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
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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....

Anxious about Being Outed

If I suddenly stop blogging it is because I am afraid of being outed as a former mental patient. I try to deceive myself into believing that everyone around me thinks I am crazy due to my quirks and neurotic personality. However, nobody has tried to coral me into the back of an ambulance where a burly EMT and a stretcher with the restraints wait. I must not be as insane as I once was, because before the burly EMT came every year, at least twice.

I prefer calm, dull life to the adrenaline spikes of psychosis and the inevitable period of confinement that followed. I blog just as proof that a former mental patient can lead a calm, dull life just like most of you. I want to show you the inside of a person with real mental illness, the horror, the irony, the ups and the downs. Still, I would not want my professors, classmates, or future employers to know. I can hide safely behind this computer screen from all of you who are critical, but in real life I get enough of that without everybody knowing I am medicated to the gills. If people found out I would be tempted to move. I would leave for a far off place, preferably Sweden.

So, if one day you find that I have deleted this little blog, it is because I got nervous that I may be outed for being certifiable.

Just to cheer myself up, I will now talk about people I admire. Kay Redfield Jamison is a researcher, PhD, and writer. I admire her. Elyn R. Saks is a lawyer, writer, and activist. I admire her. John Nash is a mathematical genius and Noble Prize winner. I admire him. They're all bipolar or schizophrenic. Okay, that cheered me up.

Unspeakable Tragedy in our nation this week. I haven't blogged at all lately because of what happened. I think everyone across the country is in a state of shock.

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When my cousin committed suicide last July I did all my homework as a means to cope. Rather than dwell on the pain, I read British literature and wrote expository essays. The pain never went away, but I managed to cope. I think that is what I am doing right now by blogging: coping with something horrible that never should have happened.



Just to put something in perspective---  Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and every other person responsible for atrocities and genocides, were not afflicted with genetic mental illness; they were sociopaths.

I read on a yahoo comment board that "all it takes is one psycho so we should.....to all the crazy...." (he was referring to mental patients and the mentally ill). I am afraid that is your train of thought as well, reader. I once told my psychiatrist that people were conspiring to put me in a death camp because of my defective DNA. Allegedly, I was floridly psychotic at the time.

After 9/11 there was a lot of pain too. There was a lot of blame aimed at people of Middle Eastern origin, regardless of innocence. In these volatile times it is easy to punish 1.5 million innocent people than 1 dead, guilty person, but it doesn't make it right.

I obey the constitution and I hope you will as well.
~Antigone

Confession on Confessional Writing

You don't know me. You are probably very bored of me just from these two sentences. So why do you keep reading the next sentence?

The problem with confessional writing is also the main reason why people are willing to read confessional writing. It is deeply personal. It is like eating dinner at a restaurant naked. Everybody around you wants to know why you're naked at the dinner table. Meanwhile, you pick at the lasagna.

Writing, to some, is an act of vanity. It is a way of marking your name on the internet like so much graffiti on a train car. I do not disagree with this. However, I feel that the real answer is a lot more complex and perplexing. I write confessional posts about my sordid life because I have an uncontrollable urge to create a narrative of my life. I have to write, it hurts when I do not write. I have to be honest because I am compelled to write the truth. Sometimes I may write little book critiques or diatribes against discrimination, but the common denominator is that I write what I'm thinking at that moment. Freckles, warts, and all, you see me as I am inside.

The one thing that I worry about is posting something in anger and then regretting it later. When I type, I type at least 35 words per minute, faster if I have had coffee, and it goes without saying that I'm not always consciously thinking about what comes next. What comes next is my thought....whatever that thought may be. I wish I could control my thoughts better. I wish I could have a brain that only thought about adorable cats, weight loss, sugar plums, and the like, but I don't. I get mad when I see youtube comments that are explicitly hate-filled. I come back here and I try to create a space where I feel that cyberspace is negated.

That is the whole goal of my blog. To create a cyberspace where people feel a little more at ease with what society labels as flaws. I tried looking on the internet for warm communities of people with mental illnesses. I found some sites but nothing that was geared to a high-functioning person. I looked for sites that were for overweight people trying to juggle losing weight with the knowledge that you can be fat and still be a good person. I really couldn't find anything like that. So I thought, well, I have an art blog where I post my drawings, why not create a blog where I just write honestly about my struggles and my discoveries of good books?

I'll try to steer clear of politics.....that is a sticky subject for any writer. Besides, all you need to know is that Noam Chomsky is my idea of a great role model. Enough said!