame of reference as to what was specifically wrong with me and second, before I was ill I thought a psychotic person was someone who killed people because they were crazy. So I don’t like to use that term in case anyone else thinks that – ha! So I find myself just saying I was ‘ill’ or I have to say I was crazy for a while and list what happened.
I also want to be given the name of an illness that a group of people have suffered, so I feel like I belong. So I’d know what happened wasn’t just to me. It’s something known about and documented – I’m not a one off basket case.
Being under the banner of a specific illness would allow me to look up a Wikipedia page and read about its history, chance of re-occurring and how the patients generally fare when they’re older. Instead I feel like I’m flying blindly into the future with no reassurances that l’ll likely be ‘normal’ for the rest of my life. Though I know no one will ever be able to give a definite answer anyway, and I shouldn’t worry about what could happen.
I want this nightlight!
I tend to trawl Wikipedia reading articles about illnesses that sound like what I went though trying and assign myself to a group. But I have no idea what it was and reading a wiki page doesn’t help much. Tonight I’ve somehow got onto the ‘Personal Boundaries’ page which lead to ‘Dependent Personality Disorder’ page; “This personality disorder is a long-term (chronic) condition in which people depend too much on others to meet their emotional and physical needs”, that sounded perhaps promising at first but reading on it doesn’t fit at all. Which is a good thing since that particular illness is chronic.
So another night where I’m none the wiser :P
Tags: aftermath, cognative, psychosis, recovery, reflection, therepy
