Tag: blog

too tired to care

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders

It’s another cold fricken day. The temp was supposed to warm up but it’s barely 30 degrees out. I was going to go out today but I am feeling really tired. I didn’t sleep very well last night and my stupid phone kept on going off with messages and alerts. I should have shut the ringer off.

I just feel really blah and don’t want to do anything. My tolerance today is zero. I am just in a grumpy mood and I can’t shake it. I’m trying to increase my fluids today, to see if that helps my bladder situation. But all I want to do is sleep. I just can’t deal with it. I really want pizza but I don’t want a whole one. Just a couple of slices. That would mean having to walk to the pizza place and I am not up for it.

I am feeling really depressed. I don’t want to talk with anyone, much less my family members. I am just so tired and wiped out. I know part of it is the stress of the upcoming MRI and knowing the results of it. It’s all I have been thinking about. I keep thinking that the surgeon is going to tell me that I have CES again and I just am not going to be able to cope with it. My worse fear is that I will have to have a fusion. Then I was talking to my bipolar cousin and he is like “don’t let them cut you open again”. Thanks, just what I wanted to hear. Like my four surgeries have been voluntary. They haven’t, they have been under emergency circumstances. I just can’t deal with ignorant people.

I’m going back to bed. I can’t stand being awake anymore. I am too tired.

fears are rampant

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression

Just when I thought my fears were behind me, they were right there in front of me all along. I woke up from my nap and had to pee really bad. My mother was in the bathroom so I had to wait. Not really good with someone with a nerve injury but it was too late to go to my sister’s apartment to use her bathroom. I didn’t have to wait too long and when I sat on the toilet, I couldn’t go. I already had retention on starting, but it seems to be getting worse. I was trying to relax so I could go and eventually I did but it wasn’t a powerful stream and it seemed to take forever to empty my bladder. Least I hope it is empty. I don’t know what this means, well, I kind of do. Tomorrow I need to push up the MRI date. If the disc is affecting my nerves to bladder, that can only mean trouble. I really don’t want to have to cath. I know people do, but it always leads to infections and such.

I haven’t had a number 2 either lately. I am always constipated so I don’t know if this is just a missed day or what. I am fearful though. I took a senna tonight to get the ball moving again. I didn’t take one last night because I forgot. I am back to my hodgepodge med taking week. I’m just taking whatever I feel like taking because I am too lazy to fill my pill box.

I hope this was a one time thing, that my fears that my bladder function is in peril is just that, a fear. I don’t think I can stand the poking and prodding to deal with this, just to move up my MRI in the ER. The thing is, I should have excruciating back pain like I did the last time I had CES and I don’t. I have a little pain but it’s not excruciating. It’s minor compared to what my ankle feels like.

I wish my therapist was here so I can talk to her about this. I can email my psychiatrist but I don’t want to worry her. She’ll probably tell me to go to the ER anyways, something I don’t want to do, especially right before the New Year. I’d rather have a psych admission than go to the ER for this. I guess I should be grateful that it’s not the other extreme where I lose control of my bladder all together. That is something that has been terrifying me the last 15 years or so.

Nyquil is kicking in. Maybe I can just sleep on it and this will all be just a dream.

Random 678

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

I finally wrote my psychache paper. It gives the highlights of Shneidman’s theory and also some of the terminology that goes with it. It’s a brief paper as I am not as verbose as Shneidman was.

I didn’t go out today because there was icy rain and snow. I don’t go out in this type of weather, unless I really have to. I hope it will melt by tomorrow so I can get my soy latte. It’s really cold out and the temp is dropping again.

One of my Twitter friends lost his son as a stillborn. His grief is palpable. I really feel for the guy. But I really don’t like him showing funeral pics of his son’s funeral. That to me is just disrespectful to the dead. It’s a closed casket, though it looks more like a water cooler. It’s sad. I just don’t understand how someone can show caskets on the web.

Other than writing the paper today, I didn’t do anything else. I wanted to read but my nose kept on running and my room is cold so I all I could think about was crawling back under the covers to snooze. I woke up really early because my ankle has been bothering me. It’s the same type of pain I always have. The weather causes me to hurt. I have been sneezing all day which hasn’t helped my runny nose. I have had these sniffles for over two months now and they just won’t go away. Just on the safe side, I took a bunch of vitamin D to ward off any infection this might be brewing. I’m also having Chamomile tea as my stomach is upset for some reason.

I have to be better about drinking fluids during the day. The only fluids that I had today was the eggnog I had after my lunch and a little milk with cereal for breakfast. I haven’t had any coffee or anything else today. I should be drinking more water but I keep forgetting to bring some bottles up when I go back up to my room. I’ll try to remember when I go back downstairs.

I have been sleepy on and off most of the day. I just can’t snap out of the drowsiness. I know part of it is because of the pain meds I took this morning. I also think it’s due to the baclofen I took for my leg pain.

I am a few weeks away from settling my student loan debt. It will be such a relief once it is gone. Then I can tackle my other loan debt and be free, I hope. It’s extremely hard to do when you on disability. I wish I could have a job but I can’t work, hence why I am on disability. I still don’t like being disabled. It has a negativity attached to it that I cannot shake. Or maybe it’s the stigma. Yet despite this, I still get looked down upon with my family, especially my parents. I feel ashamed that I didn’t turn out to be successful like they hoped. Damn mental illness and physical stuff got in the way of that. I rather would be dead than deal with this shit, this loathing that I feel.

I don’t know why I feel so loathsome. I just really hate myself because I didn’t succeed the way I should have in college. I would have graduated had I just not withdrawn from so many courses. But I just couldn’t handle the pressure of exams. It literally made me psychotic and have delusions. Now I don’t know if I can go back to the state school I was going to to finish my degree. I was eight courses shy of my bachelor’s. There were just two classes that were legit that I had to withdraw from because I was doing poorly or there was a conflict with the professor. The others, I just couldn’t handle the workload. And I was only taking two classes while working full-time. I would withdraw from the one I had the better grades in or knew I could at least get a B. I just am not that smart anymore to handle more than 1 class. I miss college though, very much. I didn’t make that many friends while I was there, but I got to know the psych department pretty well. I could never do my suicide research there for grad studies that is for sure. I would have to do some social psych dissertation that I would absolutely hate doing. Or I hope I could just do a literature review and sneak by with that. But I really don’t want to get my PhD or PsyD in Boston, not unless I was well off financially and I am far from that.

All this talk about college is making me sad because I feel like such a failure. I have a huge student loan debt and nothing to really pay for it. My transcript has more W’s than grades. Also has a few F’s but we won’t go there. I have to be the biggest loser on the planet to go so far and not collect a degree. But I got sick and it’s my fault. I have no one else to blame.

Shneidman’s Psychache Theory

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, psychache, suicidality, suicide, writing

“From the view of psychological factors in suicide, the key element in every case is psychological pain; psychache. All affective states (such as rage, hostility, depression, shame, guilt, affectiveness, hopelessness, etc.) are relevant to suicide only as they relate to unbearable psychological pain. If, for example, feeling guilty or depressed or having a bad conscience or an overwhelming unconscious rage makes one suicidal, it does so because it is painful. No psychache, no suicide”. Edwin Shneidman, Suicide as Psychache p56

 

Psychache is the unbearable guilt, despair, hopelessness, shame, pain, depression, and press one feels when thinking about suicide. It is the corner stone of what this paper is about. The pain of the mind can cause constriction, a narrowing of view of things. It can also lead to perturbation (an unrest that causes one to feel like doing something to alleviate the uneasiness one feels) and also to press, which is also known as stress or the pressure and weight one feels under. The combination of these three things, press, perturbation, and psychache is what is known as the cubic model of suicide.

20150726_191652

The cubic model of suicide is a 1-5 rating of the three things I just mentioned. The higher the rating, the higher the likelihood of suicide. The worst rating is a 5-5-5 scenario and suicide will be imminent. It is important to rate these items when dealing with a suicidal person. It will validate what they are feeling and make them feel at ease in talking about what is causing them to feel so pressured and hurt to make them think of killing themselves.

When dealing with constriction, the dichotomous thinking that a) suicide is the only way out or b) things are always going to stay the same, it is important to always bring in more options to the person so they can see things differently. In his book Suicide as Psychache, Shneidman gives the example of a young pregnant woman who was thinking of killing herself with a handgun. She couldn’t have the baby so therefore in her mind, suicide was the only way out. After discussing several options with her (calling her parents, having the baby and giving it up for adoption, discussing the situation with the baby’s father, etc.), it was agreed that the woman would call the baby’s father. Suicide was no longer the number one item on the list. To prevent a mishap, Shneidman did take the gun away from the woman. An excellent example about means restriction.

In almost every suicidal thinking, there is some measure of lethality and perturbation. You can have high lethality and high perturbation, but you don’t always have high perturbation with high lethality. Perturbation, as described above, is very much like anxiety. It is a perturbed feeling that causes one to feel pressured to do something. Lethality is the doing something.

Also in every case of suicidal thinking is the frustrated needs that bring about the suicidal feelings.

ABATEMENT The need to submit passively; to belittle oneself

ACHIEVEMENT To accomplish something difficult; to overcome

AFFILIATION To adhere to a friend or group; to affiliate

AGGRESSION To overcome opposition forcefully; fight, attack

AUTONOMY To be independent and free; to shake off restraint

COUNTERACTION To make up for loss by retrieving; get even

DEFENDANCE To vindicate the self against criticism or blame

DEFERENCE To admire and support, praise emulate a superior

DOMINANCE To control, influence, and direct others; dominate

EXHIBITION To excite, fascinate, amuse, entertain others

HARMAVOIDANCE To avoid pain, injury, illness, and death

INVIOLACY To protect the self and one’s psychological space

NURTURANCE To feed, help console, protect, nurture another

ORDER To achieve organization and order among things and ideas

PLAY To act for fun; to seek pleasure for its own sake

REJECTION To exclude, banish, jilt, or expel another person

SENTIENCE To seek sensuous, creature-comfort experience

SHAME-AVOIDANCE To avoid humiliation and embarrassment

SUCCORANCE To have one’s needs gratified; to be loved

UNDERSTANDING To know answers; to know the hows and whys

These twenty needs are what Shneidman has called the essential ones when people are suicidal. Most of them are not all twenty but five or six as it pertains to the individual. “The prevention of suicide with a highly lethal person is then primarily a matter of addressing and partially alleviating those frustrated psychological needs that are driving that person to suicide. The rule is simple. Mollify the psychache”. (p53) Shneidman believed that these frustrated needs are what caused psychache.

I believe there should be another need, validation. Everyone needs to be validated in order to feel secure and feel okay. Without this, most people feel shamed and dumb, that what they are feeling or experiencing has no meaning or purpose. They may also feel empty and alone as no one understands what they are going through. This need when frustrated or thwarted can lead to suicide.

Shneidman, Edwin. Suicide as Psychache. 1993. Jason Aronson, Inc.