Between Mind Medicine and Mind-Control: Forbidden Emotions of a Bipolar

I am highly irritable this week. Everything ignites irritability. I know it is because I am a schizophrenic-bipolar woman who is currently stressed out and broke. Knowing the underlying cause for this feeling does not help the irritability. It fact, it makes it worse because I am forbidden from expressing this irritability.

I feel irritable. Some random person posts something fiercely ignorant about race. I keep my mouth shut because I know I will over react due to my underlying mental illness. Somebody without a mental illness would have snapped and had some psychological release.

I, being subjugated to extreme scrutiny by psychiatrists, doctors, family, mental health technicians, and therapists, cannot express normal anger anymore. I have been denied the right to feel angry or depressed. These are "mental" issues that need to be addressed. In many ways, I feel emotionally spayed. I must remain neutral in mood for the rest of my life or risk being institutionalized or put on dangerously high doses of psychotropic medications.

There is a fine line between mental health treatment and mind-control. I have had my continuum of emotions deleted through medication and hospitalization.

These are emotions that are forbidden to me:

Anger
Irritability
Expansive Mood
Exhaustion
Resentment
Fear of persecution
Fear in general
Hatred
Introversion
Sadness
A combination of these that shift from one to the other rapidly.


I understand that it is "beneficial" to me and to society to put these restraints in place. It is just a bit like mind-control, that is all. I will live under constant scrutiny, constant monitoring by mental health professionals, for the rest of my life, and that is alright with me. However, if there is a better alternative, that would be awesome.

Depressed and Needy

Dear public, online diary,

I am totally miserable. I am depressed, lethargic, behind in 2 of my elective classes, and I have become infatuated with two men out of my reach.

I am experiencing a nasty chemical imbalance that makes me feel sleepy 24/7. I sleep 10 hours or longer. I sleep through my classes. I make it to a few classes, come home, and fall asleep again. I have no drive to leave bed. Bed is warm, bed is comforting, bed is not the hostile outside world.

I am leaving my current out-patient treatment and going back to the County out-patient center; the same one that turned me away so many times despite my florid psychosis. I am very agitated about being moved back there. It makes me sad. It makes me fearful. It makes me utterly pissed off that I have to play nice with a system that sent me to the brink of suicide.

I  hate my depression. At least when I am manic I can get a doctor's note excusing me from class. Depressed, I cannot even get to the doctor because I sleep through all the appointments.

When I am depressed, unlike some people, I tend to seek out other people for sexual comfort. I use contraceptives and I get myself tested before and after each new romance, but I really wish I could not feel this urgent need to possess another person's body.

I go on sprees. Shopping sprees, food binge sprees, sex sprees...I think I am just seeking a little extra serotonin through self-gratification.

Now, here I am again, depressed and needy. I try to stay away from men but it's so hard. I tend to seek egoist males who try to dominate me.

For instance, I have developed feelings for a professor of mine. I've had him as a professor for 4 classes already. During his office hours he has this way of correcting me that is a little different than the way he corrects others. With the other students he smiles and says that their ideas are a possibility but....[here he gently tells them to consider another idea]. With me he just sternly says don't do that, no. I wanted to do a paper on topic 'y' and he told me to do it on topic 'x'. End of discussion, he said topic 'x' and his tone was final.

This is not just my imagination. As part of my therapy for my paranoid symptoms, I learned to look for evidence that a concern of mine is valid. So, I looked for evidence. I have listened to how he interacts with the other 15 students in my grad class and compared it to his manner of discourse with me. I have observed his politeness, his gentleness, his openness to the ideas of the other students. With me, he sternly tells me no, don't do that, don't believe that theory, don't listen to the author of the textbook; listen to me. As an undergraduate he singled me out during class to ask how I was doing on my in-class assignment. I smiled and nodded, shuffled my papers, but he saw through me and told me that the material only got more difficult and to come to office hours for help. I knew he was doing me a favor, but I felt like I was getting preferential treatment. I feel like he doubts my intelligence and that he feels the need to act like a father and tell me what to do. I actually like it. I like his controlling behavior. It makes me feel like he sees me as a distinct person, even if he thinks I am a lesser person than my peers. I crave his attention. I like being chastised for my outlandish and improbable ideas. I like that he has a PhD and that he is smarter than I am. It makes me feel like I should obey him, like I should play the role of an intellectual submissive.

Lately, he has been ignoring my emails and this forces me to seek him out in person after class. He then tells me to see him during office hours instead because he has someplace to be (perfectly understandable, but because of my attachment to him I would much rather he just reply to my emails with an email). Just last week I sent him an email about my paper (now about topic 'x' and not my chosen topic). He didn't respond. I let it go for 5 days. Then, I just decided to go in and see him during office hours. I was nervous and uncomfortable because I am so infatuated with him. I did not sit down in the chair in his office and instead started to ramble on about my paper while standing up. I really wanted to leave. "Sit," he said. "Sit, sit." I felt like a pet dog. I sat. We talked. He loaned me a book. I thanked him and left. I think I just nailed what has been bugging me about this student-teacher dynamic. I am his pet dog and that is what I want to be.

Depression Despite 200 mg of Zoloft

I have been in a depressive state since the end of spring break back in March.

When I get depressed I sleep excessively. I have been known to sleep for 10-12 hours when I am depressed. It's not exactly laziness. I just cannot get out of bed. I feel fatigue, lethargy, and emotionally exhausted when I do roll out of bed. I often wake up at 6 in the morning, make an effort to brew some coffee, but I somehow find my way back under the covers of my bed. I then black out until around 10 or 11 am. It is ridiculous.

I am taking a mood stabilizer twice a day and 200 mg of Zoloft once a day. I have been on that dose of Zoloft for about 4 years now. I think my brain has built up a tolerance to that drug and it now barely makes a dent. Still, if I were to suddenly go off of it, I would go into a depressive withdrawal. People generally don't think that anti-depressants can cause withdrawal, but it does. The withdrawal isn't as bad as barbiturates or hard-core drugs, but there are major mood disruptions caused when you go off of anti-depressants.

Right now, I am restless and feeling low and pretty crummy. I tend to escape into cyber-space and miss class when I go into severe depression. I have been managing to to make it to class lately but I am so behind in my programming class I intentionally skipped the lab class because I fear being scolded by my professor (she would totally tell me I don't understand the data structure chapter because I haven't come to class). When I am in a depressive state I get really sensitive about comments and body language. I always feel like I am not doing good enough, that I am a failure, that people think I'm wasting their time.

I have to enact my WRAP plan. That is short for "wellness recovery action plan," which was invented by mental health counselors to get patients from relapsing into severe mental illness. Basically, it's a booklet you create outlining warning signs that indicate you are going into a period of mental illness. Accompanying this list is a set of actions and thoughts that help you re-ground yourself so you don't go into a downward spiral. I have a WRAP plan for mania and paranoia but I totally neglected to make one for depression.

I will give you an example of my WRAP plan for mania

> I get insomnia when I feel manic // --> Go to bed even earlier and just lie there instead of surfing the web until I feel sleepy.
> I start thinking that people know I'm nuts // --> Remember that the constitution protects me from discrimination based on mental disability. Write a list of arguments for and against proof that people know I'm nuts.
> I can't concentrate to do my homework // ---> go to the library, get a private study room where there is no noise and distractions, and work for as long as I can. Leave. Walk around for an hour. Come back, study.

This works pretty well for me. I cannot believe I forgot to make one for depression! I think I will do that today. Then off to the library to lock myself in a room to study programming.

I feel sad. Today is 4/20. That is national marijuana day (not a federally sanctioned holiday, but still). I cannot smoke marijuana because I am broke and also because I live with family who do not allow marijuana in their house. I have been clean 90% of the time for at least 3 years. I tend to go back to smoking pot every summer for a month or so, but I really feel that pot would be beneficial to my major depression right now. Yes, you can disagree with me. You have the right to think that pot should be illegal (it's not in California due to majority vote, but federally it's a shady area), but I have the right to disagree and yearn for the plant.

Sigh**

Yahoo article on how BM does not affect anyone outside of Boston

I find it curious how some people empathize with others while some people try to rank the victims in order of who is really hurting. No s*!t, the ones who lost people are the ones who are PTSD'd. The article is trying to make it seem like people are trivializing the bombings by feeling impacted. I think it is just a form of empathy, where you feel injured as a observer. Let us not forget that it is human to empathize. It is not very human to start telling people who may and may not feel pain over violence. Interesting article on ranking victimhood here on yahoo::

http://news.yahoo.com/boston-tragedy-not-tragedy-093700311.html

1 BM suspect dead, other on run

The news is unfolding this morning and it looks like the two suspects were brothers who came over from Europe, near the region of Chechnya. This is bewildering, sad, confusing, and infuriating.

All of Boston is shut down, no one is supposed to leave. Right now, the live news stream coming from Boston says that law enforcement is surrounding a house.

It was a terrible night of violence, more explosions, and shoot outs.

I have been having a hard time with going about my day-to-day life. I tend to get extremely nervous about national and global news. Maybe it's my mental illness, but I get really, really paranoid that something else is going to happen. I have become fixated with the news and I check for updates on multiple source websites every hour. I have been missing class to sit at home and listen to the news. This is all very distressing.

I went to class infrequently this week. It was odd, being friendly, smiling, and focused when inside I was shaken and fearful. Somehow, I managed to get a major class presentation done the day after the bombings. I felt like it was inappropriate to go about my life, but I did it anyways. I got a high B on the presentation. Not great, but good, especially considering I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

The period following 9/11 actually ignited my first psychotic episode. I was 18 years old and in the Bay Area going to a different university as a freshman. I became very delusional about everything. I was obsessed with a white van parked down the street. I would go outside to check if it was still there at every hour of the night, from 8 pm to 4 am. I also quit going to class. I was too wracked with personal paranoia, fear, and the belief that people's thoughts were being monitored. It was a very, very bad time to go insane.

I am afraid that I might have a harder time managing my mental illness. I don't want to become a reclusive hermit again. I do that when I go mad. Luckily, I have a bottle of anti-psychotics, anti-anxiety medicine, and anti-depressants. I am very grateful to the city for giving me these medicines.

I have been doing fine in my the grad classes but  I've fallen behind in my math and programming class. I really have to pull off a magic trick to get good grades.

I'll have to compartamentalize this distress and pretend like everything in my petty life is still important.

Good luck to you and I hope that our nation finds a way to deal with this horror.
~Thinking of the MIT officer who was shot last night and praying for his family....and for all 140 victims from April 15th...my deepest sympathies are with you.
~~Electra

Tragedy in Boston

I have been watching NBC's live coverage since around 2 pm, Pacific time. I am also watching the stream of news feed posts on yahoo news.

I had been working in the University's library typing up a powerpoint for my graduate class. I finished up, drove home, and stopped by my grandmother's room to say hello to her and my uncle.
"Hi," I said and walked to my room. My uncle followed me. "They bombed the Boston Marathon," he said.
"What?"
"Someone blew up the marathon," he said. I thought maybe he was exaggerating.
"Is it on the news right now?"
"Yeah."
I went back to my grandmother's room and on the TV were scenes of smoky sky, scattered debris, and people in yellow running everywhere.

I watched the same grim tape as it played over and over again: a giant plume of smoke, a runner crumpling to the ground, other runners scattering.

My first thought was terrorism. I didn't want to say it out loud.

For the last hour I've been glued to my television and computer screen. Reports are conflicting. 2 explosions, a 3rd device set off by authorities. Confusion over whether a fire at the JFK library was related (current news stream says it was not related). Boston temporarily shut down cell phone service, google set up a special person locator, and endless replays of the finish line explosion. Later, the cell phone service went back up, over 64  (reports say over 100) injured, at least 2 killed.

I'm shaky, I haven't eaten at all today. I am stuck to the computer monitor and the television screen. This reminds me of this movie I watched through amazon dot com. It is called "Four Lions." It is a British movie mocking the stupidity of terrorists. The movie follows a group of conspiring homegrown terrorists who plot to bomb the country. I am not making this up, I swear----in the movie "Four Lions" directed by Chris Morris, the movie ends with the homegrown terrorists dressing in costumes and infiltrating a marathon to kill people. I am not joking, I am not making this up, please google this movie yourself. Four Lions, directed by Chris Morris. In the movie, the terrorists all die by their own explosive devices.

In real life, we don't know who or why, one person or a group of people, homegrown or foreign---everything is uncertain. All we know is that 2 bombs went off without warning, a third was detonated in a controlled explosion, and 2 more bombs were found undetonated.

I am grieving with the rest of the country right now. This is all surreal---it's just like that freaking movie "Four Lions." That gives me the creeps. I am getting a headache. I have to call my mother. I wish you the best and I hope you and your loved ones are safe and warm.
~Electra

I Lost 1 More Pound and My History as Big Hips Woman

I lost one more pound for a total of 5 pounds. I am pleased. My big hips still have love handles, though.

I was reading this viral blog post about this girl who posted her picture on a blog. She was very pretty and heavy. Her blog post went on a tirade against people who have been mean to her because of her weight and how she is sick of hiding her body because other people don't like to see fat. In the photo she was in her bra and underwear.

My facebook friend posted it on her wall and I read the story. It resonated with me. I still remember strange men making comments about me being "too fat" to my face as I walked by.


*************Bio of Big Hips Woman**************
Unlike the blogger, I was never overweight as a child or young adult. I gained weight at the age of 23, but when I gained weight I gained a lot of it due to the effects of Zyprexa medication and a bad diet that I have had since my childhood.

Since then, I have been on a mini-crusade trying to get rid of the fat. At some points, I succeeded. About 4 to 5 years ago, I went on a crash diet and lost so much weight I went from a size 14 to about 130 pounds, or maybe a size 8. I never bought new clothes so I never found out exactly what size I turned into. Instead, I'd wear size 10 and size 12 pants with a big belt to keep them up. I lost a lot of weight but I did so by not taking the Zyprexa medicine and through a starvation diet. Naturally, being a schizo-affective with a propensity towards mania when unmedicated, I became floridly psychotic and was plucked from my daily routine of food obsession and food denial and locked in a psychiatric facility. I gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks and when I got out I just kept gaining it back, plus some extra.

I paid for weight training classes at the community college. I seriously worked out 3 times a week but the amount of weight I gained after dieting was too much and the exercise barely made a dent. I was in a class with only 2 other women. One had a tiny waist, bone-like arms, and huge breast implants. The other was a very thin, waif-like girl. Sometimes they would come into the mat room where I liked to hide doing my sit-ups and sit down along the wall, stare at me periodically, whisper and laugh. I don't care if they weren't talking about me, the looks on their faces and their obvious stares was enough to make me want to cry. Ironic that they were taking a weight lifting class but all they did was sit around, watch me and talk. Meanwhile, I was doing endless crunches and pedaling like a maniac on a stationary bike. Then came the horrible day when I ran into my old friend who had last seen me a few years ago when I was still about 115 pounds. She congratulated me on my baby. I felt ridiculous. "I'm not pregnant, just fat," I said. She apologized profusely but the damage had been done.

I continued with intermittent periods of intense exercise. I walked for hours every day for years but that never paid off. I would periodically run for hours but the weight wouldn't budge and my knees would ache for days afterwards. I would do yoga, lift a 10 pound weight, and I also took a semester of modern dance from the community college. This entire time I was doing manual labor and staying on my feet for 3-5 hours a day at my part-time job. Nothing worked.

Fast forward a few years: I was a returning student to the University. I  had just gotten out of "reintegration rehabilitation" for mental patients. It was an out-patient all-day 6 month bonanza of group therapy, art therapy, and lectures about how to deal with mental illness symptoms without resorting to drugs or relapsing. Through the whole thing there were catty females in the program who would chant obsessively that they didn't want to get fat. Luckily, they had no jobs or anything else to do during the day except to diet and depend on their men to support them. I notice that when people fail at the basic things in life like employment, education, and relationships, they always tend to fall back on the food thing. Anyways, I went to the University, concentrated on succeeding, ignored my food consumption, and gained 15 to 20 pounds. Hitting 194 was a bleak day for me. I dropped meat out of my diet and started monitoring how many calories everything had and I dropped to 181 in about a month and a half.

The next two years I exercised like I was training for a professional MMA match. I took judo twice a week for six months. On top of this, I used my stationary bike for an hour. I also used my mechanical rowing machine for at least 30 minutes. I walked for hours every day. By the end of my first year back at the University I had dropped 40 pounds and was 151 pounds. The next semester I took a modern dance class with many stereotypical dancer-type females. You know what I mean, the ones that took ballet in their youth and never took to a normal people diet. The type who think weight is a matter of self-discipline and not being a sloth. It was painful but I endured and danced and danced and got an A. Next, I dated an Arabian guy who kept feeding me deep-fried salmon, white rice, and potatoes. I gained 20 pounds.

I decided action must be taken, swift, brutal action. I enrolled in 1 hour of karate twice a week followed immediately by 1 hour of kick-boxing twice a week. On the weekends, I use a punching bag I bought for myself and  I still walk for hours every day. The result? The weight didn't budge until just now. 5 measly pounds. 5. Yes, 5 pounds. I'm 168 now, in the obese range. I am obese but I can flip you over my shoulder and throw you to the mat, I can do karate katas, and I can throw a nasty cross, hook, and a violent roundhouse. This isn't air-punching, cardio stuff, this is grab your sparring partner and flip them onto their backs. This is stand there and let your sparring partner lift you into the air so you fall on your back really hard, then get up and do it again. This is full-force roundhouse kicks on your sparring partner's command, your leg hitting pads as hard as it can. This is non-stop jabs, hooks, crosses, front kicks, roundhouse kicks, elbows, knees hitting the pads as fast and as hard as you can.

I've decided to keep up the martial arts routine, not because I am losing weight, but because I love it. I still want to lose weight, just so society will shut up about my body. Primarily, though, I want to lose enough weight to get into the main women's fighting division which is 136-144 pounds. That's where all dem tuff chicks are.I can't wait until I am up there taking real hits and giving real hits in a real competition. If I have to go on a parsley diet, or a 6 pm diet, so be it. I have so much determination that never showed on my figure, only in my eyes. One day, that slender sporty girl will be in the ring with me and she will suddenly realize that all those layers of fat were hiding hours and hours of training. That, just to be the weight I will be, I had to work five times harder than she trained for  and 5 times longer. She will realize that those years of being fat made me hard, made me angry, made me endure things she could not. I will tell her beforehand, "I used to be 194 pounds. I lost weight so I could sock you in the face a whole bunch of times. :)" And it will be true.

That is my bio as big hips woman. Thank you for reading. ~Electra

4 pounds lost in 4 days; 50 more to go

4 days ago I weighed 172. This made me sad. Last semester I weighed 152. This semester I took 2 martial arts classes twice a week, for a total of 4 hours. Regardless of how much I exercised, I still gained 10 pounds on top of the 10 pounds I gained over winter break. That's a total of 20 pounds since November.

This isn't my first extreme weight gain or weight loss adventure. I have been plagued by my weight since the psychiatrists put me on Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic with massive weight gain as a common side effect. I only made it worse by not modifying my pre-Zyprexa diet of junk food. Before Zyprexa I could eat what I felt like but afterwards, I had to learn the hard way that my body craved more food than I needed and needed twice the exercise due to the chemical effects of the pills I took.

My first semester returning to University in 2011 I gained so much weight I was 194 at my fattest. By mid-2012 I weighed 151 pounds. I lost over 40 pounds in a year by eating less than 2000 calories a day, moderate exercise, a lot of walking, and a semi-vegetarian diet (some fish, some chicken, a lot of half and half).

Even now, I'm 24 pounds lighter than my worst weight. But that is equivalent to 50 pounds heavier than my weight at age 23: 118. Now, nearly thirty years old, I am fearful that I will go back to 194 pounds and that I'll never reach my goal of being 125-130 pounds.

I decided to really get serious. Yes, maybe it is because I have fallen behind in my computer programming class and I have a deep-seated insecurity about my grades to the point where body obsession is a preferred mode of escape, but whatever, I'm going to lose weight.

I started a 6:00 pm diet. By this I mean that I get to eat an entire meal after 6 pm. Why 6 pm? Because I tend to stress out at night and this is when I am at risk for binge eating and midnight snacking. I know nutritionists say that eating heavy foods at night makes you gain weight, but I have no self-control after 7 pm anyways, at least this way I may lose some weight by trimming down on my day-time calorie consumption.

Here's how I lost 4 pounds in 4 days

9 am: drink a Kellog's Special K protein shake (180 calories)
10:00-3:00 pm = classes on campus with only one hour break. Spend this one hour sipping on coffee (80 calories).
4:00 pm = getting hungry. Good thing I brought another Special K protein shake (180 calories)
5:00 pm = one last Americano from Starbucks with a lot of half and half and splenda (100 calories)
6:00 pm = time to feast. I am at 600 calories total for the day. I get to eat 600 calories for dinner, for a total of 1200 calories. This can be a moderate serving of pasta and maybe one slice of bread, a couple of home made tacos, a Subway sandwich, 2 slices of pizza, 1 jr cheeseburger from Wendys and 5 spicy chicken nuggets, or 2 tamales from the Mexican restaurant.

I did that for 4 days and I've lost 4 pounds. In fact, I think I ate like 1600 calories on one day and still lost a pound.

I am only doing this because I am in the obese range on the BMI. I would never suggest this 6 pm diet for anybody not in the obese range. For those who are in the obese range, I still wouldn't recommend this because it may be crash dieting and that is super dangerous. That being said, I want to lose weight. I will accept the fatigue, the headaches, the lethargy, the scattered concentration, and the stomach growling so long as I lose the weight.

I was going to delete this blog post right now, but I did promise to tell the truth on this blog, no matter how uncomfortable the truth might be. So here is the ugly truth---I am losing weight. I will live off Roma tomatoes, I will lose weight if I have to pump pure caffeine into my veins to keep myself from collapsing into a deep, hungry sleep, I will lose weight. I will.
HIGH WEIGHT= 194
CURRENT WEIGHT=168
GOAL WEIGHT=130
If I can't succeed in graduate school at least I'll leave a size 8.