Psychiatric Help Alters Personality Traits!

...hopefully for the better.

Below is a link to a Yahoo! article about the effects of mental health treatment on personality traits. I always thought I would be a moody, morbid little goth girl until I got put on a cocktail of medicines and went through 3 or 4 therapists. Now, I am not morbid! I am a little moody, but nearly as much. Also, I am more sociable and I think having someone to talk to about my problems really helped with communication skills.

I am grateful for the recent psychological treatments such as the recovery and reintegration model for mental health treatment. I knew that it worked to alleviate my anxiety, but at least now there is a study that confirms this belief.

Here is the link:
http://news.yahoo.com/psychiatric-treatments-may-change-personality-135354106.html
******************************************************************

On a separate note, I read that last blog entry and I realized why I proof-read my entries prior to publishing them. It was definitely a twisted entry and not one I am proud of---yes, I have food issues, weight issues, body image issues, and abandonment issues. I am trying to work through them. The problem is that I am not seeing a therapist since I was transferred to the city's public mental health system and out of the intense out-patient treatment center. Sorry that you, the reader, have to keep reading about my food issues. I want to lose weight but I would prefer to do it healthily.

That being said, I have a history of self-harming behavior since the age of 12. I used to be a teenage cutter, then a pothead, then a binge eater, than a sexoholic, then back to binge eating. It seems like I can never find a balance inside. It is to the point where I  have no idea how I come across to the outside world. I feel desperate for love and attention but I flee after maybe 3 months of intimate relationships with friends or lovers. I can never separate the "bad" me who feels anger at what happened to me, guilt over hurting people emotionally, and shame about my past---from the "good" me who wants world peace, happy old people to sing and dance again, and little puppies to romp free across the globe.

I just wanted to say that I feel like I left that last blog entry with no positive ending. Maybe that one and the post about Dr. Katz's "why do males do violence" blog entry. Life doesn't always end with a positive ending, but I will try to at least have some positive order over this blog. ***I ate like 800 calories between the hours of 5 pm to 2 am, so no worries about my diet. Also, that guy I liked talked to me for about a half hour before he went offline. I have no idea how he feels about me. Plus, he is more than a few years younger than I am so I am totally insecure. All I know is that I am drawn to him and very lonely during this summer, which probably means I will wind up making some amateurish attempt to bed him....

Spring Break, Mental Health, & how I gained Weight

I am being transferred from an intensive out-care program to the county's relaxed mental health care system. I am not sure how I feel about this, as memories of this county facility still haunts me --- being sent away repeatedly and then finally getting to see one befuddled doctor who wrote the incorrect prescription and left me without medicine for a good 2 months (while I was floridly psychotic).

Hopefully, I can make all my doctor's appointments without fail, otherwise there might be a three month wait period.

Wish me luck, I'll need it if this new care program is like the last time I remember.

******************************************
Good news = I am president of a club and I actually did get our event approved.
Bad news = I had no spring break because I have been working on arrangements for the event.
More bad news=I did like 2 pages of a 15 page paper only. I still need to do my programming homework.
Good news = I had a cup of chai and I'm feeling good,
**********************************************

Lately, I've been reading a lot of race relations articles and I am feeling a little queasy from thinking about how many anti-immigrant/anti-minority people are running around out there. I'll keep it to myself for now, since I don't feel like going off on some political rant.

Ah heck, I'll do it anyways. marriage =. Immigration reform. Break the glass ceiling. Down with neo-nazis. Up with Bill Maher. Okay, I'm done.

******************
On my weight
OMG. I gained weight while taking two hours of martial arts twice a week! Four hours per week for nothing! Nothing! I now am at the heaviest I have been since I first modified my diet intake 2 years ago; 171 pounds. Yes, it's technically in the obese range. Yes, I hate my body (except for my boobs which have returned to a plump, seductive G cup). Yes, I gained a whopping 20 pounds in under 5 months. I don't know what to do. The more I think about my weight the more despondent I get and the more I want to comfort eat. I ate a doughnut today. I hate myself for eating that doughnut. The long walk to the doughnut store and back home only burned off a quarter of the calories I consumed in doughnut. I ate half my dinner today, but I didn't use my stationary bike or my punching bag as exercise, so I feel bloated and disgusting. My dinner was a couple of tablespoons of white rice and some nopales my mom made. My lunch was that doughnut. For breakfast I had a bowl of oatmeal with a bunch of fresh blueberries. Then, right after breakfast, my mom came home from taking the elderly neighbor lady to the grocery store. The elderly lady, in her naive kindness, bought my mom a tray of mini cupcakes. I literally doubled over when I saw them. My kryptonite. This is the reason why I don't buy any chips, baked goods, ice cream, or frozen pizzas. I have issues with moderation. I cannot eat a little handful of chips, or just 1 mini cupcake. I will literally flee the kitchen and hide in my room, without the treat. Then, for hours, I will think about the treat. Eventually, I break down, sneak into the kitchen, grab the entire bag/carton/tray of treats and secretly eat in my bedroom. This is the reason why I always buy roma tomatoes, cheese, and tea instead. When there are no sugary, sodium-laced, greasy alternatives, I eat quite healthy. But when a naively kind neighbor lady buys us mini cupcakes, I crumble after an hour of pouting on my bed and trying to distract myself by watching BBC documentaries on the internet. Yes, I ate 3 mini-cupcakes, and then I couldn't stop myself. I walked to the doughnut store and bought a coffee and a doughnut. I came home. 2 more mini-cupcakes. I despise mini-cupcakes. They must be walked into the jungle and left for the pumas. Down with mini-sprinkle cupcakes!!

I like my boobs. They are plump. They are the only part of my body I am fond of. I will now end this little blog entry by writing a positive, self-affirming statement about my fattened up body. My boobs are awesome. Guys always stare at my boobs. Sometimes, women stare at my boobs, too. Sometimes I think I must have spilled something on my blouse and people are just wondering what the stain is, which is why they are staring so intensely for so long, but then I look down and nope, just my boobs. Then, there is this awkward moment when both of us are standing there staring down at my boobs. I think I am kind of flattered. Still, it's like, what, am I wearing a dirty shirt? Are my nipples popping out? Is there like a stain that looks like a milk leak or something??

Confessions from a Healing Schizophrenic: Tips

I will be done with my degree June 8th. I am so, so close. I am enrolled in summer classes. These summer classes are to fulfill a general ed requirement. They are classes I had to take outside of my major. I have an A in one class and a B or an A in the other class. I got a vacation of a whole two days after the Spring semester. For your average college student this would very stressful. Yet I am doing well with my academics and my home life. For me, the key was having a mental health support network, a steady exercise routine, and a lot of coffee.

I know that due to budget cuts not a lot of people have the benefit of having a therapist or a psychiatrist, but there are ways to get support. I am in a county sponsored program due to my chronic illness of schizo-affective disorder. Therapy and medication are provided so long as I comply with treatment. A lot of counties provide low-income services. However, the wait time is very long. Still, if you are sick and untreated, you deserve medical care. It is in the United Nation's Declaration of Universal Human Rights, Article 25. Google "UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights" for the entire Declaration. 

If you attend college there are resources on campus. My University has a clinic with an attending physician, a small pharmacy, and a trained psychologist on staff. Part of your tuition goes towards paying for a bit of your services at the clinic, so go ask if the doctor can prescribe psychotropic medications.

With a good therapist and a good psychiatrist, a mental illness can be treated and most symptoms can go into remission. A therapist is important for me to discuss my struggle with being "Abnormal" in a "Normal" society. These are things I cannot discuss with my academic advisor or even a friend. A therapist provides positive feed-back and a balanced perspective. The psychiatrist provides the medications which allow me to think clearly without auditory hallucinations, persecution delusions, and panic attacks. Utilizing these people is essential for good mental health. Please don't try to sell me on the psychiatric versions of snake oil. Prayer is amazing but it never worked for me as a consistent anti-psychotic. Abilify worked for psychotic symptoms, vitamin B did not. 

Second, a steady exercise plan works well for improving mood and stabilizing health. It is well known that the biggest side effect of taking atypical anti-psychotics is massive weight gain. I should know. Up until around age 23-25 years my weight was, at my heaviest, 115 pounds. Post-anti-psychotic medications, I have "slimmed down" to 160 pounds. Did I engage in a decade of fast food eating, lazy tv watching, immobility? No. In fact, I did exercise for a 6 month period when I was 18, but for the most part, the bulk of my exercise routine has been recent, ever since I put on weight! I gained a startling 50 or more pounds in a matter of months once I went on Zyprexa. I did not know that by "exercise" my psychiatrist meant "what you do now for exercise is not even a fraction of what you will need to keep slim." Now, I have an exercise bike and a rowing machine that I use 3 times a week, plus hour long walks every day. I also walk to and from the bus stops. Lots of exercise. I might not look like a role model for fitness freaks, but at least I know my heart is healthy. I am also enrolling in a judo class this summer to keep myself active. Also, judo is amazing and teaches balance, coordination, discipline, and the ability to get up after getting flipped into the air and landing on your back. But I digress...

Lastly, coffee is necessary for all college students, but especially for those who have issues with morning time. I have never been able to get out of bed without feeling hopelessly sad, lethargic, and internally fearful of the outside world. The thought of a hot, Pete's brand coffee with half and half and splenda makes me wrestle with my mood disorder so I get out of bed faster. Just writing about coffee makes me want to run to my Bodum coffee press. I hope you also use a coffee press. It's thirty dollars on amazon and the coffee tastes much better than any home brewing machine. Yessss....coffee....I'll end here so I can get myself a coffee from the kitchen.

Thanks for reading! Stay healthy, think positive, and always remember that you deserve love!

Body Issues: Breasts, Weight, and Dance Class

The guy on myspace wanted to know what size bra I wear. I have to laugh, that's the first thing guys ask. In fact, I'm so accustomed to that question I stopped thinking it was rude years ago. Now, it's just like they're asking how old I am. I answer this question due to some strange exhibitionist trait I have had since I was a teenager. As you can tell by the fact that I write my diary entries online for anybody to see---I am totally an exhibitionist.

So I responded to the guy via myspace messaging. 36FF. In UK sizes. That translates to 36H in US sizes. I always answer in UK sizes because all my bras are imports from the United Kingdom, where large breasts are everywhere and stores actually make bras for the large-breasted population. It's not like here in California where Target goes up to 36DD only. There are some big bras, but they're for big band sizes, like 40 or 42 band widths. Maybe you don't know this, but the larger the circumference of the torso below the breasts, the smaller the cup size will be listed as. So a 36DDD is only a 38DD. Larger band, smaller cup. Smaller band, larger cup. Bra mathematics can be confusing.

I ran into problems in my dance class last week with my body. I am enrolled in a general education level dance class which I must pass in order to obtain my B.A. this May. I am a senior in college, 28 years old, 163 pounds (at the moment), and about 5 feet 2 inches. So I'm fat. Overweight, chunky, thick, whatever. The students are mostly underweight and still in their teenage years. I have never felt so out of place in my life---not even when I accidentally attended a faculty-only potluck last semester (only to be rudely told to get out! I was invited via email from another faculty member, but I left regardless! I almost cried, I was so humiliated!)

They are so tiny, so flat-chested, so, well dancer-like, that I wanted to run out of the dance studio in tears. We stretched, then danced. The professor, a waif-like blonde trained in modern dance, told us to do a little prance across the studio, then crouch, lunge, and twirl around. All the girls did this and they looked like professional dancers. I wound up being last in line and I was super conscious of my large breasts jiggling all over the place with every prancing step I took. I did not make this look graceful at all! It looked vulgar. I sighed, kept my eyes down, pranced, crouched, lunged, twirled, and ran to the end of the line to hide.

In certain situations my body type (heavy on top, thick thighs, big butt) gets me noticed by men. In other situations, it makes me feel like the circus freak fat woman. Dance class is making me consider a more rigorous diet.

The only good thing that came out of the class (besides the fact that I can graduate when it's over) is that there is a cute, adorable freshman who smiles at me. He's one of only 2 or 3 guys in the class. We partnered up at one point, standing back to back, and melted in a heap together on the floor. It was strictly the class work assigned by the professor, this partner work, but I felt on top of the world as we slid into each other's arms! I can't possibly imagine him picking me over the slender, model-like dance students, but it was still nice to be curled up with him on the floor. :)

Electra's Complex 102

Wow, reading that last entry was kind of sad for me.
I didn't mean to vent, I just, well, yeah, I needed to vent.
Anyways this isn't all a suicide survivor blog, it's more like an emotional eating blog, and my issues therein.

But for those of you who run around looking down your nose at obese people, please stop, you have no idea what they have/are going through.

Like I stated in the first blog entry, I whittled myself down from a size 5 to a size 2 at the age of 18 after my uncle's death.

Years later, after being put on Zyprexa, an anti-psychotic drug, I gained a whopping 50 pounds in a very short time span. You may have heard of Zyprexa, it was in the news because hundreds of patients were suing the pharmaceutical company for failing to mention that taking Zyprexa makes one gain upwards of 100 pounds and the drug even causes diabetes in some people. Everyone who was on Zyprexa that I know of had nothing kind to say about it: "It worked, yeah, but I got diabetes now!" It seems the rush to market a miracle sanity drug was a bad move on the part of pharmaceutical companies, a decision that cost lots of people their physical health. Myself, I suffered a huge weight gain from my pre-Zyprexa normal weight of 115 to 160 lbs.
I remember being chastised by an art teacher on my bad eating habits after I brought in a fast food breakfast. I just nodded and went along with it. She didn't know that the pills were making me feel super hungry, especially for foods high in fat, that the pills likely slowed my metabolism down, and that I normally didn't eat at Carl's Jr for breakfast. The rest of the class stared at my new flabby gut and then looked away. I could feel the disgust. I felt it myself. So from that point on, at the age of 22, I began to yo yo diet, binge eat, starve, exercise, and binge eat more. I went of my medication, then back on, then back off, then back on....

At one point, when I was feeling very disliked in my lowly post as a pizza delivery girl, I managed to drop my weight down to 134, slightly acceptable for my height (5'1), but just barely. Of course, I was eating nothing for breakfast, coffee and a small salad for lunch, and a slice of pizza for dinner.  On the outside I had done what society wanted me to do: lose weight. I was no longer a blemish on the face of American culture. No longer another statistic of fat women. I was acceptable. Behind the facade, I was a wreck. I was stuck in an abusive relationship with my high school science lab partner, skipping my medication, and beginning to hear voices telling me how horrible I was. My mother, thankfully, insisted I be admitted to the county psychiatric facility. I slowly improved with medication and distanced myself from that abusive person.
Unfortunately, my weight increased. There's a well known government study that proves if a person starves themselves the body will begin to hoard calories away like  a squirrel with nuts. Once you eat, it is nearly impossible to burn off those calories, as your body knows that you may starve at any time. It's natural. Can't outwit biology. I gained all my weight back, and then some.

I'm 28 now and I've returned to the University as a senior to complete my BA. By the time mid-terms hit, I was sitting around studying for hours, not getting enough exercise aside from daily long walks, and I reached 194. That's obese. I panicked. I began running and dieting. I stopped running because I had such large breasts that people would comment, or leer at me. I went down by about 30 pounds in a matter of months. I was suddenly more energetic and I felt good about myself because I wasn't eating animal meat anymore, which I always considered to be a cruel practice.

So anyways, here I am, medicated, grieving over my lost cousin, and eating a salad with spicy ranch. I weigh 173. That's up from last week, before I was told about my cousin's suicide, but my weight is significantly lower than my worst point.

Yes, I know, Ranch dressing has lots of calories. But I walk around in 100 degree heat for hours because I have no car, so I figure I am burning off those Ranch calories.

Anyways, now you know most of me. The rest of this blog will be on random topics. Mostly, I want to explore my health, both physical and mental. I will be posting lists of books I've read that helped me through difficult times, some good vegetarian recipes, places to buy bras that cater to big breasted women, and blog posts chronicling my struggle with life and death.

Mostly I started this blog because I couldn't find a forum that addressed the issues I find most pressing: how to cope with hardships without taking it out on your body. How to adjust to a highly stigmatized mental illness. How to lose weight without developing an eating disorder. How to exist happily with myself while acknowledging that I don't always make the best decisions for myself.

The next blog will be on a lighter note: how to find a bra that fits.

Electra's Complex 101

If you don't like confessional-style, soap opera lives please click "next blog." 

This blog is my way of coping with the loss of my cousin to suicide. We lived together for several years before he moved back with his mother and I hadn't seen him for 2 years when I got the news from his father that he had committed suicide. I don't mean to start off on a sad note, but it's important that anybody who reads this understands that I'm coming from a place of mourning and confusion.

In the aftermath last week, I binge ate and regained 6 pounds I had lost through a vegetarian diet and exercise.I couldn't help my cousin and it seemed like I couldn't help myself either. I stuffed BBQ chicken into my mouth at the park where our two families met to mourn. I gulped down bites of rice. The next day, we got pizza and I ate 3 slices for lunch and 3 slices for dinner. My new, healthy lifestyle went out the window for about 3 days.

I've always had issues with food; I'm an emotional eater, or dieter, it depends. When I lost one of my uncles to a tragic accident at the age of 18, I stopped eating. I sought counseling at the University psych services, and though the intern there flaked on me, he did give me some good advice: find something you can swallow and eat it someplace safe. That turned out to be chicken nuggets with me eating them in the very back of the fast food joint, out of sight. I went down to a size 2.

I came back to my home town after losing my housing accommodations and began to party like crazy. Sex was my new issue. I had lots of it. I ran around to various house parties, met up with random guys, and slept with them. My friend was disgusted. My mother was horrified (we're a traditional Mexican-American family).  I was on the verge of  a nervous breakdown from all the sex, drugs, and rock n roll.

Then I lost it and took a bunch of pills. That was my first experience with a psychiatric hospital. I was labeled bipolar, drugged up, and released. Later, a more specific diagnosis would be given to me: schizo-affective disorder, meaning when I get manic, I stop sleeping and I wind up psychotic. I'm not a bad person, I've never been in a fight and I'm not delinquent. I'm just nuts. Hence, the Electra Complex (Also, my father left before I was born so I figured this would be a good title.)



Please stay tuned for part 2. My mother is home and I have to go buy some Coriander powder and zucchini.
Thanks for reading, and I hope I haven't depressed you too too much!