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Essential Oils, Psych Meds, and Suicide

Author’s Note and Trigger Warning: The following post discusses Suicide and heavy subjects related to mental illness. Please make sure you’re in a comfortable mental space before continuing. This post was written with the assistance and approval of surviving family members. Names and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy and anonymity of those involved.

I met Brittney and her husband David in the spring of 2010. She was an assistant facilitator of a mood disorder support group that I decided to attend when I was just starting on my recovery path. I became friends with her and her husband, exchanging the periodic email and catching up every once awhile. A few months ago, I got a different kind of email from David, informing me that Brittney had completed suicide earlier this year. She was in her mid forties.

Brittney’s life wasn’t easy. She was born into an abusive family and eventually taken away by Children’s Services before she turned 10 years old. She never knew her father and her mother died of a heroin overdose before reaching her teens. Brittney was adopted and mostly raised by her grandparents who struggled to contain her rebellious, impulsive streak. Her grandmother describes her as too smart and sarcastic for her own good, even at a young age.

At about 19 years old, she was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and promptly rejected her diagnosis. She refused therapy, medication, or to acknowledge that it could be a possibility. It wasn’t until her late 20s that she finally acknowledged her diagnosis after a psychotic episode hospitalized her. By then, she was also self-medicating, struggling with a heroin addiction and alcoholism. Brittney went through rehab multiple times before she started to really embrace trying to understand herself, her mental illness, and how it had affected her life to that point.

It took a couple years but she eventually found a combination of medications that worked for her. She started attending therapy to sort through her emotional baggage. With her new-found stability, she rekindled her on again, off again relationship with her high school sweetheart David and went to college. She completed undergrad, and then went off to grad school where she earned a Master’s in Business Administration, a goal she never thought she would attain. Though she didn’t particularly love her job in middle management, she was generally happy with her life and proud of what she had accomplished.

About a year ago, she started getting interested in the multi-level marketing companies that her girlfriends were getting involved in, particularly essential oils. David related that she hated feeling enslaved to psych medications to be functional and normal. She spent a lot of time reading and relaying information about essential oils and the evils of Big Pharma, particularly the toxins that she was afraid of going into her body because of her psych medication.

Brittney clashed with her family over her desire to quit her medication, all the while being encouraged to quit her meds and detox by the natural living and “Wellness Advocates” she had surrounded herself with. She eventually accused her family of being abusive and controlling, not wanting her “to be happy and live her best life.” Her words, according to her grandmother.

As far as David can tell, that’s about the same time she quit all of her medication and refused to see her doctor or therapist anymore. She insisted they were bought and paid for by Big Pharma.

David relates that she went from relatively stable to paranoid, chaotic, and violent within just a few weeks. She quit her job, maxed out her credit cards, and spent their savings on joining and buying thousands of dollars of product from two different multi-level marketing companies.

She was hospitalized not long after, where she would be in-patient for several weeks. Eventually, she was deemed stable enough to be discharged and went home to her family.

Brittney completed suicide not even a week later. She was found by her eight year old daughter.

Ladies and gentlemen – every single day you are influenced, lied to, and manipulated by advertisers and people pushing an agenda. The various entities that embody a “wellness industry” that sits outside of regulation and certification is no different. It is absolutely true that essential oils can have reasonable uses for a number of minor maladies or problems. However, it is also absolutely true that companies and advertisers use words as weapons to manipulate those who don’t know any better into thinking their products will deliver some holy grail results that the medical industry just can’t or won’t.

Detoxification is a widely exploited myth. Your body naturally detoxifies itself on a 24/7 basis. And for those of us that are taking serious psych meds, we are generally getting regular bloodwork and testing done to ensure that they are not shutting down organs or reaching toxic levels.

Detox is wielded as an ambiguous buzzword that does not have a concrete, consistent definition from “wellness company” to “wellness company.” In the actual practice of medicine, a medical detox is weaning someone off of a controlled substance like alcohol or heroin, where withdrawal can harm or kill the person.

“But I’ve detoxed before and it really made me feel so much better! I really believe in it!” Great. Believe whatever you want to believe, but you still never tell anyone else to quit taking their medication. That’s not for you to do.

“But Big Pharma is evil! They only care about money!” This is a more difficult and nuanced perspective. I’ve met way too many professionals that do not understand the fear and mistrust that exists on the consumer side – fear and mistrust that drives decisions like Brittney’s. I don’t implicitly trust the mental health industry either. Like anything involving humanity, there’s going to be some shadiness to it somewhere. That’s just how it is, but that’s no reason to throw it all away either. If you throw away everything shady that humanity touches, there would be nothing left.

“Why don’t people trust science? Why don’t people trust doctors?” Because those industries do a piss-poor job of conveying the complexity and difficulty of it all, though I’m not confident that people would actually listen if they did focus more on public relations.

Hell, look at the prevalence of Type 2 Diabetes, which could be curbed if we just stopped shoveling garbage and sugar into our mouths on a constant basis, but we don’t even bother to do that for the most part. And no judgment, I’m just as guilty of eating a garbage diet for most of my life.

Be that as it may, you still have advertisers and executives pushing their agendas to sell more drugs and increase their profits. And we shouldn’t forget the illustrious insurance companies who don’t even seem to view us as people at times.

“But you should trust your doctor!” Yeah, we should. We should be able to trust our doctors. Doctors that told us tobacco wasn’t harmful, that handed out opioids and psych meds like candy. And of course, the humane and compassionate way the mentally ill have been treated throughout the years. I’d like to be able to trust my doctor wholly and completely, but I don’t, because they are fallible human beings.

Do you know who I trust even less than that? People who offer something for nothing.

“Essential oils can help lift your moods and may help with anxiety and depression! No side effects!” The problem with that statement is that it is disingenuous. Different people read words like mood disorder, anxiety, and depression in different ways. And mentally ill people tend to forget that words like bipolar, anxiety, and depression have other definitions that do not have to be referring to an actual diagnosed disorder. Anxiety can mean general fear and discomfort. Depression can mean general negativity and being down. They don’t necessarily mean mental illness – but that’s not how mentally ill people hear those words.

And the dishonest essential oil companies, the one peddling their wares as cure-alls with minimal side effects, exploit that perception by writing their marketing and recruiting materials in such a way that allows you to come to that conclusion on your own without needing to assert it, standing in a nebulous gray area that’s going to take new legislation to fix. But even then, it’ll barely matter. They’ll do the same thing they did when pyramid schemes were made illegal. They’ll hire a team of lawyers to interpret the new legislation, restructure, and rewrite their materials to skirt the law and take advantage of the unaware.

“But essential oils really helped me!” Great. You still do not tell other people to quit taking their psych meds. That’s not for you to do.

And if you do want to incorporate some natural methods into your mental health management, you need to discuss it with your prescribing doctor. Double-checking with your pharmacist to make sure there won’t be any conflicts is also a good idea. “Natural” and “pure” are common advertising buzzwords that sound good but essentially mean nothing. Cyanide is natural and pure.

A pharmacist is the person who will be most knowledgeable on those interactions. Their knowledge is much deeper than counting pills and putting them in a bottle for you.

And finally, if you are a person who either sells or is interested in selling “wellness products”, essential oils, or other “natural remedies” – this isn’t a fucking game. People suffer and die.

People like Brittney, who spent over a decade well and sober, who died alone by her own hand. People like her daughter, who goes to therapy every week to deal with the PTSD from finding her mother. People like her other children, who now get to grow up without their mother. People like her husband, who is now raising their kids alone and misses her every day. People like her grandmother, who have been with her from the beginning, who struggled and sacrificed to try and help her when she wasn’t ready to help herself. People like her friends who will mourn her. And the people that she touched and helped on their own paths who will mourn her.

And for what? Not thinking past a few lousy dollars because some dick in a suit with a bright smile sells people on the idea that they are improving health, offering hope and wellness in lieu of the big bad Big Pharma and “evil” medical industry.

Essential oils may be able to temporarily improve your mood, but they are no substitute for psych medication. They will not control or cure any mood disorder or mental illness. They cannot and should not be used to treat any mental illness or mood disorder, despite what their marketing materials insinuate and “Wellness Advocates” may claim. Always take your medication as directed. If you want to quit or change it, talk to your prescribing professional first.

And always remember, if you have Bipolar Disorder and you are doing well on medication, it’s because of the medication! Don’t stop taking it. Bipolar Disorder is for life. The reality that we need to accept is that medication is the difference between life and death for a lot of us. That’s just the way it is and the reality we have to accept.

Rest in peace, Brittney.

 

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Is There Hope?

Is there hope?

It’s a question that’s come up numerous times since I started on this journey, although the question is rarely that literal. I find it’s what many people who are lost, suffering, or confused are looking for. They’re looking for some tangible anchor to tether onto, some sign that whatever they are going through will end, and that they will come out better on the other side of whatever challenge they are facing.

I have a difficult, strained relationship with hope. You see, I never really experienced the emotional load that comes with hope until I was 29 years old, sitting in a Licensed Clinical Social Worker’s office, being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. I experienced hope because this person could see something in me that I could not. Diagnosis gave a name to what had been plaguing me since I was a teenager. I remember thinking maybe this is the reason I couldn’t hold job consistently, kept blowing up relationships, kept having such strange thoughts and feelings. If my problem had a name, then I could understand it and find a way to overcome it.

I distinctly remember the feeling because it was so foreign. I had never felt hope before. I had never really experienced the shift in mentality and warmth that hope provided. But you know what I had experienced by then?

Hopelessness. So much hopelessness. I never looked forward to my future. I always assumed I would end up killing myself by 30 at the latest. I had lost two people I cared about, one to homicide and one to overdose, and witnessed the fallout from a relatively close point of view. I had experienced living in poverty. There’s a thing about poverty that I feel like is never communicated well in the depictions I see of it – the weight of hopelessness.

I distinctly remember how heavy everything felt, like each and every person that understood how screwed they were were like Atlas, bearing the weight of the sky on their shoulders. I’ve never been able to see or feel that heaviness in media depictions of poverty, whether it’s on your nightly news or some fictional story.

And I think it’s those experiences, combined with my own Major Depression and Bipolar Disorder, that makes me hate false, superficial hope so intensely.

“Hate, Dennis? That’s a strong word. Are you sure you mean hate?”

Fuck yes! It took me years to unwind the visceral, gut reaction of anger that resulted from bromides like, “It’ll get better!”, “You just have to have faith!”, and “People care about you!” Because none of those things that I perceived to be superficial bullshit ever made me feel as though as it were true. None of those things really eased the crushing weight I felt on my own shoulders. It all sounded like so much pandering nonsense.

But, after entering the advocacy or activist space, whatever you want to call it, I came to realize that this perspective was off and I was judging the people who made these statements far too harshly. You see, when I really started taking my blogging and work seriously, I quietly promised myself that I would not rely on superficial or false hope. I would make every effort to find sources of real, tangible, actionable hope to offer.

I was nowhere near close to understanding how fucking difficult that would turn out to be. Not only do you have the anger, fear, and alienation of many mentally ill people towards the mental health industry and society to contend with, a lot of it filled with misinformation and manipulation, there’s also the near infinite number of perspectives in people who are receptive, some fueled by mental illness, others fueled by what people believe and how they’ve experienced their lives. Each and every person is their own individual jigsaw puzzle composed of a billion small pieces, all of them sky blue with no corners to start from. (Yeah, that’s right. I used a jigsaw puzzle analogy. …do people still do jigsaw puzzles? Hm. Anyway…)

I do not believe that hope is as strong or powerful as it is portrayed to be. My perspective on this shifted drastically after getting to know other activists with different perspectives and forming not quite personal, not quite professional friendships with mental health professionals and social workers involved in things like outreach.

I think hope is more like a match – you can strike it (inspiration) and it will create a light (hope), but the factors that contribute to hopelessness will, sooner or later, swallow the flame if it is not used to ignite a greater fuel source (a course of action that provides confidence through tangible progress).

I came to realize that a lot of people who are offering those words that made me feel so alienated weren’t doing it because they didn’t understand, it was because they do understand. They understand how difficult it is to not only strike the match, but get the actual fuel burning. From the start, in every conversation I’ve had with people, every support activity I’ve participated in, I look constantly for the tethers that the people I’m talking with can hold onto that will set their fuel ablaze.

But, sometimes, I just can’t see it. Sometimes all I can see is that person is going to need to have patience while things play out or come together. That is a difficult message to deliver to someone in a way that won’t send them crashing into the abyss or destabilizing.

Hope, like inspiration, is not something that will carry a person for a long time. And the process of confronting one’s problems and working to overcome them is not a fast process. It can take years. Personally, I feel like I’m more on a lifelong journey than anything else. Because every time I feel like I fix one thing and learn as much as I can about that, I see something else I can improve that will help bolster my overall wellness and well-being. I don’t know if it’s a process that will ever end for me. Maybe it will? I don’t know.

I’m writing this blog post because after a few recent series of conversations with different people, they all asked the exact same question – is there hope? And that’s a question that I can’t always answer. I have to say that in most situations I’ve been able to find reasonable, tangible anchors for people to hold onto. But sometimes I can’t. Sometimes it’s because I don’t know enough about the person to identify something tangible, other times it’s because I know the person is just trying to manipulate me by providing a fatalistic perspective that they are painting as hopeless to garner sympathy, and other times it’s because there is no other answer than needing to have patience while a situation runs its course.

Furthermore, the perspectives that a lot of people have about hope are just not rooted in reality, as mine weren’t at the start of my own journey. The perception, that came from somewhere and is often repeated, is that we mentally ill people can recover and live a life just like anybody else! Well, that’s sort of true. There are some people who reach that level of recovery. On the other hand, there are a lot more people that don’t – and it’s not that they don’t recover.

What I find to be more common is that through a lot of personal work, therapy, and meds, many recovered mentally ill people get their symptoms under control which allows them to conduct their life – but they still have to make allowances for dealing with their mental illnesses or traumas. We don’t necessarily live our lives like people who do not have this additional weight to carry, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that your life can’t be good, productive, or happy. It’s just different. It’s not what is advertised.

I don’t think I necessarily make a good example for mental health recovery because of another super common question I get – are you a happy person? That’s also a difficult question. And it’s difficult because “happy” is an emotion, and emotions come and go. My default state is not happy, so technically, no, I’m not really a happy person.

I’m more of a melancholy person who is able to experience happiness, which is a drastic improvement from the morbidly depressed and unstable person I was for a long time. I tend to think of myself as more of a peaceful person, that is, being largely at peace with who I am and my life thus far. I don’t think anyone would look at me and think, “That is a happy person.” I’m usually mired in my own thoughts and have whatever the male equivalent of resting bitch face is. Resting dick face? Mmm, no.

I would also consider myself an optimist though – because I do have hope for a lot of you and your loved ones – even if I can’t see it myself and still don’t feel right saying the words that contributed to making me feel so isolated and alone for such a long time, even if I have to sometimes say, “I don’t know.” If I didn’t, I would have gave this up a long time ago.

And, an additional note to the other content creators who read my work or who have some interest in trying to spur people to action – it works much better if you tie your message to a tangible action. The most common one I use is, “Have you talked to your doctor/counselor about this? That’s really something you need to explore with a certified professional.” It provides a safe course of action and a tangible anchor for people to tether to. I find a lot of people sit on the fence on whether they should or shouldn’t and often do need an affirmation that it’s the right course of action. Of course, that gets more complicated if the person has had bad experiences with the mental health industry, but that’s kind of outside of the scope of this post.

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About “Talk to Someone” and Crisis

On July 20th, 2017, Chester Bennington died by suicide. I was never much of a fan of Linkin Park. They had a couple of okay songs and, a long time ago, I owned one of their CD’s (that’s a Compact Disc for you youngin’s). I didn’t even know his name before the headline started crashing across social media. Even still, it hurts to see another person lose their war. You know that there will be pain and suffering left behind in the people that he loved and that loved him. And, as a mentally ill person, you wonder if that will be your end as well. You may not want it to be, but you can’t really know how the culmination of your past with the grinding of the present and future will wear you down. It’s a stark reminder of a reality that many of us live with twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

Every time there is a high profile suicide social media is overran with grief and anger. People are constantly sharing articles about warning signs, retweeting crisis services, and posturing about how much they care and claim to want to help. As you may have guessed by my tone, I have a problem with this.

My problem is that I feel it may prevent at-risk people from getting meaningful help that they need while instilling a false confidence in the general public of how much they can legitimately help a person who is in crisis. I want to call specific attention to the words “in crisis,” because there are plenty of people who may be in a dark space that just need someone to be present with them for a little while.

I am not talking about that. I am specifically talking about people who are at or near their limit.

About Target Audiences and Demographics

As a writer and a marketer, understanding one’s target audience is of the utmost importance when constructing a Call to Action (CtA) or message. The method you choose in trying to gain a conversion is often more important than the message. A conversion can be anything from convincing another person to accept a new idea, buy a product or service, sign up for a newsletter, or take some kind of action. A CtA is the content or statement that you are using to try to get the viewer to take an action.

Let’s deconstruct a common Call to Action. “Talk to someone if you are having a hard time.”

Who is the target audience of this CtA? It’s people that are struggling, unstable, depressed, possibly suicidal, and emotionally compromised – people that may not be in the best mental space for making sound decisions. Still, it’s an audience that needs to be reached.

What action are we trying to convince this audience to take? We want them to get the help and support that they need to get through whatever it is they may be dealing with. We want them to communicate. Again, nothing wrong with that. That is a valuable message.

My problem with this statement comes from “talk to” and “someone.” They are not the right words.

On “Talk to…”

All my life I’ve been told to talk about my problems, I’d feel better. I know I’m not the only one. That works well for people who are not mentally ill because they do not have traumatic experiences or physiological processes impeding the way their mind should function.

On the other hand, I have Bipolar Disorder and Major Depression. Talking about my problems never did much for me because talking about those problems did not change the physiological processes and physical problems associated with my mental illnesses. I stopped talking about my problems because talking about them just made them more complicated to deal with. In regards to friends and relationships, now I have to deal with what’s going on in my mind on top of trying to make you feel like you actually helped so you won’t feel bad, so I won’t feel bad for making you feel bad and like you couldn’t help me. What I really needed was medication to control the physiological processes and therapy to fix the way I perceived and interpreted the world through my mental illness.

You have social attitudes about talking about your problems to cut through. The way I combat this perception is to frame that kind of statement in a way that is solution oriented. I don’t want a person to just talk about their problem, I want them to talk to a certified professional that can help them find a way to manage or solve that problem.

The statement “talk to” is too indirect, intangible. An important piece of an effective CtA is an action that spells out a direct reaction. Why? Because people will not figure it out on their own. They just don’t. You have to lead people directly from Point A to Point B. You can look at about any commercial or advertisement that is asking you to do something for confirmation. “Sign up for this newsletter and receive a free XYZ!” You must tell people exactly what you want from them and why or the chance of them taking action drops straight off.

Talk is technically a correct word, but it’s not a good choice because of the stigma and emotion people associate with it. Hell, “talk therapy” doesn’t necessarily indicate just talking about one’s problems. I found talk therapy to be incredibly helpful in learning to understand myself and my mental illness. What I did not do was talk just to talk or be heard. I talked because I had a specific goal in mind of understanding what was going on in my head and how to manage it. Talking about my problems? Useless. Talking about my problems to find a solution for them? That provides a course of action not influenced by my personal feelings or perceptions.

Why does this matter? Because of the word “someone”.

On “Someone…”

Who exactly is “someone?” Now, you may be sitting there thinking, “Oh! A doctor! A crisis counselor! A therapist!” Fair and valid. What about a person who is suicidal or going through something horrible? Who are they are going to reach out to? Is their first thought going to be seeking professional help? Doubtful. They are more likely to reach out to people that they believe love them, care about them, or that they care about. That is a major problem.

It’s a problem because of mental health stigma and how many people are in dysfunctional families and relationships. I started on my advocacy path in 2010. I cannot tell you how many fucking times I’ve heard variations of, “I tried talking to my mom, but she didn’t think it was a big deal.” “I tried talking to my husband, but he doesn’t care.” “I tried talking to my sister, but all she said was, ‘This, again?’” “I tried talking to my best friend, but they were too busy and I didn’t want to bother them.” Over and over and over and over and over. And that’s not even touching on the number of abuse survivors who reached out for help in their worst times and were met with inaction.

Who is “someone?” Is someone the spouse that’s been gaslighting and tormenting them? Is someone a parent that doesn’t believe in mental illness? Is someone a person they think is their friend, who doesn’t actually give a damn about them? Is someone a member of a dysfunctional family? Is someone a person who has ground down that at-risk person’s mental and emotional health to control and manipulate them?

Or maybe someone is a person who cares, is a kind and loving soul, is gentle, considerate and warm. Someone who donates to charity and would offer you the shirt off their back. And maybe that someone, with all their warm thoughts and good intentions, doesn’t have an iota of knowledge or experience in being that close to something so delicate. Perhaps that someone believes that the fact they care is good enough to patch up the wounds of a difficult or traumatic life. It’s not. Caring isn’t good enough.

Many wounds just don’t heal all of the way. Look at Chester – sexually abused as a child, recovering from addiction, and long-term mental health challenges. For a lot of people, those scars do not fully heal. They can be brought under control, they can be managed, they can be worked on, but they still linger to some degree and need to be managed in the long-term. And to manage them in the long-term, mentally ill people need more than just people caring. They and their families need support, they need the clinical knowledge that professionals can provide, they need affordable and accessible services.

Crisis services are well, good, and important; but what about the rest of life? What about the times when we’re not in crisis but starting to slide? What is the long-term solution to that? I watched many people beat the drum on Chester’s “cries for help.” I don’t know how many of those people realize that he did reach out for help and support when he needed it from his friends and bandmates. But, after awhile, you just don’t want to anymore.

In Conclusion…

The posturing that happens every time there is a high profile suicide feels so phony. It’s bothersome how oblivious society is about the everyday struggle of dealing with and surviving long-term mental illness. And I dislike the phrase, “Talk to someone if you are having a hard time.” I feel that this statement puts at-risk people in a position to either be harmed or dissuaded from pursuing professional help more often than not.

I do not believe that encouraging suicidal or severely mentally ill people to talk to just anyone about their problems is a good idea. By all means, be supportive, try to be understanding, thank them for opening up…but encourage them to talk to someone who is trained to meaningfully help them. Yes, support from friends and family is important. As a supporter, there is definitely a line where help from a qualified, certified mental health professional is necessary.

It’s a tricky thing because people need different things. There are plenty of us out there who do see and talk to our medical professionals, who still do sometimes just need someone to be present with us in a difficult moment. On the other hand, a lot of the messages being pumped out after high profile suicides are related to suicidal people.

It all just depends on the person and the specific situation; which isn’t a good combination with the general, generic nature of social media posturing.

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Can a Person Recover From Their Mental Illness?

Are you a kind, compassionate person? Are you the type of person who looks for and sees the best in everyone? Do you believe that many people can heal or recover from their mental illness? Believe it or not – I do. But, that’s not the most important question. The real question is – will they be able to recover?

That is an entirely different question altogether. Quite a few people I cross paths with want to hear a story of hope. It’s clear from the questions they ask and the statements they make. They are less than impressed when I tell them the truth; that my recovery was largely fueled by fear of my own mind, being stubborn, and anger.

People cling to hope because it’s positive and romantic. And yes, hope is an important thing because it can keep people moving through dark times. However, there comes a point where hope can be harmful because we invest so much emotional energy in how we want things to be as opposed to how they are. We spend too much of our time in the future instead of the present.

Do I believe that most people can recover and attain a higher quality of life? Yes. Do I believe that they will? That’s a more complicated question. And here are a list of reasons why…

1. The person has to want to change. My biggest system shock came with the realization of how few people want to change. They want something easy, a therapist or a pill to fix them. Recovery is like 98% personal work, 2% clinical assistance. That personal work includes reevaluating one’s emotions, how one conducts their life, how one interacts with others, learning management practices and actually implementing them, and so much more. Every person I know that has reached a high degree of recovery from Depression or Bipolar Disorder is a very different person from who they started off as. Why? Because the attitudes and emotions that these mental illnesses foster are often harmful and toxic. They must be changed.

2. The person needs adequate resources. Numerous people just don’t have access to the resources they need or reject the ones they have access to. Medication and doctor appointments can be expensive. And yes, I know, “Some have sliding scales!” Which means little when you have next to nothing and are barely able to keep your head above water. I’ve watched people absolutely refuse to request help from charities or other resources when they would have qualified because of their own pride. I was one of these people, too.

3. The person needs to be okay with changing. This is different than the first point because a person may decide they want to change, but not like how they change. I find this to be especially true in Bipolar people who trend towards the escalated side of the Disorder that is pronounced, but not necessarily destructive. But even a destructive mania can feel absolutely wonderful to the person experiencing it. And I’ve met several people who view it as their edge in their art, career, or social life. Real emotions are so quiet compared to what a Bipolar person experiences in escalation. Some people don’t want to give that up. On the other side of that coin are the people who are content to be miserable and depressed. Life is just horrible and they feel more comfortable being a victim to it all.

4. The person can make bad decisions. Many people are a bad decision or two away from serious repercussions. “I feel great! I don’t really need this med.” “I’m going to skip this doctor’s appointment.” “One night of hard drinking or drugs isn’t going to kill me.” “I didn’t call in my prescription early enough and they are out of my med until next week!” “I’m not really mentally ill. Everyone else is the problem.” I can talk until I’m blue in the face on what to avoid, but people insist on learning the hard way time after time.

5. Even if the person makes all the right decisions, the pursuit of wellness can still go sideways. Medication can have negative reactions or unmanageable side effects. A person can be medication resistant, meaning their body just doesn’t react well at all or positively to medication. Trying to push through past damage and trauma with a therapist can make a person worse before they start getting better. Many mental illnesses can get worse with age, not better. Bipolar Disorder is one of them. And then you have dealing with the general stresses of life on top of everything else.

And none of that is including the people who like having their mental illness as an effective “Get Out of Responsibility” card. Abusers and manipulators regularly use hope and compassion against their victim. The victim carries the hope that a toxic person will recover, feel sorry for their actions, and everyone lives happily ever after. That rarely happens.

Even if we do everything right, things can still go completely wrong. And getting people to want to change is the hardest battle of all, because change is fucking difficult and scary.

I know that a lot of people are going to take this post as me being negative, but I’m not. This is the reality that I’ve come to know in trying to help other mentally ill people and their loved ones walk their own path. It’s still difficult, even in an optimal scenario. Hell, it’s not like my life is where I want it to be yet either. Self-improvement is a marathon, not a sprint. And I still get shit wrong, too. All you can do is the best you can, really.

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On Where to Draw Boundaries and Lines in the Sand…

Quite a few people reach out to me in the hopes of gaining some understanding of what their mentally ill loved one is going through. One of the most common strings of questions I receive goes something like this: “Where do I draw the line? How will I know when enough is enough? Where does compassion end and accountability start for destructive behavior?”

There is a simple answer. The line is drawn wherever you want to draw it. That’s as complicated as it needs to be. No one but you can decide what you are willing to deal with. No one but you can decide where your compassion needs to end. You are the only one that can make that decision for yourself, based on your personal circumstances. And if you’re confused and unsure? Get off the internet and talk to a certified mental health counselor about the situation.

There are no internet articles that are going to be able to replace that important knowledge and neutral, third party perspective.

And it would be lovely if the more vocal, compassionate people of the world would stop pushing the romanticized narrative that martyring oneself is a good and noble choice. It’s not. It’s short-sighted and destructive. The stains, wounds, and scars of staying in an abusive situation, regardless of the cause, do not just disappear after. They may linger and continue to be destructive even decades later.

Then you have the generic, blanket advice to clearly state one’s boundary and enforce it. Okay. And if the other person is a skilled manipulator who can gauge how to coast just below that boundary to be destructive, but without overstepping? What about people who have been in emotionally abusive relationships that have been conditioned by an abusive partner to bend their boundaries?

Blanket statements can cause a person to give up far too much information to someone who may be adept at wielding that information as a weapon to harm. Anyone who’s been in an abusive relationship knows that honesty is an impossibility in that kind of situation. That person knows that what they say or do can, will, and often be used against them.

Always be wary of who you discuss the issue of boundaries with and treat their words with skepticism. They are not you. It is so easy for someone sitting outside of the situation to tell you to keep going through hell because they believe it’s the compassionate or right thing to do, when they aren’t the one suffering. That’s not their decision to make for you.

And in my personal experience, having listened to the survivors of these situations for years now, women tend to get the worst end of that. For men, it’s typically, “She’s crazy. You should dump her.” For women, it’s typically, “You need to be more supportive and understanding. It’s your job to keep things together.” Which is total bullshit on so many levels.

Draw the line wherever you want. You are the only one that can decide what you are willing to suffer through. No one else is going to live your life 24/7. No one else is going to have to deal with the consequences of that choice. You are your own person. No one has the right to tell you how compassionate you should or shouldn’t be.

Anyone that would criticize you for choosing your own survival and well-being is not worth listening to.

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The Joys of Unexpected Events and Bipolar Disorder

The unexpected can easily threaten one’s stability and well-being when you are mentally ill. For the better part of January, I have been largely quiet on my blog. The reason is due to an unexpected circumstance that threatened an unwell cycle. Thanks to medication, practices I learned in therapy, and the knowledge I have built about how my mental illness affects me specifically, I was able to keep that stress from exploding into a full-blown unwell cycle.

The benefit of psych medication, for me, is that it prevents Bipolar Disorder from pulling my mind out into extremes. There are times when I feel like my brain is trying to escalate or crash into depression but it just hits a metaphorical wall and won’t go any further than that. But it does still like to hang out in those more troublesome areas where greater volatility can further threaten my stability.

And that’s where practices I learned in therapy and on my own come into play.

I think most people can agree that the more you dwell on a matter, the greater power you give it to affect you. In dealing with a mood disorder, dwelling on stresses, emotions, and other troubling circumstances not only fans the flames, but throws more fuel on them so they just burn brighter.

I strive to limit the amount of attention I give to circumstances that are beyond my control. In this case, I was unenrolled from a program that was paying my Medicare premiums about three months ago, but they did not actually adjust what I was receiving from Disability. I received no notification that this was happening, for whatever reason. I found this out when the government reclaimed those funds through a deduction that cut January’s payment by 2/3rds.

Shit situation? Absolutely. Anything I can do about it? Not according to Social Security.

It’s important to confront problems head on. The longer they fester, the worse off they will get. Ignoring them is the worst thing you can do. But, it’s really easy for anxiety, depression, or Bipolar Disorder to make everything feel overwhelming. We need to attempt to strike a middle ground. I do that by dedicating a certain amount of time to working on that problem and then forcing my brain onto different subject matter. This is not something that is easy to do initially! It’s a skill you need to work on. It does get easier with time and effort.

In this case, I allotted two hours to researching what happened and looking for a solution (not counting the time I spent on hold!) That culminated in a handful of phone calls to various offices and discovering there was nothing I could do to affect the situation. From there, any additional thoughts or energy dedicated to it would simply be wasted. It’s just potential fuel for the fires of unwellness to ignite and burn.

Whenever I find myself dwelling on what happened, I redirect my thoughts onto something else that requires greater focus. The more complex, the more I get immersed, the less energy I’m giving to thoughts that could spiral out of control.

This also works pretty well in trying to support a loved one who is being hit with unwell or anxiety-driven thoughts. If I know what the person’s interests are, I will ask them what their favorite thing about that interest is. As I get them talking about it, I’ll just keep asking questions about various details about the hobby or thing until I can tell they are calming down. If I don’t know, I’ll just ask them what their favorite thing is and start unwinding from there. It can take a few minutes, but it’s a really good way to derail anxiety or unwell thoughts.

I would like to close off this post by thanking the several people who sent me, “are you okay?” messages. I do appreciate them. I am okay, just dealing with my mental illness.

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4 Thoughts on Marriage, Long-Term Relationships, and Bipolar Disorder

Everyone needs love in their life. Like many mentally ill people, I have experienced a great deal of turmoil in all facets of my life, including romance. I’ve been engaged twice, but never married. I was diagnosed and started on my recovery path around the same time that my second engagement ended.

I distinctly remember her expressions of pained confusion as my mind melted down. At the time I was diagnosed, I decided to just stay single because I was tired of dragging people I loved through pain and misery with me. But, after three years working on recovery, I began to see that it was certainly possible to have a long-term, happy relationship as a mentally ill person. The problem is that a lot of the advice and information out there is aimed at a generic, lowest common denominator “typical” person.

The following thoughts are derived from my own recovery, as well as listening to the woes of several married couples where Bipolar Disorder is present. Your mileage may vary.

1. Accept that not everyone can handle mental illness.

You don’t have to look far to find articles about how people with mental illness need kindness, compassion, and understanding. That is true. However, it’s also true that not everyone has a thick enough skin to handle mental illness. It can be frightening, disturbing, and confusing. Not everyone can handle that, and that’s okay.

It is worthwhile to consider what kind of experience and opinions a potential partner holds about mental illness. Have they ever been emotionally close to a mentally ill person before? Do they accept it is a medical problem, an illness? What kind of challenges have they faced in their lives? Will this person fall to pieces if they are confronted with the worst your mental illness has to offer?

I find that there are a lot of people that want to be understanding and compassionate, but the extremes of mental illness are just so different and unsettling that they don’t understand how to be.

2. The traditional tropes of partnership don’t necessarily apply.

A traditional idea of marriage sees two people joining their life together in many ways to be partners in this life. I know it’s a heart-warming, romantic notion to many. In a relationship involving Bipolar Disorder or other mental illness, there has to be at least some degree of space between the partners.

I’ve heard the following scenario dozens of times.

Husband has Bipolar Disorder and is the primary source of income. Husband swings manic, cleans out the bank account, and bails on wife and children. Husband may be a fantastic guy when well and balanced, but for the next several months, he’s teetering on the edge of out of his mind while mania does what it does. Wife is forced to cajole, coerce, or literally beg husband to keep their family afloat and a roof over their heads, not always succeeding.

In my well, placid state of mind, I would never want that for my family. Any half-decent person with a conscience wouldn’t want that for their family. So, I would never want to fully intertwine my financials with a long-term partner, because who knows what I might think is a good idea when I’m out of my mind? Separate bank accounts, avoid cosigning for things if it can be avoided, maybe a mutual bank account for paying bills and rent at the most. Need to build or rebuild credit? Get yourself a Secured Credit Card instead of cosigning a debt.

Not everything needs to be meshed together. And in my opinion, it definitely shouldn’t be. Boundaries are necessary.

3. Patience. Take your time developing the relationship.

Personally, any time I start to feel too good, I just assume I’m escalating until I can confirm that I’m not. Hitting things off well with another person can certainly be a escalation trigger for Bipolar Disorder. In fact, the following scenario is the most common that people write to me about.

Person A meets Person B and there is immediate chemistry. Person B lives with Bipolar Disorder. The relationship takes off hot and heavy. They’re my soul-mate! It’s intense, it’s passionate, everything seems to be perfect for about three to six months. Then, things change. They change because Person B triggered into mania, the cycle runs its course, and they crash hard into depression. Person A is confused, they want the person they fell in love with back!

Well, that’s what they think they want. In reality, the person they fell in love with may not actually exist. Mania can be a distortion of the person with Bipolar Disorder. It can also create totally fictional feelings and beliefs, making it not real at all. So many people are looking for this romanticized notion of a soul-mate. They think they find it in manic Person B because mania isn’t anything like what they’ve known before, unless they’re actually familiar with Bipolar Disorder, in which case they would know that it’s not a good thing at all.

Patience is a virtue that everyone needs more of. Date for at least two years before making any major decisions like getting a place together. This is good for both parties. It prevents the person with Bipolar Disorder from acting on fictitious emotions they may not actually feel and it gives the partner a chance to see a wide sampling of the mood swings and how things can be.

If you meet a person and you’re flooded with all of these overwhelming feelings of perfection, love, beauty, and purity of passion; assume it’s mania until you can prove otherwise. A lack of doubt is a major warning flag for escalation.

4. Do not hide your mental illness to achieve a relationship.

People come and go in life. Living with mental illness, we often see a number of people go. Friends are nowhere to be found, relationships crumble when drastic unwellness hits. It can be tempting to want to hide this facet away from a potential partner, but that’s a mistake.

You can’t build a healthy, loving relationship on distrust and partial information. Healthy relationships aren’t built that way. Sooner or later the partner will find out, and they will be hurt and feel betrayed. You’ll be setting yourself up for failure from the start.

The matter of mental health does need some partnership to it. If you’re going to spend a large amount of time with a person, it would help both parties out if they could communicate and work together to overcome the inevitable hurdles that the mental illness will contribute. I’ve talked to both mentally ill people and their partners who think that it can just be the sole domain of the mentally ill person, that it can be kept from affecting the partner. That’s naive, wishful thinking at best.

When’s the best time to have that discussion? Earlyish. It doesn’t have to be immediately, but somewhere before love and serious relationship sets in. I prefer sooner so I don’t waste our time.

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Can Bipolar Disorder Be Controlled Naturally?

I’ve spent a great deal of time talking to people newly diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Inevitably, they ask about controlling Bipolar Disorder through natural means. Can Bipolar Disorder be totally controlled through natural means? I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that it can. I think that the numerous natural practices out there supplement a person’s overall wellness and stability, at best.

I am not a mental health professional or a doctor. However, I am a guy who has talked to literally hundreds of mentally ill people and their families over the past five years. I’ve met people who have believed a great number of things ranging from diet being able to cure their mental illness to people who thought Jesus came to them and exorcised their demons to “Native American secrets they don’t want you to know!” I’ve listened to a hell of a lot of claims.

If Bipolar Disorder can be well-managed or cured through natural means, where are the people doing it? 

Quality of life is an important consideration, even with psych medication. Oh, so your medication knocks you out for sixteen hours a day? A person can’t live that way. Call your doctor and see what should be done about it.

And then you have the people touting a natural approach. “I do X, Y, and Z and I feel AMAZING!” Well, I got news for you. You feel amazing because you’re either borderline manic or high, I can tell by the way you’re ranting at me and exuding energy. It’s obvious to anyone familiar with mania and you probably missed it because you’re escalating.

Here’s a simple pro-tip: if you have Bipolar Disorder and you feel “amazing” for absolutely no reason, start going through your process to make sure your brain isn’t escalating into unwellness. People don’t typically feel amazing for no reason.

I am not telling you to take psychiatric medication. That is a decision only you can make with a qualified professional. What I am telling you is to not delude yourself into thinking that you’re out of the woods because you feel good for the moment. That may not mean a damned thing a week, six months, or a year from now. You should certainly be prepared for a major cycle to kick your teeth down your throat should you trigger.

The Mental Health System is the Most Effective Way to Achieve Wellness

I believe that our flawed mental health system is the most effective way to attain control over mental illness and achieve a greater quality of life. That’s what I’ve seen work for people over and over.

I’ve met several well-balanced people who have achieved years of stability and peace through means offered by the mental health system. On the other hand, I’ve met zero who achieve it through self-medication and substance abuse, prayer, Native American secrets, smoothies, or positive thinking.

There are no shortcuts to achieving mental wellness and stability. It is challenging and it is work. Anyone that says otherwise is either trying to sell you a product or doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Meaningful change takes time and effort, in all things. Period.

And, if you are a person with Bipolar Disorder who has managed at least a year of stability with a decent quality of life through “natural” anything, I would love to hear from you.

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Love Is Not Greater Than Mental Illness

Love is not greater than mental illness. I’m writing that sentence out because I find myself needing to regularly tell people that love is a product of the brain. It’s not the heart, which pumps blood. It’s not the soul, an often debated construct of belief. Love is created, grown, and hosted in the mind. Therefore, love is just as vulnerable to mental illness as any other emotion or thought process.

Bipolar Disorder unwellness can create a fictional reality and emotions out of thin air. From the outside, it is incredibly confusing. From the inside, the fictional emotions and beliefs that arise from them seem as though they are reality. To say that, “they are not real” is incorrect. They are real in that the unwell mind is saying that “this is reality.” They are not real in that those beliefs don’t typically align with fact.

A person with a high degree of awareness, who retains enough presence of mind to listen to the people around them who can see when they are unwell, can attempt to counter that thinking by continuously reminding themselves that what they are experiencing is not factual and not base their decisions off of them. But, then there are people who are too unwell to see their illness, listen to supporters with rationality, or become convinced that they are being lied to.

“Why is my spouse being so awful to me now? We had a good relationship before!”

“Why is an otherwise loving parent now treating their kids like an afterthought now?”

“My significant other really loved our pets. Why are they so cold and ignoring them now?”

Mental illness would not be nearly as devastating if love surpassed it.

A majority of the people that reach out to me are the friends, family, and loved ones of the mentally ill who are trying to understand what is going on in the mind of their mentally ill loved one. The problem is that they do not have the appropriate perspective to accurately do that. They try to filter mental unwellness through the filter of how they experience and interpret life. It’s not the same.

A person with a typical mind may get angry with their partner but they still retain love.

A Bipolar mind that swings into mania can have that love overridden by the unwell cycle. Instead of anger with love, the person may wind up with intense anger and frustration, impeded decision making ability, impulsiveness, recklessness, racing thoughts, in addition to a removal of the filter between the brain and the mouth. Irrational emotions that are not based in reality flow through actions and words, free to deal drastic damage to a loving relationship.

And then the cycle will end sooner or later. The Bipolar person goes back to who they were before the manic cycle blasted its way through. Then the people involved are left to sweep up whatever ashes they can, because we can’t take back actions or words. All we can really do is apologize and try to put it back together as well as it can be.

“But, if they really loved me, they wouldn’t have done XYZ!”

No. Love is not greater than mental illness. In fact, I would argue that love is the single most vulnerable victim of mental illness, because it’s something that is an essential part of every person’s existence in some way.

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To the Parents Trying to Get Through to a Mentally Ill Child

I receive correspondence from people dealing with a wide variety of issues relating to mental illness. One of the more common themes include parents, usually mothers, who are trying to figure out a way to make their adult child realize they need help and work toward recovery. I’ve talked to parents who have developed severe depression and anxiety, who have claimed strokes and heart attacks from the stress, who have gone so far as to take out additional mortgages to try and fund rehab, and far more.

In many cases, these parents have gone to mental health groups or counselors of their own. They’ve been told about the need and importance for boundaries; but feel that they can’t do these things to their child because of potential repercussions like violence, homelessness, self-harm, or suicide. All are very real possibilities when it comes to Bipolar Disorder and other volatile mental illnesses. That’s why it is vital to have the input and support of a qualified, licensed mental health professional. Being that I am not, it is not my place to tell you what you should do in that kind of situation other than seek professional help. Instead, I want to address the internal struggle of those parents.

On Waging the War…

I look at my mental wellness and my efforts in trying to help other mentally ill people and their loved ones in the context of fighting a war. You need a loose strategy that can be adapted as you push towards your goals. You need to have and manage resources. In war that includes troops, morale, weaponry, and money to keep the machine going. In mental health it’s professionals, your own emotional and health, therapy, medications, and money.

In war, you deploy your resources in a way that will push you closer to a victory. You do not want to arbitrarily waste your resources on battles that will not bring you closer to victory. In war, your troops may have advanced on and taken a hill. Intelligence indicates that a massive counter-attack is coming. Do you hold the hill? Does it serve a strategic importance to keep your troops on that hill and commit additional resources like air support and artillery to ensuring they hold it? Or is it a better idea to withdraw and let the enemy retake it so you can conserve resources and keep your troops in fresh, fighting shape for future actions?

In mental health, the wise will pick their battles in a similar way. You commit your resources when they have the greatest ability to make an impact and serve a strategic purpose. The most common piece of advice I give to people is don’t bother arguing with a Bipolar person who is manic. It serves little purpose. On the off-chance you actually do get through to the person in that moment, their instability can wipe out any perceived gains that you’ve made. What’s more likely to happen is you end up throwing fuel on the fires of their unwellness, anger them more, drive them further into instability. Then you have the emotional energy that you’ve expended in the form of your own anger, sadness, and frustration with the lack of meaningful gain.

In trying to get through to a mentally ill loved one, you must conserve your resources because it can take years for a person to not only realize they need help, but foster the desire to change their situation. You cannot sacrifice your mental and physical health, career, money, and home for someone who is not ready to help themselves. If you do, then you may not have those resources available five or ten years down the road when they could have been employed to make a real difference.

I Can’t Do What Is Suggested to My Child…

No one in this world is going to love your child as much as you do. No one. No one is going to put up with as much shit, sacrifice, or care as much as you do. What happens when you are no longer there? Will they end up on the streets? Will they commit suicide? Will they jump into a terrible relationship to just not be alone or on the streets? Will they turn to drugs or alcohol to escape? Maybe they are already doing those things now; but the difference is you are alive and reading this right now. That means you have the potential to be there for them and crack through the distorted perception that mental illness creates.

The boundary setting suggestions that mental health professionals make serve different purposes. Not only do they help you retain your sanity and well-being, but they also contribute to a controlled descent based on choice, whether that was the intention or not. Enforcing these boundaries forces the person to acknowledge that they have choices that will have repercussions. That helps to contribute to a controlled fall where hopefully the person won’t have to hit rock bottom to realize they need to change.

This is not something you are doing TO your child; this is something you are doing FOR your child. In following the recommendations of your mental health professionals, you are fighting the war FOR your child, which will hopefully push them towards the realization that they need to fight, too. Nobody accidentally recovers from a serious mental illness like Bipolar Disorder. Recovery is a major victory in a long-term war that requires a great deal of fighting, effort, and work. It is not something that can be handed to another person.

Your child, or loved one, is the only one who can truly help themselves. Enabling that person to realize it and that they have the strength to overcome will be two of the hardest fought, bloodiest battles in the war. Thus, you need to pace yourself to make sure your own life and well-being doesn’t get destroyed in the process. If the situation is so bad that your professional is suggesting extreme measures, you can’t tell yourself you can’t do them. You may not have a choice if you want to win the battle.

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