chandrarueff1961-yasmb

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This is my first-ever blog. If you experience any problems with it, I’ll probably have to seek help to solve them for you. You can email me at chandrarueff1961@gmail.com if you have problems doing so within the blog itself. I do have experience in the behavioral health field and still consider myself bound to strict rules of confidentiality. That said, I want to add a warning here: sometimes people can be identified by their stories. Be as general as you feel that you need to be to protect your identity.

This blog is for people who are experiencing mental health issues and want to have a community of people with whom they can relate, so they know that they are not the only ones who have a particular problem, issue, or need. Talking to your dog, cat, or plants about it may not be cutting it. I’ve tried all of those except for the plants, because I have an absolutely black thumb with plants and therefore none to talk to. Because of my individual negative experiences with therapists, I have major trust issues with the field as a whole. I have made myself vulnerable to therapists who were critical, judgmental, missed my points entirely, and who were just plain dishonest. There are many people who have had these same experiences, but there are many more who have found therapy to be beneficial.

This is not therapy. I might direct you to a resource if you’re in crisis, but I’m not a therapist, and other than that I won’t offer advice or therapeutic services.

I’ve got a few friends who share my own mental health experiences, and it’s always been a relief to know that I’m not alone in this. Hence this blog.

So, I’ll start. I am a person who has more than a couple of mental health diagnoses. This blog is for all who have one or more of them. No hating or discriminatory remarks, please. But English is the universal language of this blog for now. Maybe at some point I’ll develop the skills to use Google Translate effectively, but for now, if you know how, please do so here.

I refer to myself as a person who has been diagnosed with Bipolar Depression, PTSD, Agoraphobia, and Body Dysmorphia as opposed to a depressed person, an anxious/stressed out person, an introverted person, or an ugly person. My diagnoses are not who I am. There are times when I am quite content, relaxed, and not only look forward to getting out with others, but can work a whole room at a business or social occasion without worrying about how I look. So I encourage you to see yourself simply as an individual with a few complications. You don’t have to identify as your diagnosis/es.

I have seen a couple of psychiatrists. The first was just stuck on antidepressants. The one that I am seeing now has put me on a few different medication “cocktails” that helped, but not with everything. Some of the meds had side effects that I could not tolerate. I’m more or less better on the current blend. I guess I SHOULD seek out another therapist. “Should” will be a key word here. I’m not going to say it’s a bad word, but it’s a word that can reinforce negative thoughts and feelings (Like, “I should clean my house more often,” whether or not it’s relatively clean, or “I shouldn’t have done that” when there’s nothing that you can do about the fact that you did it except maybe apologize and/or learn from it). On the other hand, it can be a word that provides a learning moment or prompts positive action. Like, “I should call that hotline.”

Many of us were openly expressing fears and anxiety and using maladaptive behavior as children, but our parents did not seek professional help for us. After I got into legal trouble when I was 20, an adult, my mother finally steered me in that direction. That was the judgmental therapist. Definitely NOT what I needed at that time – I was already beating myself up. Still am, sometimes, many years later. When I’m job hunting and facing a background check, for example.

Many of us have had major traumas that triggered chronic anxiety and pushed us fully into PTSD. Some of us didn’t really consider our diagnoses as mental illnesses. I mean, isn’t everybody depressed, anxious, stressed out, and shy at times? PTSD finally got my attention. I found myself living my traumas over and over again and also thinking up other dire scenarios that were not occurring and never had occurred, but I needed to figure out how to keep me and my children safe from them. It wasn’t just the thoughts; it was the feelings and the physiological responses – fast heart rate, dry mouth, tight muscles, etc. I told my therapist that I already knew that I was depressed and anxious, but that this was the first time that I really felt “crazy.”

I found a second, non-judgmental therapist at that point, and I told her enough to make me feel very vulnerable. Even so, I trusted her until she ended up ripping me off financially.

Another shared experience – after yet another succession of antidepressants did not work, the second psychiatrist prescribed Seroquel (quetiapine). That definitely quieted the anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and sleep problems. But one of its common side effects is weight gain. Enter Body Dysmorphia, and weight gain was simply intolerable for me. But in the end, all of that led to a real weight problem. The depression stayed, and I continued to gain weight. I got to 340 pounds before a friend took me to a “weight loss” meeting that was really an introduction to bariatric surgery. Desperate, I ended up having a RNY Gastric Bypass. It sure did make me lose weight. I lost half of that 340 pounds in a year-and-a-half. Then diet and exercise paid off and I “got pretty,” except for my ankles, which never did “lose weight” (Body Dysmorphia) Before you go all in for weight-loss surgery, which is a huge major surgery (after all, they are removing your stomach from the digestive process, cutting into your intestines, and stitching your intestines back together in different places entirely), please know that I ended up having serious complications from it – 5 instances of an extremely painful intestinal hernia resulting in more major abdominal surgeries.

Another shared experience: Having been overweight for most of my life (oh, yeah, then there really was that, Body Dysmorphia or not), I had no idea how to deal with the new experience of a lot of male attention. I ended up in a disastrous 8-year relationship. Just because I was more attractive did not magically improve my self-esteem or erase the depression and anxiety.

During that relationship, my mental health issues and a couple of serious medical problems became crippling. I ended up failing badly at 3 jobs in a row. My family has bailed me out of financial holes more than once, and that has not improved my mental health.

Alright, I’ve written a novella about me, and that’s enough. I hope that some of you can relate to it. I’ve probably told too much of my story. Future employers might check my social media presence and read every bit of this, thus jeopardizing my chances of finding a new job. Then again, I’d rather enter a new job while being honest with a prospective employer than not.