Tag: psychotherapy

Love, Hate, and Suicide

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

Love Hate and Suicide

Above is the link for my article. It has been a rough twenty-four hours. I have not slept very well because of the weird dreams I have been having over the stress of this publication. For the most part, my article was well received. There were a few dissenters that questioned my therapist’s methods and therapy with me, but they were dispelled by other commenters, which made me feel a little better. I had gotten so upset about the readers “attacking” my treaters, I felt like I made a huge mistake. My psychiatrist was impressed I made such an impression, which made me feel better. Also talking with my therapist after nearly 5 days was such comfort. I thought I was offending her and I wasn’t doing any of the sort. She laughed at some of the comments I was telling her and told me it didn’t matter. Everyone was entitled to their opinion. What really matters is what happens between us not the rest of the world, or something like that. Because I was so sleep deprived and a nervous wreck, I cried today while talking with her. I just got so overwhelmed with the comments. Some of them had them questioning whether my therapist was “real”, meaning did she have the proper credentials and training to be a therapist. It was just so hurtful, to me anyways. So I cried, got upset, and then laughed about it. Before my psychiatrist wrote back, I seriously thought about ending my life. But the feelings passed. Now I just hope I can get a good night’s sleep and I should be able to face the day tomorrow.

I had to go out today. I stayed in all weekend and was starting to feel cooped up. I went to Walgreens to try and get some Pringles and my prescription. I also gave the article to one of the pharm techs I told I write. She was flabbergasted. They didn’t have the Pringles but they did have my prescription ready. When I came home I showered and waited for the time for my therapist.

After therapy, I checked some more comments, my blog stats (which are blooming), and messages on FB. I then got dressed and waited for the bus. I didn’t have to wait as my cousin drove by and gave me a ride to the Square. I was hungry so had a celebratory burrito. Actually, I got a salad with all the burrito fillings. It was just as good but without the flour tortilla. I went to my Starbucks and got a pumpkin spice latte and a scone. I was stuffed at this point. My mother called while I was having my latte wanted to know if I would be home for supper. I said I would be home but I don’t think I would be eating. I was too tired to write so just decided to catch the next bus home, which meant catching the bus with the mentally disabled guy. He was not too bad today, though he did ask some young kids for money. I ignored him, though I couldn’t wait to get off the bus. He just makes me uncomfortable because he has a quick temper. Something doesn’t go his way and he flies off the handle. I am glad the bus wasn’t too crowded today.

Love/Hate Relationship with Therapy

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, mood disorders, suicidality, suicide

Love/Hate Relationship with Therapy

There are times when I like my therapist. When she is supportive and understanding, it’s easy to like her. Sometimes the like turns to love because she means so much to me. It is at these times when I value our relationship the most. My therapist is very dear to me but then, like tonight, she will say something that makes me hate her. Mostly, this is around her not wanting me to kill myself. I feel trapped by this, and so the love I feel turns to hate. It is not a quick thing to happen. I don’t have oscillating feelings toward my therapist. It is only when I am suicidal and she wants me to live that I really hate her.

It wasn’t always this way. I never really knew how she felt about me till we were four years into our relationship. I call it a relationship for lack of a better word. In 2005, I was severely depressed and snapped. I wanted to die very badly and was planning on ending my life sometime that November. It was one of the lowest points in my life. When I finally confided in her what I was planning, which was not easy to do, she got really upset. I couldn’t bare to see her that upset. In fact, no one till that point in my life was ever upset with me for being suicidal. Her fear of losing me made her cry and I just could not tolerate it. I still cannot tolerate it. It messes with my head. Since then, the love/hate began. The love is just the kind that people have with one another. I told her I hated her tonight and she welcomed it. She said that I could hate her till eternity if it meant keeping me alive. But I don’t like hating someone that I really care for. It hurts me. It causes me mental anguish that drives me crazy. I can’t stay hateful for long. I’m not that type of person. And I do love her more than I hate her. She brings me joy and a little bit of hope every time we talk. I need these things or I will attempt to take my life.

I feel trapped by her love. To her, I can do no wrong. I am not a bad person in her eyes. I told her to read a blog that I wrote that I think is triggering to people. She doesn’t know where I came from, that I always think of others before myself. I write horribly dark, depressing things. But this piece of work is really troubling me. It’s extremely profound in darkness and depression. I want her to read it with a professional’s eye. I want her opinion from her psychologist’s mind, not her love for me. Yes, she loves me, too. It makes me uncomfortable at times. But it also makes me kind of feel unsafe. Because if I love her back and she loves me, that just opens a can of worms I don’t want to open. I don’t want to get hurt again by a therapist. I have been hurt ten times by former therapists and she is my last straw. I know that if we break up, it will kill me. After fourteen years together, it will be extremely hard to start over with someone new.

My suicidality has always been a gatekeeper. She feels that I should have more sessions because I am suicidal. More is sometimes not better. But she wants to know what is happening in my life all the time.

My psychiatrist I have known for more than twenty years. I feel closer to her than I do my therapist because of our long standing relationship. I sometimes think of my pdoc as a mother figure in my life. She is proud of me and my accomplishments, even though I never went to med school like we hoped. That is another story for another blog.

My pdoc is the best. She really gets me, sometimes better than my therapist. I don’t know if she loves me. I know she cares deeply about me. We have been through some tough times together. She is my rock. I know I do love her, but in a way a son love their mothers.

My therapist and I love each other as people do. We truly care for one another. I guess the same can be said about my pdoc, thought we have never discussed our feelings for one another. She is strictly professional in this regard, not to say my goofy therapist isn’t. There are boundaries. I respect both of my treaters. I don’t think I have ever hated my pdoc. The only time that I might have was when she sectioned me a few years ago after I sent her a dark email and she couldn’t get in touch with me. I knew it was out of concern for my safety but that doesn’t mean I had to like it.

My therapist has never sectioned me or made me go to the ER. My pdoc doc knows that I will usually take myself to the ER when I am in a dark place. My therapist will just tack on another session. My pdoc would do the same when I am at my worst points. Sometimes, I would see my pdoc weekly rather than biweekly because she was concerned about my safety. Both of these professionals know me pretty well. I have known them a long time and I am grateful they include me in their treatment plan rather than saying this is how it is going to be. That doesn’t work for me and they know it. I have to be in control of my treatment in order for it to work. And if this helps save a life, then so be it.

talking therapies and other things

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mood disorders

A fellow blogger asked about talking therapies and it got me thinking that I never really wrote about this before. I have been through most psychotherapies, but mostly to do with psychodynamic. I never was one for DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) or CBT (Cognitive behavioral therapy). I wanted to get better quick and these therapies, you had to do homework and stuff. It just made me more depressed. I know some people have sworn by them and have been helped by them. I know they work because I have seen the studies on them. Most recently, CBT is making waves with veterans who have suicidal thoughts. They use what is called Brief CBT and it helps the soldiers faster than “treatment as usual”. Treatment as usual is just a term used to describe what is standard care for someone. There are some specifics about it but I can’t remember them off the top of my head at the moment.

For suicidal patients, I still believe the standard of care should be CAMS, Collaborating, Assessment, and Managing of Suicide. It is a framework that has been shown to work best with suicidal people and its assessment, the SSF (Suicide Status Form) is very useful in getting to the bottom of a suicide crisis. People don’t know more about CAMS because they rather rely on their own method of treating someone who is suicidal, which is the “standard of care” but it doesn’t work. If you are suicidal, you agree you aren’t going to kill yourself and if you can’t agree with that, you are placed in the hospital. CAMS allows for outpatient treatment to occur and only takes about fifteen minutes in a 50 minute session to work on. I have written about CAMS. You can search for it in my archives.

I didn’t sleep well last night. I was just tossing and turning most of the time. I couldn’t get comfortable. I was hot, cold, cold, hot. I just didn’t get it. I finally took my meds around 0230 this morning and then was up till around 0530. I didn’t have supper and I wasn’t hungry. My appetite has been minimal these days. Going to my father’s place was a chore and left me more tired than I was before I left my house. I was only there for about ten minutes. He is a pain in the ass as he hasn’t been taking his water pill and then wonders why he is swollen. Pisses me off.

Now I am home and feel like I should nap. Except I don’t want to nap. I am wicked cold and need something to warm me up. I would have coffee but I don’t want the jitters. I still am not over my little caffeine overdose from the other day. Never again will I drink back to back cups of coffee. It was too much for my system. I felt great but not in the long run. It wasn’t intentional. I just wanted to stay up as I had again didn’t sleep too well. Think I might have tea next time.

Hospitalizations: Fifteen Minutes of Fame

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, mental disorders, mood disorders, suicidality, suicide

Hospitalizations: Fifteen Minutes of Fame

I had therapy. My therapist read my “Brick Wall” blog. She asked if we could talk about the bricks and we spent most of the session going over them. I also told her about my book problems, that I think it is disorganized. She said that it is her most prized possession, so I think she is biased in my writing abilities. She said my short story was heartbreaking to read. I haven’t gotten too many likes on it. I may have to play with the tags a bit. Anyway, talking about the bricks was difficult because it lead to where I was in my last hospitalization, where I wrote the story. I told her how no one was looking at the bricks, that they were just looking for the cement to dry before sending me home, so to speak. That is all they cared about. Stabilization and discharge were the key focus of what they wanted to do. What brought you in the hospital, they didn’t care about. Or if they did, it was always, “we’ll talk about it tomorrow” but never did. I hated that my needs were ignored and patronized. I flatly told them I was going to kill myself when I left the hospital during my initial few days when they wanted to discharge me. And it was true. I needed help and was going to stay inpatient to get that help. Except the help came back to me looking for help from outside services. The social worker that was working with me didn’t care about my needs. I ended up having to call places to look for outside support. I tried to get it but never had a call back or even an email back, though one place the email came back as undelieverable. It was a trying time. I wanted to kill myself so badly and yet I was supposed to make all these phone calls to show that I wanted to live? To do the work my team was supposed to be doing? I just don’t understand their mentality. Yet it has been nine months since I left the hospital. I am still here because the anti depressant they put me on really help stabilize my depression. Too bad it no longer works. I stopped taking it in December.

My therapist thinks I should write a blog about past hospitalizations and current ones. Thing is, I don’t remember much. I know things are different today than they were back then. For example, there are no longer any outside passes given. If you want outside passes, you are basically discharged. When I was in the hospital in August, they wanted to give me grounds privileges. This meant that I could go out for staff walks. I told them adamantly no because I was scared I was going to run. They gave it to me anyway. Granted that at the time, I was in an AFO so I know I wouldn’t get far, but they still took that chance of letting me go. Stupid, I tell ya. I should have gone away from the group and tried to escape. I don’t know what that would look like but I know it wouldn’t be good on either side. I would most likely get reprimanded like a child, even though I am an adult. But that would be on them. I told them I would run and if I did, it was on them, not me.

I remember a time when I was in the hospital 21 years ago. I was severely depressed and suicidal. I had attempted suicide and was hospitalized against my will, in fact the admitting staff forged my signature on the consent form. I went through my records after discharged. Anyway, back then they had ground privileges, which meant you could leave the unit unaccompanied by a staff person. Just as long as you stayed on hospital grounds. Well, I decided to walk around the block after working hours and got “caught” by off duty staff. My privileges were revoked the next day as I broke the “rules”. I never kept my privileges too long. I always did something to revoke them. One weekend I had to beg for an outside pass just to pay a bill (I was there for more than a month and if I didn’t pay the bill, my phone was going to be turned off). I told them I would be back within an hour and I did. It was the first time they trusted me to do this. It was tough because I was so suicidal and they weren’t going to let me try again, hence why my stay was 2 ½ months. That was my longest time in the hospital. It did help me but the demons were still there. I had major issues that I still don’t talk to anyone about, not even my current therapist. It’s just too scary.

Last night I was looking for former therapists. I came across one, Dr. B. She helped me probably more than all the rest. She was the longest therapist that I have seen till that point, three years. All the rest of the therapists that I have seen were year or less. I am going to send her my book and email address. I wrote about her in my book. It was hard not to include her because the opening introduction has her in it as that was my first serious suicide attempt. I had made other attempts before that one, but this one landed me in the hospital and then I was there for a long time. That is when you had good care and one on one contact with someone. Now they have these “teams” where there are all the staff from the unit meet with you for fifteen minutes or so and then decide what to do with you. Fifteen minutes to decide if you need further stay or discharge. It is nothing like the care I had 21 years ago. You met with your inpatient therapist, then a social worker, and then your contact person who was a staff member for that shift. This no longer happens and it’s sad. No longer do you feel safe in the hospital or cared for. It is the end of the era for hospitals. I will never go back, no matter how suicidal I get. They can just kiss my ass goodbye.