Tag: psychosis

ramblings 16

by Midnight Demon, posted in CES, Chronic pain, depression, mental disorders, mental illness, psychache, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

Been staring at the cursor of a new document for the past fifteen minutes and still nothing is coming to me about what to write. This writing project that my friend has involved me in is draining me. I am having to come up with new material every day and how can you possibly do that every day? I am not used to writing on demand. I have a migraine today so my thinking is kind of slow. All I want to do today is sleep but I just can’t because I have this restlessness inside. I want to go out but it is just too bright out. I am getting lazy. I am hardly leaving the house for anything these days. Not even the temptation of Starbucks makes me want to leave the house.  Last time I left the house was Friday for a doctor’s appointment. I spent that day at the medical center because I was to be seen for my blurry vision episodes. Tomorrow I will have to leave the house to go for an MRI.  I will have to take pain meds and an Ativan to get through. I know that it is going to be tough because the damn thing always hurts my back. I simply cannot lay flat for the 45 minutes or so it takes. I am always hurting afterwards. I have had numerous MRIs as I have a chronic back condition that needs monitoring. I have not had a back MRI in some time but I have had a brain MRI last year. It was similar to the same condition I am experiencing now. Except I just have blurry vision and not a visual field problem.

So this writing binge is because my friend need help writing her book and I sort of need to write my book which has to do with how I deal with my suicidality all the time and my chronic pain that can send me over the edge. My last pain attack was two weeks ago and it ended ugly. I ended up taking more medicine than I should have because I just didn’t care any more. I could have ended my life that night and the only thing that stopped me was that I couldn’t walk the three feet, yes three feet, to my bureau to get even more medicine. I still wish that I went through with it. Maybe I would have slept more and not woken up the next day. I don’t know. I am so sleepy now that I just want to go to sleep than to talk about this…

I think my friend has an ulterior motive for me writing. It’s to know that 1) I am alive and 2) to try and control the demons. The demons are what control me to try and take my life when I am in severe pain, either mental or physical. I can’t seem to tolerate one or the other but when I have both, I am in trouble. As what happened that night, things escalated very quickly and I found myself staring at a bottle of pills to end my life because I couldn’t stand the intense pain. I still am in disbelief about how this happened and the intense grief in surviving it really got my head spinning.  When you feel suicidal you have a plan about what to do. You call someone, your therapist, psychiatrist, PCP, a hotline. But I didn’t use any of those resources and that is what is killing me. I didn’t have the time to practically think about what is causing me to feel suicidal. I just wanted the pain to end and was willing to take a bottle of pills to end it. Stupid yes and for the suicidologist in me couldn’t distract, how is someone that I am treating or a friend that is in crisis supposed to do this? It makes no sense. I couldn’t step back and see that this pain would pass, that I just had to give the meds time to work. I see this now but I didn’t in the moment.

psychological pain: real or not?

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, depression, psychache, suicide

I did some Google research on psychological pain. I got over 34 million hits on those terms alone and had to narrow it. I really miss having access to PsychLit, a search engine tool for psych papers and other related mental health professions. So I put the psych pain in quotations to narrow the search. I narrowed it down to 444,000. Yikes. How was I going to get through that many? I decided to go through the first three pages of results. I found what I was looking for and did another search for that. Sometimes you can get lucky and get a free PDF of the research article. I wasn’t lucky this time. I did pay $20 USD for to “look” at the research article. What I found was another psychological pain scale that has been in use for the past six years. I don’t know how I missed this article in my previous searches, but then I have been following ONLY the works and “followers” of Dr. Shniedman.

From what I have read about this article, this is a quantitative research measure for psychological pain. Unlike Jobes’s SSF (Suicide Status Form), which measures multiple psychological pain issues and is a qualitative form, it does not measure anything related to suicidal thinking. This is disappointing. Most of the measures have been for major depression, whereas the research for the SSF has been across all psychiatric disorders.

OMG I just read one of the results that Tylenol would help psychological pain. WTF, ARE YOU SERIOUS??? No wonder there is so much liver failure in this country. But then most people don’t think that this pain is real and only physical pain can be felt. I think this is bogus because I have suffered from psychic pain for a great many years and I can say that it is just as real as any physical pain that I have ever felt. It might not be the same as say the pain from a broken limb but a broken heart hurts just as bad.

In this article that asks is there such a thing as psychological pain? And why it matters. I found this article interesting as he was comparing the pain and grief of losing a child to cancer can be just as painful as a kidney stone.

 

 

References

Biro, David. Is There such a thing as psychological pain? And Why it matters. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 2010.(34).4.658-667

Mee S, Bunney BG, Bunney WE, Hetrick W, Potkin SG, Reist C. Assessment of psychological pain in major depressive episodes. J Psychiatr Res. 2011 Nov;45(11):1504-10. Epub 2011 Aug 9.

about suicide

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

I had worked on Ramblings 15 today but have decided not to publish it because it is a rant more than anything. I have not been in a happy mood the past few days. Not that I am a happy person to start with, just that I have not been able to sleep at all the past week. It is driving me crazy. I sleep every few hours. It sucks. Last night I finally was able to get at least 5 hrs straight but I still am not in a good mood. I am not suicidal just crazy with sleep deprivation.

I did part of my Christmas shopping today. Now I am worried that I won’t have money to get my license renewed. I still have to pay off one more citation before I can get it renewed. Stupid laws in my state forbid any parking tickets or citations not being paid before renewal. I have to go into town sometime next week to pay off my last one. It’s not a huge pain in the butt but it kind of is. I am not sure if this place allows money order or cash. Some places don’t allow personal checks because they don’t want to deal with them bouncing.

The Savage God: book that I am reading, slowly, about the history of suicide. I find it very disturbing at times and have to read it in increments. It is a good book, just when you feel suicidal it kind of revs you up while you are reading it because you know exactly what the author is writing about.

Speaking of suicides, I recently read an article ( http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/11/27/175710/in-suicide-epidemic-military-wrestles.html ) that a friend of mine posted about how the military is now dealing with the problem. Court Martials and prosecution. Just what the mentally ill needs. I find it abhorrent as the suicide prevention has been set back by 150 years. Just when you think our military has been through enough, they can’t even try and take their own life without consequences. The message is, to me, do it right and die an honorable death. Fail and face prosecution. It is sickening. I don’t think it is going to help the rise of suicides post military service and I don’t think it is going to help those who work in suicide prevention and those that are trying to reach out for help.

Holidays: struggle between meaning and hope

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, psychache, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

Our lives are filled with charades and facades. If you are depressed and don’t want anyone to know, the façade becomes even more ingrained with the self. On the outside, people see you as happy, maybe even without a care in the world while inside you are dying and hurting inside. It takes all the effort you have to make it through the day. At the end of the day, you are more tired than you were when you woke up. The mental exhaustion of a façade cannot be underestimated. This is the face of chronic depression at its worse.

What can really bring one to their knees is the holiday season, a time that is supposed to be filled with love, joy, giving, and happiness. How are you supposed to feel that when you feel like the scum of the earth most of the time? It is very difficult to hold two faces, the face that everyone sees with friends and family, coworkers, etc. and then the face that no one sees when you are alone at night, away from the demands of life. I have struggled for years with this façade and it has taken its toll on me. I think it takes a toll on every one. We cannot allow ourselves to feel down because we have to be the one that is strong for everyone else. It is this internal battle that we face, the “I feel sad and lonely inside but I have to pretend to be happy and feeling connected to others”. That is the struggle that leads to more hurt and pain on the inside. The hope for us is that tomorrow will be a better day, even though there is a part of ourselves that know that it won’t be. We cannot hide the pessimism. It is the real self that always shines through no matter what kind of happy façade we are pretending.

With the holidays, this struggle becomes more intense and the more intense it becomes, the more the disappointment we feel. If we act like a Scrooge, we are treated like a Scrooge and told to lighten up, if we act like Bob Cratchet, hiding the need for help, we end up losing Tiny Tim, which leads to depression of spirits much like the story goes before Scrooge intervenes in the end. Scrooge is one of my favorite all time movies and I think it really captures what it is like to be humble like Crachet and grumpy like Scrooge.

We all don’t always feel miserable all the time but there is a stress in the holidays that always seems unbearable. Psychiatric hospital admissions go up, the requests for detox goes up. Everyone wants to make a new start to the new year. And with that the hope that things will change. That the misery that is felt today will be gone tomorrow. That is the struggle those of us with chronic depression deal with every day and sometimes even those without depression have it as well.