if you say this clear: I am enough for myself, I don't need anything else. I am enough for myself.

Sunday, 11/19/17, 2:11pm, 5:18pm; Friday, 11/24/17, 5:03pm; Friday, 12/01/17, 8:43am, 4:07pm

It's been... a little while since I last wrote. And part of the reason for that is... I haven't been doing quite as well. I did a bit better for almost a week there, then the majority has been crap again.

It's been really really frustrating. And it's kinda like a whole bunch of years of frustration all built up into a "why the hell am I not better already?" feeling. For awhile there after the ECT acute phase, I was saying this has been life changing, I'm finally finding relief from my depression. But then the last month/month and a half or so, I've been questioning all that. It's exhausting, discouraging, frustrating, incredibly disappointing.

We're at a point that things just seem to be pointing more and more to the possibility of bipolar type II, which looks just like depression and is misdiagnosed fairly often. We're now weaning me off the antidepressant I'm on (since we started wondering if the increased dosage might have actually made me worse, yet another sign for bipolar), and I'm starting to take a mood stabilizer, used for bipolar. Unfortunately this medication has a good 8-week ramp up to the full dosage, so it'll likely be awhile before it starts helping, you know, if it does. Because of that, we did decide to do a 3 ECT treatment burst, right after Thanksgiving, to hopefully jump-start my mood. And then I ended up adding the Monday and Wednesday before Thanksgiving as treatment days.

Man, I've even been rather good about working out every day, and it's incredibly frustrating to not be noticing any clear benefits from that. I feel like I used to get a nice high from working out; now why can't that be happening now, when it feels like I need it the most???

On a separate, happier note, the week that I was doing a little better, I got a really nice surprise one day when I opened the front door to go to the bus stop. There was a note waiting for me on the front porch... it was something that completely made my day, and probably several days after. And it still makes me tear up to re-read the note, and I've been wearing the bracelet every day since.

It's all from a woman in my neighborhood who I had recently told about my illness and treatment and blog, and she was interested in reading the blog. And honestly, I never really know when I do share my blog with someone new, whether or not they'll actually read it. Or if they'll read one post and just be turned off to all of it. Just like how I never know if I tell someone new about my depression if it's just going to turn the conversation into awkward silence. Apparently my blog meant enough to this woman to write the kind kind words in the note and to pick up the lovely MantraBand for me. 

I like wearing a reminder every day that I am Enough. It's a good, daily reminder for me.

And now I've completed the burst of treatment- today's Friday and I had 3 treatments this week, 2 last week. Whew. It's been exhausting, and my brain is feeling all the taxiing effects. We decided to schedule the next one for next Wednesday, so not too long away, but hopefully a good amount of time to recover.

I've had a lot of help from neighbors and friends and family this week. Having 3 treatments in one week is a crap-ton of coordination for rides, care post-treatment. It's not easy.

we’re broken in two from the day we are born, but you’ll not hear any more of this said

Tuesday, 10/04/16, 8:10am, 12:05pm, 1:25pm

I know I've gone off my soap box several times throughout the course of this blog about the stigma around mental illness and the effects that it has on people with it- here, here, and here for example. But until stigma around mental illness is gone from this world (something I don't expect to happen in my lifetime let alone my kids'), I will continue to talk about it, to bring it up and shine light to it.

I've posted this before, but I think it's worth re-visiting. When I googled "stigma", here's what came up:

stig·ma

ˈstiɡmə/

noun

1. 1.

   a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person.

   "the stigma of mental disorder"

   synonyms:

   shame, disgrace, dishonor, ignominy, opprobrium, humiliation, (bad) reputation "the stigma of bankruptcy"

Note, the first example is "the stigma of mental disorder". That's because it is SO prevalent. You don't believe me? Read here and here. Why do I think that stigma is still present? Because people still treat mental illness different from physical illness. They assign a shame around mental illness, making the illness his/her fault.

I've stated some of the statistics before, but what does stigma look like?

Stigma is the wave of embarrassment when you talk about crazy Uncle Louie who suffers from biopolar disorder or cousin Steve's crazy ex wife who suffers from schizophrenia. Stigma is shifting your eyes away from the homeless person you see on the corner, mumbling to themselves. Self-stigma is the refusal to seek treatment when you suffer from a mental illness because you think you should be "strong enough" without it. Stigma is when Donald Trump can suggest that military service members who commit suicide do so because they "can't handle it".

Stigma is this internet meme (there's a part of me that doesn't even want to post it, to give it any notoriety).




Oh that meme makes me so angry (and trust me I know the benefits of the outdoors and I recognize that antidepressants are far from perfect), now I've gotta post the correction meme to this.



The thing is antidepressants can mean that difference between suicidal and not for many people, for some they may take the edge off, for others they might not help much and the side effects may make it not worth it. And then of course for some, they can cause suicidal thoughts, so I agree, when that happens, they're shit. But it isn't fair to discount all the good they do for so many people. And it isn't weak to take medication, it doesn't mean that someone "can't handle it"; it simply means that person has chosen to medically treat their brain. Just like you would with any other organ.

I hate the stigma, I hate my own self-stigma. It makes my depression that much more difficult to battle. I'm fighting that stigma, continually, and I will as long as I'm on this earth. I fight the stigma everytime I write openly about my struggles, I fight the stigma when I request or accept help from others, I fight the stigma when I raise my kids to believe a mental illness is an illness not a character flaw.