More of Jesus

Posted on by Astrid

Today, I am joining in with Five Minute Friday (FMF), for which the word today is “More”. I regularly read the posts from other bloggers there, but rarely join in, as I”m not a practising Christian. I do believe in God, but am generally a lot more progressive than most Christians and do not like the practical requirements and political implications of organized religion. This feels odd to me sometimes. I crave spiritual guidance.

I found out through Five Minute Friday today about Betsy Cruz’s Book More of God and the title struck a chord.

I want more of God. I want more of a spiritual life. I feel I should be engaging in meditation and prayer more, but I don’t.

I also feel I want to connect to other believers more, but feel generally left out because I’m too progressive. I was kicked out of an apparently conservative Christian blogging community when I mentioned (without condoning it) the possibility of connecting to a higher power other than God in a post on my old blog. I felt sad about that, so I got angry with the Christian blogosphere and by extension with christianity as a whole. I wanted no more Jesus. But yet I do.

Jesus didn’t kick me out of that community. He loves me (and I’m sorry if this gets me kicked out of FMF too) even if I don’t follow the rules of conservative Christianity. He can and does help me find inspiration in life. I want more of Him.

#IWSG: Finding My Voice

Posted on by Astrid

Today, it is once again time to share our thoughts with the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (#IWSG). The optional question assigned for this month is to write about from whose perspective you like to write best. Since I rarely write fiction nowadays, my answer is simple: my own.

I didn’t do much blogging in the past month. Part of the reason is the need to remain silent about some recent occurrences in my life. This means some diary-style writing is out of the question right now. Unless, that is, I do it offline.

Which brings me to the fact that I rediscovered Dyrii, an app on my iPhone and now on my Mac too, which you can use for keeping a journal. It still needs a little getting used to on my part, but overall, I like it. It helps me find my voice again, even if it isn’t in public.

I seem to have been able to write some more again in the past week. It feels good. I always feel good when I write.

I am also seriously thinking of starting up my fiction writing again, even though I am told that it generally lacks imaginativeness. I will see if tomorrow, which is my day off from day activities, I can write some fictional piece again.

In other news, I got myself the Dictionary.com app on my iPhone. I am loving looking up new words and idioms. As you might know, English is my second language and half the words that I come across in word-of-the-day challenges, I do not know the meaning of. I’m told this isn’t so unusual and that I’d benefit more from learning idioms rather than vocabulary. I don’t care. It’s cool to learn either way.

DID Awareness Day and Plural Pride Day 2019

Posted on by Astrid

Today is DID Awareness Day and Plural Pride Day. I really want to share something for it, but I struggle with knowing what to share. I haven’t written about our experience of being plural in a long while, so maybe today I should jump at the opportunity. For today’s post, I am just going to introduce the subject of DID and our system to people who may not be aware.

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a trauma-based mental health condition in which the sufferer experiences two or more distinct identities or personality states, each with their own unique way of perceiving and relating to the world. People with DID also have amnesia for important information either in the present or past that is too extensive to be due to ordinary forgetfulness. People who do not have this type of amnesia, or whose identities are not fully formed, may be diagnosed with other specified dissociative disorder (OSDD) type 1A or 1B.

We were diagnosed with DID in 2010. At the time, we could be pretty in your face about ourselves, because we were in an environment where we felt relatively safe to be ourselves. This, however, also opened us up to suggestion, as our therapist concluded pretty early in the process that we have DID. Normally, a diagnosis of full-fledged DID is not made after initial assessment, but requires at least six months of therapy with a DID therapist.

Anyway, we probably do experience some level of amnesia, but didn’t know how to explain it to our therapist. For this reason, we would report we didn’t remember something, even though we showed in our actions that we did. This got people to assume we were faking our amnesia and by extension the whole dissociative experience.

When we moved from one psychiatric institution into another in 2013, we no longer felt safe. We actively denied the alters and started to explain ourselves away as bad moods. That’s probably one reason our diagnosis was changed from DID to borderline personality disorder (BPD). My next psychologist, some years later still, went so far as to say we invented our DID because we felt it’d be an interesting diagnosis. Well, no.

We first became aware of ourselves in the summer of 2001, when the body was fifteen. At the time, the host didn’t see the alters as part of herself. In fact, if I reread my diary from back then, it felt as though I was bordering on psychosis. I wasn’t though.

In early 2004, the alters started to appear more and claim their own names. We denied having “multiple personalities”, but only on the grounds that we didn’t lose time. Like I said above, while this could rule out full-fledged DID, it doesn’t necessarily do so (identity amnesia and amnesia for past events also counts), and it still means we’re multiple, ie. diagnosable with OSDD.

Currently, we don’t have a diagnosis of a dissociative disorder. We’re not ready to undergo the assessment process for it, as psychological assessments are a huge trigger for us. However, here we are, all 26 or so of us.

Song Lyric Sunday: Occupation

Posted on by Astrid

I haven’t participated in Song Lyric Sunday in months and for a while, I couldn’t find it. Turns out Helen, the founder of the challenge, is struggling with her health. Jim over at A Unique Title for Me is temporarily hosting the challenge now. This week’s theme is Occupation.

The first song that came to mind is a song I used to listen to a lot in the early 2000s, and some later too when I didn’t have an active Internet connection. I had a Jim Croce CD that I’d borrowed from my parents and never given back. Here is the song I’m referring to. For those not aware, I had no idea what this song was about when I listened to it a lot, since I grew up in an era past operators. For those who didn’t grow up with landlines at all, can you imagine this?

Title: Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)

Singer/Songwriter: Jim Croce

Release Date: 1972

Operator, well could you help me place this call
See, the number on the match book is old and faded
She’s living in L.A.
With my best old ex-friend Ray
A guy she said she knew well and sometimes hated

[Chorus]
But isn’t that the way they say it goes
Well let’s forget all that
And give me the number if you can find it
So I can call just to tell ’em I’m fine, and to show
I’ve overcome the blow
I’ve learned to take it well
I only wish my words
Could just convince myself
That it just wasn’t real
But that’s not the way it feels

[Verse 2]
Operator, well could you help me place this call
Cause I can’t read the number that you just gave me
There’s something in my eyes
You know it happens every time
I think about the love that I thought would save me

[Chorus]
But isn’t that the way they say it goes
Well let’s forget all that
And give me the number if you can find it
So I can call just to tell ’em I’m fine, and to show
I’ve overcome the blow
I’ve learned to take it well
I only wish my words
Could just convince myself
That it just wasn’t real
But that’s not the way it feels

No, no, no, no
That’s not the way it feels

[Verse 3]
Operator, well let’s forget about this call
There’s no one there I really wanted to talk to
Thank you for your time
Ah, you’ve been so much more than kind
You can keep the dime

[Chorus]
But isn’t that the way they say it goes
Well let’s forget all that
And give me the number if you can find it
So I can call just to tell ’em I’m fine, and to show
I’ve overcome the blow
I’ve learned to take it well
I only wish my words
Could just convince myself
That it just wasn’t real
But that’s not the way it feels

Celexa #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for #SoCS is “cele”. Choose a word that starts with it and go from there. I initially chose “celebrate”, but I got stuck before I even introduced my topic. Then it hit me, I’d have to choose another word: Celexa. I bet this isn’t as common a choice as “celebrate”, which I’ve seen with at least one other blogger.

Celexa is the antidepressant I’ve taken for over eight years and counting. Its generic name is citalopram. It is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), the most commonly used type of antidepressant. It is known to help with both depression and some with obsessive and compulsive behaviors. Not that I have those a lot, but I do suffer with depression quite a bit.

That being said, I hadn’t even been diagnosed with depression when I was first put on this medication. It was used as an adjuvant to my antipsychotic, Abilify, when two increases in the dose didn’t calm my anxiety-induced irritability.

Years later, I was diagnosed with depression. This gave me the courage to finally ask for a dose increas of my Celexa. I had already had five dose increases in my Abilify and was at the highest dose, but no-one bothered to look beyond my irritability anymore. In fact, I am not sure the psychiatrist who initially put me on Celexa did.

In May of 2018, I got put on my current dose of 40mg. This is so far working quite well. I mean, even with the bad news I received this past week – and trust me, it was very bad, distressing news -, I am not falling into the pit of depression. I’m pretty sure that without my high dose of Celexa, I’d have spiraled out of control. And I don’t need that happening if I want the situation, which the bad news was about, to work out.

The Friday Four

Posted on by Astrid

I am struggling a lot. I got some really bad news, but I cannot share it publicly at this point. This has caused me a lot of stress, but it did get me to revive my offline journal, which I keep in an app called Dyrii on my iPhone. I have the app on my Mac too, but haven’t yet fully figured it out on there.

That being said, my not being able to share what’s on my mind publicly, did keep me from writing on this blog at all. To get myself back into the writing habit, I am participating in A Guy Called Bloke’s Friday Four. I get the impression that this is the last installment in the series for now, so I’m rather late to the party. I like the questions though.

1] If you are in a bad mood, do you prefer to be left alone or have someone to cheer you up?
I prefer to be with someone to talk to and for them to cheer me up, but I often act like I prefer to be left alone. I tend to withdraw when depressed.

2] What’s the one thing that people always misunderstand about you?
The (lack of) significance of my being of above-average verbal intelligence. I got a bad reminder of this last week (the stressor I cannot share about here). For those who don’t know, I have an above-average verbal IQ, but struggle in almost every other area of cognitive, social and emotional development, adaptive behavior, etc.

3] What do you think about when you’re by yourself?
Usually the current stressor du jour, which often involves the future.

4] What are three things you value most about a person?
Kindness, compassion, respect.

Bonus Series 1 Question
If heaven is real and you died tomorrow, would you get in?
Yes, because I believe there’s no special requirement to get into Heaven (like accepting some kind of savior) and I’m not an altogether evil person.

Gratitude List (February 23, 2019) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

This week was a truly mixed bag. I am tempted to focus on the negative. I mean, even my Thankful Thursday post sounded more negative than grateful. For this reason, I’m going to write a gratitude list for this week. As always, I am linking up with #TToT

1. Nearly 14,000 steps on Monday! I had over 120 active minutes thanks to a long walk in the morning, another long walk in the afternoon and going on the elliptical.

2. No more need for painkillers. It’s been five weeks since my collarbone fracture and I am now almost pain-free without medication.

3. Lovely weather. It’s been a lot warmer than is normal for February this past week and it’s supposed to get even warmer next week. I know this could be bad in terms of climate change, but I’m so grateful.

4. No weight gain. I had my annual physical check-up at the mental health agency last week and weighed the same as in late December. Since I’ve not been minding my diet at all, this is good news. My blood pressure was also pretty good.

5. PRN tranquilizers. I haven’t needed them anymore after Wednesday, but I’m still glad I have them.

6. My cynical sense of humor. By 2021, everything will be okay. I know really I can’t wait that long, but everytime I say these words, they still bring a grin to my face.

7. Horseback riding with my day activities group. Because two clients from my group are currently not capable of horseback riding, the staff asked me whether I want to ride in their place. I loved it.

8. My mother texting me. She rarely calls or texts me and I’d let it go and not contacted her after our visit last December. She asked how I’m doing. Of course, I still had to avoid the elephant in the room that is my going into long-term care, but oh well.

9. Getting more used to my Mac. Yesterday, I even started writing a blog post on it using an external blogging app (because WordPress is hard to use). I haven’t figured everything out, but I’m sure that I will.

10. My mood being slightly better thes elast few days. I am not nearly as anxious as I was early in the week.

What have you been grateful for lately?

Thankful Thursday (February 21, 2019): Meltdowns

Posted on by Astrid

Today is Thursday and I’m participating in the Thankful Thursday blog hop. I am thankful for all the wonderful people in my life, who stick by me even when I’m struggling.

We have been struggling a lot lately. On Tuesday, we were in an almost-constant state of panic. Our staff tried to comfort us, but it was hard. They were nice though and even though we were very distressed, they didn’t get reactive.

Then Wednesday didn’t start good either. We had to have a blood draw and the laboratory person was supposed to come to our home. She hadn’t told us at what time she’d come though, so I waited for an hour, not having eaten as instructed, and then left. I was in a meltdown already.

Later that morning, once at day activities, I was on the rocking lounger in the yard. The staff had said she’d come get me back indoors “in a while”. Well she looked through the window and saw me rocking nicely, but then when I wanted to get off, no-one saw or heard me. That’s when I melted down again.

And then, in the afternoon, my husband informed me that he wouldn’t be home from work till 8PM. My in-laws couldn’t have me eat at theirs either, so I would have to be alone at home till 8PM. I was in a huge meltdown again and ran out of the house.

Thankfully, a woman who lives further down the street came to me and calmed me and helped me find the way to my home.

In addition to being grateful for all the nice people in my life, I”m thankful for PRN tranquilizers. My husband has them in a locker, because I’ve taken two overdoses on them in the past. I hardly ever use them, so when I had used my last pill, I’d forgotten to ask my husband for a refill. Fortunately, he did yesterday. He reminds me that even though I hardly use them, I don’t have them prescribed for no reason at all.

2021

Posted on by Astrid

I am struggling a lot. On Sunday, I read that long-term care funding will be available to those with a lifelong psychiatic disorder, but it won’t be till 2021. Then, I had myself convinced that I won’t get funding until then. After all, the funding person said the medical advisor may have to talk to my psychiatrist. I’m pretty sure my psychiatrist feels my primary disability is psychiatric in nature, because, well, she’s a psychiatrist. Then I will be denied long-term care funding for now.

Of course, I could be seeing the 2021 thing as a positive, in that even if I don’t qualify for long-term care now, I almost certainly will by then. I cannot see it like that though, because right now I’m virtually drowning.

I struggled a lot at day activities today. I have been struggling for a few weeks, in fact. I couldn’t find the words to express myself at first, only that I’m anxious. Then finally I was able to put some feelings into words. I fear when going into the sensory room on my own that the staff will forget me if I fall asleep. I also feel very easily overloaded by the other clients (and sometimes the staff). I just realize as I write this that staff trying to explain what is happening, sometimes overloads me even more.

I’m also afraid I will be kicked out of this day center if my challenging behavior escalates and that I’ll be left at home alone all day then. I’m not sure whether I believe the staff when they say that I won’t.

I am just so scared. I don’t know whether I can go on like this for two more years. In fact, I’m pretty certain that I can’t.

Carol

Was I Sometimes Raised as a Golden Child?

Posted on by Astrid

I have been feeling really off lately. I keep having flashbacks. I also keep having what I’d describe as flashforwards, where I imagine my parents’ reaction to the different possible outcomes of the long-term care situation. These then lead to more flashbacks. One particular flashback I keep having is to a phone conversation I had with my mother when I’d just been admitted to the mental hospital in 2007, or maybe it was shortly before then. She yelled at me “You can’t even wipe your butt without your support worker there”. While this was and still is exaggerated, I do have issues with my personal hygiene, including sometimes with toileting.

I have noticed that there’s a lot of shame attached to my needs. Like, there is this constant nagging voice in my mind saying that I really do manipulate everyone into giving me more care. After all, am I not getting by? This part of me is telling me to erase everyone from my life and just go live on my own, since even if I lived with my husband and no support, there was still my husband to be manipulated.

I was discussing all this with my nurse practitioner last Thursday. He said even if I do manipulate people (and I no doubt do, as does everyone else), these people also let themselves be manipulated. Like, if they have an attitude like they’d rather help me with every little thing than endure my frustration, it’s no wonder I become dependent.

There was this show on Dutch television last Sunday about a second grade class. I didn’t see it, but a term used in it that was repeated often throughout the week, was “curling mother”. I have no idea whether that’s the correct English term, but it refers to a parent who helps their child with everything until they’re eighteen and then magically expects them to have learned independence and leave the nest. My nurse practitioner was reminded of this when I described my parents. It feels odd, because even though yes my parents did help me with every little thing, this expectation that I move out at eighteen was made very explicit from an early age on. It wasn’t like my parents were hoovering over me not realizing that they’d not be there for me forever. In fact, I’m pretty sure they couldn’t wait for me to move out. It just ugh, feels so off. Like I was spoiled somehow because my parents did everything for me.

At this point, I remember a discussion in an inner child healing group in which the original poster commented on some author or speaker saying that the golden child of narcissistic parents suffers a lot. This person was confused, because the golden child is the child favorited by the narcissistic parent, the child who doesn’t get abused (or so it seems). Some people said that the golden child suffers a lot because, well, they are only the narcissist’s favorite as long as they live up to their perfect standards.

I was raised in a household where the golden child/scapegoat roles reversed repeatedly. For those not aware, the scapegoat is the main target of obvious abuse in a narcissistic family. As such, I can relate to a lot of golden child attributes. Like, I was often praised excessively, bragged about and let off the hook. Then again, I was, and this was always very clear, expected to livve up to my parents’ perfect-image plan for me. Once I stopped doing this, I was placed in a clearer scapegoat role.

It still feels off to think of myself as having been spoiled. I know Pete Walker says spoiling is a severe kind of trauma too. However, in society, it is often treated like the spoiled child is to blame for being spoiled. And they definitely aren’t. Only as adults can they choose to undo the effects of this trauma, but they have to admit it first. I have to accept this.