Thank You!

I really didn't expect that I'd get so much responses and support after posting March's rant. My inbox got flooded with emails quite quickly and I'm going to have to respond to each one of you. I kind of cried a bit. I appriciate so much what you have sent me, it means a lot. It's nice to know that outside of my circle, that other people care about me. Thank you!

Things are looking up at this point, after doing additional assesmments and put on more pills and other adjustments. My life is about to resume it's normally scheduled program, and soon enough the projects will resume, just not yet.

Also in the way is not having a good machine to work with. I had to say good bye to my Lenovo ThinkPad P16, which honestly was a mixed bag. I'll leave the rant for another time, but let's say some design flaws got into the way of actually getting things done. So for now, I'm typing this from a 9 year old computer, I don't know how I'm going to survive with 4GB of RAM for a few weeks.

Stay tuned for more. Cheers!

Breaking Point

I have to apologize for the recent silence and lack of progress in my various projects. My mind hasn't been wired properly for a while now and going to difficult and troubling times. I mentioned before that I'm bipolar schizoaffective and borderline but my symptoms have reached their peak in somewhat recent times. I was promised that my illness would be a prodrome to grow bigger and bigger and they were absolutely correct. My onset of thirteen years ago never hinted at me that I'd be battling a monster that vies to be victorious over my frailty.

This is a very sensitive and personal subject for me and it's guaranteed to make me vulnerable and a target for all sorts of missed opportunities. However, I'm at a breaking point where I just can't hold in the tears anymore. I have to spit everything out in the most embarrassing of places, my blog. At the end of the day, I'm a human being who's going through some tough challenges and if this is a point of judgement for you, please move on and don't waste my time. At least I'm brave enough to put this in public for everyone to learn about.

The subject is graphic both emotionally and physically so I'm going to throw some massive trigger warnings here for those who hold trauma or are so neurotypical that thoughts like these never entered their minds. If you fear seeing a drop of blood coming out of your body or the most painful thing you've ever had was broken nail, this is not for you. In other words, if you've never suffered and take everything for granted, we're just not going to vibe.

My account starts with something in the present. Permanent marks and cuts on my arms that will never heal. I'm not ashamed of them nor do I regret committing the act. It has become part of my story giving a glimpse into who I am and the pain that I had to endure. I've had the bravery this fall to wear short-sleeves for all to see and had people courageous enough to ask me questions about it. It doesn't take much to explain other than admitting that it's self-harm and that 80% of my kind engages in activities like these.

A select few have asked me why I would do something like that. My answer was always the same: because I had to. It's impossible to feel emotional and physical pain at the same time, so this act provides me with consistent relief and distraction from what's going on inside my head. Never has blood looked so tantalizing to me seeing it flow down my arms spoiling my blanket. In my naïve years of teenagerhood, I though that something like that was just so stupid, but now I have total respect for it and fully understand how necessary it is.

Last weekend, I developed a panic attack because I knew I was about to have a psychotic break. No matter how much I was trained to recognize them, they still scare the shit out of me knowing that soon, my reality will melt and I'm going to be in a strange world. The delusions became so real and the paranoia started to hunt me down. I watched the world getting foggier and foggier and losing track of the real world becoming derealization. Imagine yourself not being able to trust your thoughts anymore and everything fading to obscurity revealing a new existence that even a bad trip on psychedelics can't recreate.

That night, my delusional self was keeping me away from my treatment. I thought that something mysterious took over me and that magic will banish it to eternal suffering. However, I had to do what they call opposite action, a very difficult technique that is ingrained in your psyche so deep learned in Dialectical Behavioural Therapy. I struggled to convince myself to get off my couch with all the colours swirling everywhere and swallow giant doses of antipsychotics. It took five hours to regain my consciousness, so to speak, and end the day with bedtime. I was still afraid.

So that's what happened recently, but the cocktail of symptoms has been presenting me with surprises and put me on the path of relapse. A mixed episode out of nowhere collapsed onto my taking me over along with the dreaded short shots of emotions from borderline personality. However, this one wasn't going to be covered by massive doses of Seroquel, it was going to last and for the past few months, I've been in it. The darkness is seeping in dimming even the dimmest of lights, I just can't anymore.

My functioning and cognition took the biggest hit, the thing that I value the most in my mind, is starting to fade away. There's no trigger, it's just the genetic switches that keep being turned on, one by one, and it seems like it's still growing. Every night, I dissociate because of how hopeless I feel and realize that I just had another empty day of nothing. It hurts, a lot.

Throughout my career of mental challenges, I would get lapse of relief, thinking that whatever combination of medications has settled me down. Sometimes it was relief but other times it was just a hypomanic episode giving me the illusion of a cure.

Where I am now is a painful but empty existence. There's nothing inside me, I feel nothing but a void. There are emotions but I can't feel them except through the filter of borderline, and my mood swings are just something to witness through the state of the world around me. Every morning, I start hallucinating and it ends when I go to sleep. However, my symptoms still haunt me in my dreams because the nightmare is both when I'm awake and when I'm asleep.

But, I'm trying to be hopeful and care-seeking. I want to get better and resume my life, but it won't be an easy path. The expression 'live day by day' is insipid and an extreme insult for me, because you can't plan a mental illness like that. The episodes last weeks and months, with no end in sight even if you are aware that there will be finality, but only for that episode. Because, another one is lined up for me.

My condition has taught me to be strong and forced me to become resistant of the ramblings of my mind. I can't get them out of head, or even ignore them, but just let the demons live inside my head and have the party they so badly want. I've brushed death and literally met it a few times so I know what it's like on the other end. I've learned to keep myself safe but the thoughts will never leave me, not even for a day.

On the other hand, I can't let myself submit to my circumstances but I have to cope with them in the best way possible, even if it means hitting the pause button for a while.

That’s it, I’m coming out. Living with Bipolar Schizoaffective Disorder and Borderline Personality...

This was a really difficult decision to make fearing the stigma behind mental challenges and disorders. Revealing my condition will definitely make me more vulnerable in my personal and professional lives. However, if we want to change the perspective of the general populace giving them more insight. More and more people need to express what it’s like to suffer in silence.

What my inside perceives as the outside. I can hear and see the colours. It’s more pain than annoyance.

Thanks to my friend Mary Moody McLean (gifted copyright 2022) for the illustration.

There’s definitely fear associated with these kinds of problems but for the sufferers, it’s even scarier. Losing control of your mind because of brain chemistry problems and neurological pathways that are going in the wrong direction. We are still in the dark ages of psychiatry, but experimentation and studies have developed therapies that enhance quality of life.

The majority of these conditions are chronic and go in the disability bucket. They affect your functioning and make living very difficult as you have to fight your mind while it tries to control you. The darkness is overwhelming and if you really knew what kind of paining we had, it would change your perspective and reveal the thoughts that make us crazy.

What is really important to understand is that our symptoms are beyond our control and not our fault. It’s not something that can be talked out of someone and telling someone to just smile and be happy is the most insulting thing you can say to us. It doesn’t work like that and having your first diagnosis really feels dehumanizing. Learning that you have something wrong with you isn’t the first step to therapy.

The majority of mental conditions are due to genetics and in some rarer cases environmental factors. One might live with a clear-mind until the genetic switch is turned on, usually between the age of 19 and 24. There’s several genomes that indicate a probability of developing a certain condition.

At one point, you realize that you need help and that’s when you seek the help of practitioners. From psychiatrists, to psychologists, to psychotherapists and counsellors. Learning that you have a broken brain causes often jealousy for those who have a ‘normally’ functioning brain. But, eventually you become mindful of what you have and strive to live with it.

Pills, pills and more pills. Day by day they get harder to swallow. As hard to swallow as my reality.

Thanks to my friend Mary Moody McLean (gifted copyright 2022) for the illustration.

A good variety of chronic conditions are somewhat well understood by most, because they can imagine what it feels like, or even have experienced themselves on a transient basis. Chronic pain, multiple sclerosis and diabetes are examples of diseases that don’t require shyness to expose. A headache for example is something experienced by many thus making it easy to relate.

Unfortunately, there is no way to ‘cure’ most affective or psychotic disorders. Treatment focuses on management of symptoms and developing coping strategies to live with them. Most psychiatric drugs have unknown mechanisms of action and they often don’t get rid of the manifestation of the illness but rather only make it easier to manage. What we take aren’t magic mood boosters or stress reducers but rather attempts to correct deficiencies in the brain. Often, just partially.

My adventure started twelve years ago with misdiagnosis after misdiagnoses being put on many drugs that were ineffective. Personally, I got my ‘final’ diagnosis only 3 years ago. Learning that I was bipolar schizoaffective with a mix of borderline personality sank my heart and even made me feel hopeless. Nevertheless, I finally had words that would tell my story in a couple of minutes rather than two hour consultations.

The symptom constellation that I own are both painful and frustrating. As for many mental conditions, they are often discovered to be prodromes. In other words, often things will get worse over time. My combination of mood swings, emotional instability, hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, psychosis, anxiety, stress, derealization, depersonalization, dissociation. avolition, anhedonia, bipolar depression and mania generate quite a battle that requires insight into each monster. You can’t get rid of them, but only learn to live with them.

I don’t need to explain every symptom I have as a quick peek at Wikipedia will give you a good taste of what these complicated words mean. Becoming an outside expert is challenging because it’s hard to speak the same language as your doctor, but for us sufferers, it’s extremely clear and we can only make sense of it when we talk with others who has similar conditions.

At this point, I’m considered ‘managed’ but not ‘treated’. Remission is too far away and often impossible; we are broken for life. Functioning for some is completely impossible while others have hope of living a somewhat ‘normal’ life. But the pain will never go away no matter how mild or severe you have it.

Dreamed view of my relief. The phantasy of reaching remission. But the coloured pain will never go away.

Thanks to my friend Mary Moody McLean (gifted copyright 2022) for the illustration.

In my case, most of my treatment was done through medication. So heavily medicated I am that I would be considered a living pharmacy with over 30 pills entering my blood. A combination of antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, reuptake inhibitors, benzodiazepines and betablockers. Some are luckier than me taking a much smaller cocktail but pharmacists tell me that only they have seen some with a bigger combination. Unfortunately, the side effects can be really dangerous requiring constant bloodwork and ultrasounds. On those drugs, you really do feel medicated, that brain fog never goes away.

Medication is not enough to manage illnesses for most of the time. I did psychotherapy for several years, and out of my pocket, such as Dialectal Behavioural Therapy, Distress Tolerance and Acceptance-Commitment. Many undergo Cognitive Behavioural Therapy but it was a failure to me and I didn’t respond.

While most people picture imagine us sitting on a sofa telling out life story but it’s much different. The focus is on symptoms and treatments with only very basic questions about personal life such as functioning, work and study. Sometimes you mention brief aspects of your existence such as stressors or other triggers.

The best way I can explain what living with mood and psychotic disorders is like this. For me, it’s like living two lives: one that is daily and outside of my head, and the other dealing with the pain inside our brain. So much energy it is depleting that fatigue is a common symptom among us. With no solution other than life hygiene such as eating properly, exercising and sleeping enough.

Blood drawn from my arms because I have to.

Thanks to my friend Mary Moody McLean (gifted copyright 2022) for the illustration.

In another way, we have the desire to eliminate the second life with any means of desperation. I have taken risks trying recreational drugs that nearly put me on the street. I have several suicide attempts under my belt including self-harm such as cutting my arms leaving permanent scars. The mental pain is so great sometimes that physical pain brings relief and a distraction to what’s going on inside your head.

I want to sympathize with those who suffer from any chronic diseases, you are brave. You are not losers who are crazy or someone with an anger management or temper problems. Our disability-adjusted life years are lifelong. Many of us have chosen to be silent. However, the person sharing your desk might be feeling like this. There’s a one-in-fifty chance that they are keeping quiet from the invisible pain.