Paradoxically, living with it, it being a part of you, and trying to explain this enigmatic phenomenon, in terms of how it works and what it is, is proving, like biting your own teeth, nigh on impossible.
Defining something requires having the words available to decipher the behaviours it’s created and what it manifests into and explodes within you interfering with your functionality. Sometimes there’s no words in the language we have that concisely describes and defines what is happening.
For example, trying to make sense of psychosis; “Your thoughts start to become more and more outlandish. Thinking that maybe your soul had been swapped with someone else’s, a renegade who was on the run from MI5 or a similar organisation. Paranoid that everyone is looking at you and talking about you, watching you. The fact of the matter though is that you are harbouring the soul of a fugitive, your own, you are a fugitive who is running from yourself, detached from your consciousness and on the run from nothing else but reality. Your reality.”
Nothing is ever a consistent experience with Mental Illness. No two episodes of trauma have the same precursors or present themselves as they have done before. Nothing is ever the same. It’s always new, like it’s constantly evolving within you.
So, people lose touch with reality, and live in a world of illusions. By illusions, I’m referring to the thoughts people have. Relating specifically to this endless chatter in the skull. Perpetual and compulsive, a relentless repetition of words, of reckoning the past and calculating the future, creating the in trepidation of something that hasn’t, and probably never will, happened. Yet it is a fixation that consumes the mind to the point of being unable to comprehend or experience the reality of the situation never occurs. Playing out all these negative scenarios an producing a massive amount of anxiety over them is nothing more than having, in Layman’s terms, a shit imagination. I think so because I have experienced it. I have had an argument about it with a Psychologist on a Mental Health forum who said I was disrespectful, I asked if he suffered from Anxiety, and he said no. So I returned with the question that how can his advice and understanding be any more, or even equal to mine, as I live with Anxiety and I have the best education in what it is about, not what you are taught in a lecture or a text book. He booted me off the forum, maybe he was having trouble with his anxiety as someone had finally challenged the so called experts and engaged in a discussion?
This brings me on to the topic of questioning the psychiatrist or doctor or health care practitioners, you can feel obligated to just sit there and say nothing as you are told this and that about the issue, told to take these pills, do this and then do that, but enough is enough.
From an early age we see a doctor and through the time we grow up and into adulthood, we display the same behaviour at the doctors as it is ingrained on us. Sat there, in silence, not challenging anything, not even asking questions. We have no idea what the pills are that you are now taking. How do we know they won’t react in a bad way?
Off we pop into the chemist and pick up the prescription, that is £10 if you have to pay for it, and we think we will get better in no time now because the doctor said this and I have my pills. WAKE UP! I have to take tablets every day, 12 in total. I take 9 in the morning and 3 in the evening. I’m going to have to do this for the rest of my life because there’s no cure for Bipolar Disorder. I’m only remedying the illness. But if you think about it cynically, if there was a medication formulated that cured Bipolar and other Mental Illnesses, then the Pharmaceutical Company would have lost a shit load of patients, or should I say customers. A patient cured is a customer lost to them. It’s disease management and symptom maintenance. Big Pharma has the say over your health care and your metaphorically being controlled by a corrupt, elite and evil conglomerate that has the power to end your life at any point.
So if you ask why you are being prescribed a medication, how it works and what it does to you, you will find that you get a limited response and very little information. You see, doctors are told which medication to prescribe for certain illnesses and ailments. For a person with Depression, it is primarily Sertraline which is prescribed. It is a horrible drug and having spoken to other people who have been prescribed it, they all say the same. There’s a lot of different drugs that are prescribed for Depression. It does seem to me though that when you change the medication, it is a lottery for your next medication. It is from a family of antidepressants called SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors). The alternative drugs are in the same classification as the previous one that wasn’t working for you, but then you find that this new one one does, so why is that? Do pharmaceutical companies notice this and go back to the chemists and use the feedback from the people taking the drug, that it doesn’t work or it works really well? I don’t think they do.
Nothing new has been uncovered in the treatment of Bipolar since John Cade discovered the effects of Lithium Carbonate in 1948. Nearly 80 years ago! If you’re wondering how to make advancements in treatment don’t look at the treatment for Bipolar. In 80 years there’s been no improvement in treatment. Yes, there has been the introduction of 2-Generation Antipsychotics, and Antidepressants in the late 80s, but these are for regulating the levels of monoamine neurotransmitters in the brain, predominantly Serotonin and Dopamine, which are associated with mood and cognitive functions. These medications are also just a remedy for the conditions they are prescribed for.
My experiences with trying to get a proactive understanding of my Bipolar (which I was told to do by a psychiatrist), is a laborious process. I think that I am probably a clinician’s worst nightmare because I ask for more detailed explanations and why this is happening and that happening. But I receive limited response.
The way you talk to yourself creates the atmosphere in your mind, the home you live in, so make it a hacienda of tranquility and serenity.
#MightyTogether
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