Does it ever feel like everybody but mental health peers are super stoked for World Mental Health Day and mental health awareness week and suicide prevention month? Having bipolar, it’s just another day, just another week, and just another month, with the only noticable difference being a bump in the numbers of people telling me how “brave & inspirational” I am for talking so willingly about that part of my life that is bipolar.
Okay, I get it, it’s important to have the open conversation and I’m active in that conversation . Still, hubris be damned, I’m pretty cool the rest of the year, too, and I 0know this because my Mom told me how very special I am every day.
You should be praising my bravery every day!
Living with bipolar, for me every day is world mental health day for as long as I’m in this world.
With bipolar depression, there’s a sooper sucky quality to suicidal thoughts. The harder I try to quiet the suicidal thoughts the more pronounced the suicidal thoughts become. Why is this?
The reason is easy. Because I’m actively thinking “Shut up, suicidal thoughts” I now have the original suicidal thoughts plus additional thoughts of thinking about suicidal thoughts. It’s doubling down on the suicidal thoughts creating an amplifying Suicidal Thoughts Feedback Loop. Sooper sucky.
This is along the lines of micro-epiphany after many rounds with suicidal thoughts over the years. Wisdom borne of bipolar misery. That’s kind of cool.
My friend the Cat Apologist sent me this as “proof” and “evidence” of cats are superior and if not then you’re stupid.
Citations? This “study” sounds like the same ilk of baseless self-serving fortune cookie logic Facebook denizens use to justify overt Trump hatred (racist racist racist!!!) and bad science rhetoric (climate climate climate!!!). And in this case, cat apologists making excuses for being a cat apologist.
Similarly and conclusively, those credentialed professionals in the behavioral health community claiming lofty authority via the premise “Because Professional Studies Show” WITHOUT providing validating professional citations are the epitome of the appeal to false authority. It’s the same psychological construct that helps Lebron James peddle a Kia and 50 Cent convince you Vitamin Water is the finest way to quench your thirst.
Unsubstantiated scholarship at behavioral health meetings holds the same scholarly sway as “I’m not a doctor but I play one on TV.”
Simply stringing soothing words together, creating a meme, and posting it to Facebook doesn’t make it valid and true. Cat apologists do not have the gift of effective reality. Nor do those with credentials sitting at the same table with peers.
I’m the one with the mental health symptoms. These meetings are important. It affects me directly. My interest is immediately vested. I’m not prepared just to take your word for it. Proove yourself to me. Thank you.
Something needs to be done about my Seasonal Affective Disorder and how insufferably cheerful and gratingly pleasant I get during summertime. Not imposing upon my loved ones just because I’m joyful must be leaving a huge void in their heart. There must be a med to drag me into even a mild doldrum, requiring the people in my life the burden of having to be on suicide watch 24/7.
I hardly want to spend any time at all in my bed beneath my Blanket Fortress. And this unforced smile is so easy and uplifting. What a chore this is. For myself, for everone.
I’m so sorry for feeling happy and productive once again. I feel selfish to the core.
Forgive me for this and I’ll forgive you for eating the whole goddam bag of Cheetos. Those were for everyone, you realize.
Something needs to be done about my Seasonal Affective Disorder and how insufferably cheerful and gratingly pleasant I get during summertime. Not imposing upon my loved ones just because I’m joyful must be leaving a huge void in their heart. There must be a med to drag me into even a mild doldrum, requiring the people in my life the burden of having to be on suicide watch 24/7.
I hardly want to spend any time at all in my bed beneath my Blanket Fortress. And this unforced smile is so easy and uplifting. What a chore this is. For myself, for everone.
I’m so sorry for feeling happy and productive once again. I feel selfish to the core.
Forgive me for this and I’ll forgive you for eating the whole goddam bag of Cheetos. Those were for everyone, you realize.
Having been attending STS support groups (formerly DBSA Albuquerque) since October 14, 2010, I’ve heard said, “All I could do today was take a shower. I was exhausted. I feel like such a failure.”
I’ve heard similar words out of my own mouth, although mine was more akin to “All I could do today was make it halfway to the toilet from my bed, decided I wouldn’t have the strength to lift the toilet seat if traversing the entire remaining distance, so I moistened the carpeted floor over which I stood, and then my knees buckled from the exertion of urinating, never making it back to bed, and lightly moistened myself. Big win!”
Thing is, that was all the strength I had that day. Every. Last. Ounce. Of. Strength. Getting halfway to the bathroom took all the effort I had that day.
Contrast that with a few months on, and I’m training for a marathon. Truly. And that was the strength I had that day. Every. Last. Ounce. Of. Strength. Training for a marathon took all the effort I had that day.
Let’s say it together.
There’s a HUGE difference betwixt peeing on the floor (and collapsing into said puddle of pee) and training for a marathon.
And let’s have me counter immediately this fallacy.
Nothing a peer accomplishes is a “pathetic small thing” and a “monumental huge thing.”
Why, that makes no sense, says some. How can I make such a claim?
This is because, as a peer, I measure my accomplishments in terms of “effort.” If all the effort I have gets me halfway to the bathroom from the bed, it is EXACTLY equivalent of all the effort I have to train for a marathon. It’s the magnitude of the effort, not a qualitative “that is so much more than this” stigma.
Where I’m going to with this is to say to my fellow peers, pat yourself on the back, on the front, on the arse, wherever, because any accomplishment that expends all your effort for the day is HUGE!
HUGE!!!
I don’t beat myself up any longer, with “Geesh, I’m pathetic and weak. Why am I so exhausted?” I’m exhausted because I put every last bit of effort I have in me into whatever supposedly pathetic, weak task I accomplished. Some days, it’s making it to the toilet and back into bed. Some days, it’s pushing hard so I can beat a three hour finish time on the marathon.
Give yourself credit, peers. You didn’t ask for this life, with a brain condition that determines how your effort can be expended that day. Give yourself credit because you accomplished something amazing.
Self-disclosure. Before losing Clare, I felt I had unlimited reserves of effort. Nowadays, just making it to STS support group takes everything I have not to stay home and isolate instead.
Measure your deeds in the amount of effort you put into it. It’s that magnitude of effort that defines your accomplishment. Such as, reading through this entire article wondering if my meds are working properly. I know how much effort this takes. I’ve been told so very many times.
Stigmatization is a cruddy reality for those contending with the symptoms of illnesses, mental and medical alike. There’s a group of terms affiliated with stigmas I really don’t like in the least, the most, and all points betwixt:
“In The Closet,” “Coming Out,” and “Outing Myself.”
I’d like you to look at this photo of the NAMI Challenger. The front page article is one I composed during my time on the NAMI Albuquerque board. I ask you to look at this photo and remember it because when we travel full-circle back to “in the closet, “coming out,” and “outing myself,” the importance of this image will make sense.
So, I’ve got a buddy who is deaf (“Big D” as she calls it), and she is not the best at “reading lips.” That’s great for Hollywood scripts, she tells me, but not so great for actually carrying on a conversation. There are two things that bug her about people:
1.) When they raise their voices to talk to her, as if shouting will bring her hearing back.
2.) When people think she’s stupid, as in intellectually deficient, because her speaking voice is different than those of us whose ears collect noises and whose brains interpret the noises as sound.
These stigmas, when she was young and soon after she lost her ability to hear, had her hiding from the neighbor kids who were once her friends. After the accident that took her hearing, these “friends” became cruel, taunting, and vicious in the teasing and gossip they spread into the community that the accident made her stupid and deaf. She just wanted to hide, she just didn’t want to be with people anymore, she just wanted to die.
Now, she is a strong peer voice in the hearing impaired community (and I use the word “voice” purposely, and she likes it a lot), and she works with children with hearing impairment sharing her life stories and experiences to hopefully spare them the feeling of worthlessness and self-doubt that comes from being stigmatized.
In our chats, I shared with her that I, too, had feelings of worthlessness and self-doubt tied to my bipolar. I had a friend of two decades who stopped calling (after my wife… ex-wife now… told him I had a mental illness), I’d been fired from job after job, my marriage was a disaster and a failure, I’d been kicked out of New Mexico Tech… what I thought of myself was equivalent to what I thought of dog squeeze on the bottom of a nice pair of Nikes. I dreaded that point where someone caught whiff of me and tried to wipe me off on the lawn, the entire time cursing they ever met me… and the bottom of their shoe.
Stigmas abound beyond only medical and mental considerations. I gave a presentation to a group of kids at Polk Middle School earlier this year, and part of the presentation is asking the kids what stigmas they contend with in their lives. The typical teen-angstiness identified “We’re always on our phones,” “Everyone thinks we’re lazy,” and “All we think about is boys/girls.” I think they meant teen crushes, but I didn’t explore that one.
One young man shared a stigma that broke my heart. And, I could sense when he shared his stigma with the class that there was an implicit understanding with his peers:
“Everyone says if you live in the South Valley you’ll wind up in prison or working at Walmart.”
The quality of this stigma, the impact it had upon the class, was tangible. It was real. It was beyond “always being on the phone” or “being boy/girl crazy.” A young lady followed up saying “That’s why I never tell anyone where I go to school.” Too many of her classmates nodded in agreement.
That sense of accepted worthlessness is something I realize and understand is part of any marginalized group’s mainstay. It’s a community bond built upon a foundation of presumptions, misconceptions, and lies. These kids believe that people think less of them because of where they live, and that this stigma they overwhelmingly feel is part of their identity is a preordained limitation on what they can accomplish. I’m not too proud to say I started tearing up when I heard the kids speak about this unfair assumption.
The word “unfair” is thrown out there so much and so often that it’s all but lost meaning. It’s unfair I have to wait until Sunday to see Force Awakens. It’s unfair she got to go to the company picnic while I had to stay at work and finish billing reports. It’s unfair he buys a brand new car every year and I’m stuck driving this clunker. Given these qualifications for “unfairness,” it’s easy to see why “unfair” is a nearly worthless word.
Yet when you hear from these Polk Middle School kids, the word “unfair” is afforded a clarity all but lost in the vernacular, that the magnitude and direction of vectored fairness is so real and succinct that stigmatization is unavoidable. These kids were all a part of a leadership class, and there is no mistaking why they were chosen for this class. Their leadership talents define them so much more than the geographic locality of their community.
That’s the crux of stigmatization. It is unfair and immediate, created by an unenlightened, self-appointed mob judiciary over generations. More than that, though, is stigmas become so pervasive and saturating that the people being marginalized come to accept the prejudice, and when this happens stigmatization mutates from prejudice to shame.
What is shameful about living in the South Valley? For me, it’s a gorgeous place to walk the old trails and follow the irrigation canals between neighborhoods. The history and culture are rich and so much more a part of New Mexico’s identity than my tract housing neighborhood. For some reason, though, kids living in the South Valley are ashamed to tell other kids where they live and where they go to school, and this is baffling to me. If anything, being part of such an important community is a trophy of pride and not shame.
Looking at different stigmas, and looking at my own life living with bipolar and how I’ve often devalued myself, there is a common link expressed almost universally by marginalized groups:
Shame.
In fact, the shame is so powerful that people feel they have to hide themselves from public view and scrutiny. My Big D friend hid from kids who used to be her friends. The young lady from Polk Middle School won’t tell other kids where she goes to school. And me? I pretended that I was “normal” and dreaded that people would see the symptoms of bipolar that alter my behavior so detrimentally (read: I’m weird, I know it, and I hope nobody notices me because I just can’t handle another failed job, failed relationship, and failed self). I was ashamed of myself for having bipolar.
“In The Closet,” “Coming Out,” and “Outing Myself.” We touched on this at the beginning of this article, and as promised we’ve gotten to the reason I started the article talking about “in the closet,” “coming out,” and “outing myself.” This is a concept attributed initially to the LGBT community (I don’t know the full acronym any longer – please send me the entire list of letters if you know it and I’ll edit the text). Being “in the closet” was being homosexual and not sharing this with others. There are valid reasons for this, with the policy of the U.S. military being a fine example. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was actual policy and not just a catch phrase. Serving our country, protecting our freedom, rights, and liberty meant you couldn’t tell anyone you are gay. Where’s the logic in that? And yet there it was, and it was a policy that if you wanted to commit yourself to serving our country, it meant you couldn’t be homosexual, of if you were, you were required to hide it. It’s shameful to be gay while serving our country. It was official federal policy to keep people “in the closet.”
Now, stating proudly “I’m a guy who likes guys” or “I’m a girl who likes girls” is part of our American culture. Being “in the closet” has become more passe than “coming out of the closet.” Yet, the term remains. To share with those you love that you are gay still entails the idea of “I’m coming out of the closet,” shortened as “coming out,” and the choice and act of leaving “the closet” as “outing myself.”
I don’t like “in the closet,” “coming out,” and “outing myself” in word and concept, and this goes to the etymology of the phrase. The connotation retains the artifact consideration that “coming out” or “outing myself” meant I was hiding something that I felt was deeply shameful, and that I didn’t like who I was based upon others’ presumptions, misconceptions, and lies about what it is to be someone with bipolar.
I don’t like “in the closet,” “coming out,” and “outing myself” with such directed, purposeful zeal that it is part of my peer advocacy playbook. I don’t feel like I’ve “come out” to the public to share openly that I have bipolar. When I decided to start speaking in public about my challenges and triumphs living with bipolar, I wasn’t “outing myself.” I share openly that I have bipolar because I like who I am, and I’m hoping that my openness can inspire other peers to have the innate pride in themselves that every person on the planet has a right to.
Exactly like with “journey to recovery” versus “recovery journey” (I NEVER say “journey to recovery”), I NEVER say anywhere at anytime that me sharing my life experiences with others is the a process of being “in the closet,” “coming out,” and “outing myself.” You will NEVER hear me say “I’ve come out of the closet as someone with bipolar, and when I did I outed myself and you can, too.”
Why? Because while I felt inferior at the beginning of my recovery journey, and I felt I had to hide my shame away, the way I feel about the world and my place in it has evolved dramatically, and I’m exceptionally proud of who I am, and part of that is being a peer and a peer advocate. When I first began this peer advocacy phase of my recovery journey, I discovered in myself that I had no shame of having bipolar and I didn’t feel I had to hide my bipolar symptoms. There was no “coming out.” I didn’t “out myself.” There was only me sharing my life experiences with others in a celebration of life and all the quirky nuances that is the human condition.
So here is that photo again, zoomed in on a very specific sector of the article. “In the closet,” “coming out,” and in this article “outing myself” is not part of my vernacular, and I actively advocate removing “in the closet,” “coming out,” “outing myself” from the vocabulary of my peers.
That “outing myself” is presented in italics is a good indicator that my original article met with less-than-adept editing skills prior to publication. Sorry if anyone got the wrong impression, which many peers did at the time questioning, “Steve, ‘outing myself’ doesn’t sound like something you’d say.” Exactly. And please notice the “journey to recovery” kicking off the article as well. I covered this in an earlier “Letter to the NAMI Editor” article. “Journey to recovery” and “outing myself” in the same initial paragraph of my article are not my words or what I submitted for publication. Quality control and professional editing was not a priority for this issue of NAMI Challenger, so let this serve (vanity press) notice in lieu of a wordy editorial retraction in a future issue of NAMI Challenger.
If you’d like a copy of this NAMI Challenger issue, I’d highly recommend this specific issue. There is a very good article on WRAP, and a free WRAP class is taught at the NAMI Albuquerque office every Sunday.
Okay, so here’s the rub. I’ve learned a lot about myself as I understood more about stigmas. For you, I share a pocket-size version to take with you:
There is nothing shameful about having mental health challenges. There is nothing to hide.
And what I’ve discovered during my recovery journey is that while there are so many stigmas surrounding mental health peers, others weren’t stigmatizing me as strongly as I was stigmatizing myself.
I hope you learn something similar about yourself in your recovery journey.
Dedicated to Mary Tabor, for without your warmth, leadership, and encouragement this article would not be possible. Thank you for everything!
As an active peer advocate in the New Mexico Behavioral Health Community over the last five years, I’ve learned there is one highly-sought commodity in our behavioral health community that is treasured over all others:
Peer Endorsement.
Any number of agencies, organizations, legislators, individuals, companies, etc. would love to get the “peer stamp of approval” for whatever product, project, or purpose they’re championing. Peer endorsement lends validity, credibility, and substance to behavioral health causes in a way no other type of endorsement can.
One way peer endorsement is achieved is through petitions. You’ve been handed a clipboard any number of times in any number of places. Heading in to vote. At the grocery store. At a sporting event. Someone knocking on your front door to ask you if “You’ve Heard the Good Word.”
The thing about petitions is the dude handing you the clipboard will give you a thirty second, rapid-fire spiel explaining what the petition is for and how you can help. It’s a thirty second sales pitch, and you’re asked to give your name in signature form at the end of that thirty seconds.
The pitch always sounds great. Sign this petition and you’ll be helping education. Sign this petition and you’ll be saying our community needs to be tough on crime. Sign this petition and you’ll be standing up to proclaim “NO WAY” to poachers who prey upon unborn gay whales.
But what can you learn in that thirty seconds that tells you exactly HOW your signature will be used? Who has access to your signature? Is the cause just or even real?
As a peer, your signature is worth its weight in gold-encrusted diamonds with a shiny platinum filling. Your signature says “I am a person living with mental health issues and I sign your petition because I believe what you say is just and true, and I want everyone to know you have my support.” Signing that petition is peer endorsement, and you’ve given it away for free with no consideration other than thirty seconds of explanatory sloganeering.
Here’s the advice: Don’t sign petitions.
There are so many reasons for this. I’ve already detailed many of them. The most important reason for passing on petitions is just this:
Your word, your voice, and your support is your greatest strength and your greatest gift to our communities.
Be sure of what you’re signing, and if you have only thirty seconds to decide, chances are the guy with the clipboard hasn’t earned your signature, your support, and your endorsement.
X__________________________________ Sign here to add your name to those who agree with everything I ever say without question! (just joking)
I’ve got bipolar. It’s a fairly straightforward, mundane flavor of bipolar with the ups and the downs. Way up and I’m driving to Nova Scotia in three days from Albuquerque, whilst my kidnapped roommate scribbles a “Being Held Against My Will. Call Police. Please Help.” on the back of a Howard Johnson’s napkin, plastering it against his passenger side window for passing motorists to glance at and ignore. Who wants to help a kidnap victim jetting along at 75 mph? By the time they called the police (these are the days before cell phones where really effort needed to be made to “call the police”), the poor kidnapped roommate would be 200 miles down the road where we could have turned off anywhere going to any place. Like Nova Scotia. In three days. From Albuquerque.
Way down and I’m not getting out of bed, barely feeding myself, and I’m debating the necessity of a bed pan as a convenience or merely an unfortunate middleman.
Something else happens when I get exceptionally depressed. I get psychotic. This is no mood disorder thing. I enter a reality no one else can see or hear or taste or understand. My brain has decided that depression is just not fun enough, like a girlfriend who decides a new apple red Miata would go great with the 20 carat diamond engagement ring you just got her by eating ramen and forgoing dental visits since your very first paper route, scrimping penny by penny just dreaming about the day you meet that ungrateful gold digger of your dreams.
This is the girl I married. Susan. Social climber, social debutante, social parasite. The majority of our relationship was spent with me being undiagnosed with bipolar. The symptoms were all there. It was the diagnosis and treatment that were missing. And the love. There wasn’t a lot of true love there. Not the type of love humans typically had for each other. My love for her was more like the love a neglected Chihuahua shows the person who occasionally throws wilted kale leaves into the garage, and lives most of his life in a mouse-chewed Adidas box in the back corner of the garage, and the single garage lightbulb burned out in 1992, and the Chihuahua was born in 1994 in that Adidas box with his seven puppy brothers and sisters, and the Chihuahua was the only one to survive birth, including his mother, and the corpses of pups and mum were never removed or noticed, and kale leaves were not on the menu for the first two months of his life and yet the Chihuahua wasn’t undernourished until his third month of life…
I grew to hate kale.
And the ex-wife, she had this to say to me during the divorce: “I only loved you when you were successful.”
Our power couple name mash up was “SusanateluciferwholeandnowlordsoverhellSteve”. Not quite Bragelina or Bennifer in brevity or intent, but there it is.
So psychosis. I get supermega-depressed and I go psychotic. Full bore, engine in redline psychotic. Typically, this manifests as delusions and paranoia. During my divorce and the endless court dates to fight for custody of my very favorite son (my only son), my psychotic symptoms reached a new zenith, a trajectory even Icarus would envy. The court battles sucked. The proto-ex-wife sucked worse. And she was kicking my ass in court. I couldn’t figure out how she knew so much of the strategy my excellent attorney engineered, but dude, it was like she was in my head, which I know is impossible because my skull was both lead and niobium-shielded. Yep, I was already well on the way to Disney’s Dimentialand. Every character there is named “Goofy.” Too easy. Sorry. Better joke writers for the next blog post.
So one early morning, around 2 AM-ish, I finally figured out how she was getting all the “insider information” she was using against me in court. If there was no way for her to penetrate my mind (because lead and niobium thwart pure, unfiltered evil very effectively), obviously my mind must be broadcasting my thoughts to her. Obviously. And it was the neighbor’s tree that was amplifying my thoughts and broadcasting them to the soon to be ex-wife. Obviously. Clearly. Variance denied.
I’m a solution guy. I’m all about creating my own solutions. The neighbor’s tree was broadcasting my thoughts. If my neighbor’s ham radio array was broadcasting video of me in the shower (I’m sure it was), what would I have done? I would take out that radio array. I’d topple it. I’d kill that broadcast suddenly and definitively. A tree is very much like a ham radio array. Only it is alive and it’s made of wood. To kill the broadcast, the tree must die. The tree was like Jenny Picket in fifth grade who gossiped a lot. Jenny needed to die, too. But that’s hyperbole. You hope. I hope. Where was I?
Right! The tree had to die. And seeing as it was made of wood, I had the perfect instrument of “arborcide.” My camping axe. So at 3 AM-ish in the morning, I chopped down my neighbor’s tree. It had to be done immediately at 3 AM, before the soon to be ex-wife could wake up and start taking notes again. Guess what? I felled the tree… and the broadcast stopped!
Funny thing happened, though. When a tree thought-broadcasting array stops transmission, the Albuquerque Police Department picks up another form of transmission I understand is termed “The Neighbor Who Owned The Tree Called 911.”
