There’ve been a few letters from young adults that I’ve put on the back burner over the last six months, but the similarities between them don’t seem to decrease, as with the latest of this week. With this latest one, I wanted to strongly encourage anyone going through similar situations to talk to an adult or call a helpline and speak to anyone who will listen. The National Sexual Assault Hotline has confidential (anonymous) help 24/7 and can be reached at 1.800.656.4673 or find them at online.rainn.org.
My story revealed in the above two books only ended after intervention with kindhearted first responders and social workers. There is a way out of that dysfunction, and it might not be the way those involved in your situation may be suggesting, so please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline.
Regarding the recurring theme of forgiveness, I believe I’ve forgiven my stepfather(s) and my mother for choosing him and turning her back on her daughter. As it was pointed out in two of the letters from you readers that I received earlier this year, if I genuinely forgave them, then I should be able to reconnect with my birth family. I’ve heard that before, too. That’s not always the case. I wish all of them the best and that the light of God/Creator shines down on them abundantly. I just don’t have the mental fortitude to put myself in their presence or that environment. Each person in similar situations will be able to handle things better or worse to varying degrees. Just because they tell you to forgive them and get over it doesn’t mean you can or should without outside intervention in the form of the National Sexual Assault Hotline, teachers, therapists, or social workers, especially not if you’re underage. And yes, seventeen is still a minor. Don’t listen to anyone that tells you that you’re an adult and should buck up.
I appreciate the letters and emails I receive about the wide variety of topics and apologize for not addressing this subject matter sooner. Mental fortitude affected my lack of words to tackle the weight of this matter until this most recent connection made it a necessity.
It sometimes feels really unfair when coming out of psychosis (the depths of a mental illness). Why me? But in order put spin some positivity regarding it, I’d like to mention some things it has taught me about myself. Here are reasons I’m grateful for certain aspects of living with a mental illness.
Being grateful for the little or mundane things
Sense of achievement
A better sense of self
Empathy towards other
Learning strength of self
Especially when I’ve come out of psychosis, I’ve noticed things with better clarity. The trees are greener, the flowers more vivid, the laughter of a child or anyone for that matter is so musical. I’m grateful for life. Doing the dishes, laundry, swiffering, or cleaning the windows even doesn’t seem like a chore. I lived through the tough moments and treasure the ability to do them.
I’ve got an incredible sense of achievement for struggling through something terrifying and coming out on the other end. I pick myself up by my bootstraps and dust myself off and continue with my responsibilities with an air of accomplishment. That’s because I did something not everyone can say they muddled through and won for the time being.
I have this enhance sense of self that realizes while I have limitations, I can challenge them. My confidence is earned, and I set the bar for future endeavors higher. It makes me more in tune with my personality.
My empathy towards others fighting similar battles is more attuned. It’s heartening to learn of others mightily fighting MS or cancer and appreciating their strength to get through each day. I even see the anger or rage in strangers and wonder who or what hurt them so badly that they need to have such a sour demeanor.
While I feel pathetic and weak when I’m coming out of psychosis, I gradually learn how strong and confident I am to tackle the little things to the big things. I’m resilient. Heart palpitations, sweaty hands, trembling body, and nauseousness are merely bumps in the road. I’ve been to the depths of madness and inched my way back. And I’m grateful for the experience to be more attuned to the world around me and have the strength to help others who make mountains out of molehills see the other side of things.
Fear of being hurt by the sufferer is one such reason there is stigma about mental health issues. Most people with mental illness aren’t dangerous. And if they are, it’s a danger to themselves. My psychiatrist once said that mental illness doesn’t cause a person to be violent if they didn’t already have that trait.
Contagiousness is another aspect of stigma. People don’t want to catch the mental illness. Sure, they know they can’t catch it, but they worry something similar or lesser may happen to them if they have to think about it. That’s not how a chemical imbalance in the brain works. It’s nature and part nurture that determine if you’ll have mental illness issues. If you see someone with severe depression or mania and then come down with it yourself, it’s because of genetics and/or your environment that brough it on.
News stories are another trigger of stigma. When there is a shooting or other major crime, the first person the public point fingers at is the people with mental illness such as schizophrenia. That’s farthest from the truth that the mentally ill are inclined to do such damage to others. Those with schizophrenia seek to hide their condition from others and go out of their way to distance themselves from scrutiny so it does not shine the light on their illness. Like I said above, if a person with mental illness is violent, that trait was already there before they were diagnosed which means that shooting or other major crime could’ve been committed by non-sufferers just as likely.
Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness where contact with reality and insight are impaired, an example of psychosis. Symptoms of schizophrenia include psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, and thought disorder (unusual ways of thinking), as well as reduced expression of emotions, reduced motivation to accomplish goals, difficulty in social relationships, motor impairment, and cognitive impairment.
Schizophrenia is a severe, long-term mental health condition that requires lifelong treatment, even when symptoms subside. Treatment with medications and psychosocial therapy can help manage the condition. In some cases, hospitalization may be needed.
Medications are the cornerstone of schizophrenia treatment, and antipsychotic medications like Seroquel, Risperdal, Lithium, or Haldol are the most commonly prescribed drugs.
First generation antipsychotic medications, meaning discovered in the 1950s, formed one of the greatest breakthroughs in psychiatry. However, first-generation antipsychotics have frequent and potentially significant neurological side effects, including the possibility of developing a movement disorder (tardive dyskinesia) that may or may not be reversible. Fortunately, for me it was in my case. Newer, second-generation medications are often preferred because they pose a lower risk of serious side effects than do first-generation antipsychotics.
Newer mood stabilizers are also used to treat the condition, as is in my case. Mood stabilizers work for me because the hallucinations and delusions vary based on my mood. For example, on New Year’s Day of this year, I was admitted to the emergency room for breathing problems and an upper respiratory infection that was not COVID but was severe enough to scare me. And with the added stressor of loved ones not being allowed into the room with me, the voices were incredibly terrifying. So, my mood being down, the voices were predominantly negative, suggesting that I take my own life. The following three weeks found no relief since I was put on prednisone, a glucocorticoid, which amplifies feelings and/or conditions. In my case that was the negative voices.
On the other hand, I’m typically even-keeled, and some say optimistic a good portion of the time. So, the limited voices correspond to my mood and reveal themselves to be cathartic, even encouraging, but mainly limited in their ferocity thanks to the mood stabilizer, Abilify, which I’m on maximum dosage. After a few more months of this leveling off, I’ll go back down to a moderate dose. But, after many years of being overly optimistic about my condition, I’ve come to the realization that I’ll be on a mood stabilizer, if not anti-psychotic, the rest of my life.
In addition to medication, there is the ongoing psychosocial therapy. That too, will be lifelong, hopefully not as often as I’m currently required to see the therapist. So, like the 3.5 million others battling this mental illness and the 100,000 new diagnoses each year, I will continue to press onward and upward so that I’m not in the 3.5 times more likely who ultimately take their lives. Schizophrenia isn’t a death sentence and many of us with it choose to say we battle it as opposed to suffer from it.
The most difficult thing to deal with, for many, isn’t the disease itself but the stigma surrounding it; but, for me, that’s probably in part to my social anxiety disorder, which is a comorbidity. Schizophrenia is most often seen in patients that have an underlying or overlapping condition such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD, and panic disorder, which makes it difficult to diagnose and why so many suffer without the therapies, whether medication or psychotherapy, that assists them in battling the condition.
Atheneum, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division, 2018
This little, cerebral thriller of a book packs a punch. However, there’s a few things to consider before you read it. It is a book about mental health and schizophrenia. It is not a fluffy cuddly book. This one bites, and confuses. The author has South Korean origins, meaning that the Eastern influences are heavy in the writing style of the book. And why do I say both things before I even review the book? Because if you’re expecting a perfectly “coherent” fluffy book, this book is not it and it definitely isn’t a Western view of the world even if it is set in the US.
Throughout the novel we get to know Grace, who saw her mother deteriorate in the grips of schizophrenia, and then ultimately disappear from her life. Her mother has never been found, which has led Grace’s father on a desperate quest to find a cure for this debilitating illness. Grace interns at the lab where her father works. He is a headhunter, bringing in the top scientists from around the world to join forces in search of the key that will unlock a cure for Grace’s mother—the love of his life—if only they could find her.
This is a non-linear novel that uses the seasons of the year to anchor you in the story. Na is a master of imagery and it felt to me that her arresting descriptions of the weather coincided with Grace’s moods and mental state. I could be reading too much into it, but nothing in this book felt accidental.
In addition to jumping back and forth between the seasons and around in the story, the reader is also left to parse between reality and delusion. This made for an intriguing and gut-wrenching, but unenjoyable read. Though, I would argue that “enjoyable” was not the goal, and for this I was glad.
Though a novel, this did not read like an attempt to make schizophrenia into entertainment. This felt like a deft effort to bring understanding to an illness that continues to be misunderstood, despite decades of research. The portrayal of this mental illness and how it breaks the mind apart from the inside out was honest and elegant. It does not glorify the disease but rather exposes it in all its gruesome tragedy.
It was definitely worth the read, and I believe an important work for helping people understand what schizophrenia looks like from the inside out. It’s a confusing illness, and to wrap up the story with a neat little bow would have been disingenuous. In the end, I appreciated the beauty and tragedy, and clarity and confusion Na wove together to create this novel. There are a lot of twists and intriguing bits in the story where at first you aren’t sure but as the story progresses you begin to realize how much Grace is fighting and what “enemy” she’s fighting. In my opinion it was a clever book with the way it sets things and how it leaves you guessing
“People tend to look unfavorably upon the mentally ill, especially those of us who’ve been hospitalized. Losing your mind is indeed traumatizing but doing so in front of a supposedly sane audience is mortifying. It’s not like getting cancer. No one rallies around you or shaves her head in solidarity or brings you sweets. “Normals” (or “normies,” as some of us “crazies” affectionately refer to them) feel uneasy around those of us who’ve lost a grip on reality. Perhaps they’re afraid we might attack them or drool on them or, worse yet, suck them into our alternate universe where slitting your wrists and talking to phantoms seem perfectly rational.” ― Melody Moezzi
Haldol and Hyacinths, is a powerful, funny, and moving narrative that pays tribute to the healing power of hope and humor, by writer Melody Moezzi, an Iranian American and Muslim, who speaks out against the stigma surrounding bipolar disorder. She certainly doesn’t fit the highly inaccurate stereotype of someone with mental illness.
“A lot of ways, when you are labeled with something like manic depression or schizophrenia. That label carries so much weight and you take it on as part of your identity in a way that can be really harmful.” Moezzi said.
She isn’t disabled or violent or contagious. Melody is an attorney with a Master’s degree in Public Health. She is an award-winning author who has made many national and international media appearances. Many people who suffer from mental illnesses are highly educated, high functioning individuals.
For Moezzi, and only after years of mania and depression, was she successfully diagnosed in 2008 and subsequently, found access to the right treatment plan and medication. Bipolar disorder can be wrought with hallucinations, delusions, extremes highs or lows in mood, and impulsivity. In her case, such impulses led to a suicide attempt. But after years of improper diagnoses, medications, and humiliating, dehumanizing inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations, medication, therapy, and having a partner that helped her focus on her full self she managed her illness and found her calling to tell her powerful story. It took a lot of bravery, and humor, for Melody to share her story. She is quick to point out the importance of speaking, writing, and living authentically.
It was exciting, interesting, and excellent glimpse into the life and mind of an extraordinary young woman with an unfortunate mental disorder.
OCD is characterized by intrusive, troubling thoughts (obsessions), and repetitive, ritualistic behaviors (compulsions) which are time-consuming, significantly impair functioning and/or cause distress. The average onset of OCD is 19 years old and occurs slightly more often in females than in males. It affects 1 in 40 adults and 1 in 100 children.
When an obsession occurs, it almost always corresponds with a significant increase in anxiety and distress. Subsequent compulsions serve to reduce this associated anxiety/distress.
Many people with OCD recognize that it isn’t rational but continue to need to act on their obsessions with their corresponding compulsions and may spend lengthy amounts of time, like several hours daily, performing senseless rituals. OCD can be chronic and interfere with a person’s schoolwork, job, family, or social activities. Proper treatment with medication or cognitive-behavioral therapy can help sufferers regain control over the illness and feel relief from the symptoms.
My onset was also at 19 years old despite occasional cutting (of my thighs) as a younger teenager. The bulk of my OCD began when with dealing with an alcoholic spouse. I’d start worrying about a fire in the apartment and what the police or firefighters would walk into, so I repetitively cleaned, straightened, and reorganized many times so they wouldn’t think low of me. At 21 years old, when my daughter was born, I worried something bad would happen to her; so I began touching a set of feng-shui coins tied in a red ribbon that I’d nailed to the entry door trim. Then I established the handwashing routine where I’d scrub roughly for eighteen minutes. After that the tapping the table eight times began.
When I returned to college at age twenty-six, I’d avoid certain hallways and walk unnecessarily around campus as opposed to direct paths. When I had to take the quick routes for social reasons, I’d ask for reassurance that nothing bad would occur. Two years later, after I filed for divorce, I sought help so others wouldn’t see my compulsions. The psychiatrist prescribed SSRIs which eased a good deal of the more embarrassing situations.
Now, I take Zoloft (serotonin) and Wellbutrin (dopamine) for the chemical imbalances in my brain. Those are an immense help. Now the social disturbances are almost non-existent unless an event occurs that stresses me beyond normal levels, such as my daughter receiving radiation therapy or immunotherapy. The only thing that I compulsively perform is touching the coins when I leave or enter. The reasoning behind that is that nothing will happen to my loved ones. I realize it’s irrational, but I can’t quite handle that obsession and compulsion yet.
My point is that help is available. You may not be cured, but a combination of medications and cognitive-behavioral therapy may treat it to the point of others not observing your behaviors, especially in confined spaces like classes, meetings, or elevators.
Expressive writing is a highly effective anxiety management technique and once you start to notice the benefits you are likely to get pleasure from engaging in this activity.
I found that regularly writing about what happened in my childhood and how that made me feel was incredibly healing.
Music listening is associated with a decreased level of anxiety and distress.
This is one of my favorite hobbies for relieving anxiety, because I realized very early on that each time I would put on my headphones and listen to relaxing sounds my anxiety would start to ease instantly. I found this to be incredible and putting on calming music became one of my emergency anti-anxiety measures.
A 2009 study at the University of Minnesota found that reading can reduce stress by up to 68%, so this is a highly effective hobby for people suffering from stress and anxiety.
Reading powerful books by beautiful authors helped me to get out a very dark anxiety hole.
If you don’t have the time to read, you can listen to all of these books instead by signing up to a platform such as Audible.
Being physically active is essential for managing anxiety because exercise stimulates the release of endorphins, hormones that makes us naturally feel good.
It also helps to release excess energy, which if not released would make you more anxious.
But the trouble is, anxiety as a condition can be very exhausting and overwhelming and so it is often hard to find the motivation to do any form of exercise.
That’s why I recommend gentle physical activities for people with anxiety, and in my experience, walking is the best form of exercise for anxiety relief.
5. Connecting with Animals :
Thor (Cocker Spaniel & Cavalier King Charles mix)
Spending time with animals—by playing with them and stroking them—can be a great hobby for managing anxiety.
Getting a pet would be of course an amazing solution for that, but it’s also not essential. You can always volunteer at rescue centers by offering to walk their dogs or play with their cats.
The reason animals have such a great effect on your mental health is because, according to research interacting with them can increase the levels of “the love hormone” oxytocin and decrease levels of “the stress hormone” cortisol, which has a calming effect on the body and mind.
Interaction between owners and their dogs’ results in increasing levels of oxytocin in both owners and dogs, whereas cortisol levels decrease in the owners, but increase in the dogs
Yoga is an ancient technique that is very beneficial for managing anxiety.
Anxiety makes us tense, irritable and inflexible, while yoga can work to reverse all of these, plus nourish us with a whole host of other health benefits.
A lot of people are hesitant about trying yoga because they think they won’t be able to get into certain positions, but I can assure you that anyone can practice yoga. Yoga is about connecting with your own body, mind and soul, and everyone else is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the other people are doing, all that matters is that you are listening to your body and doing what you can do. I have fallen in love with yoga, and it has become a big part of me. I just practice for myself, and I don’t care how I look to anyone else. Yoga has helped me to improve my breathing which is essential for managing anxiety.
Healthy eating is necessary for reducing and managing anxiety. But when we start to eat healthily it can be hard to stick with it because we don’t know how to make tasty meals that are healthy and also, we often don’t know what to eat.
That’s why searching for healthy recipes and experimenting in the kitchen is a great hobby to adopt because it can help you eat healthily long-term, which can make enormous positive changes to your anxiety levels.
But that’s not all, cooking as an activity has shown to benefit mental health.
One study showed that adolescents with the most cooking skills reported a greater sense of mental well-being, as well as less symptoms of depression.
Watching inspirational movies and documentaries, or movies based on a true story, can be very uplifting and motivational to encourage us to make positive changes in our lives.
I have found that watching such movies benefits me the most in the evening after a long day to help me calm down and unwind.
Whether it’s photography or painting, I find these activities extremely relaxing and fun, and it’s also a great way for me to be present in the moment (mindfulness) which is an anxiety alleviator, especially out in nature.
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