PART 2: STIGMA: MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL CHALLENGES. HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THEM?

    

Welcome back for Part 2, my friends. So much to share, so much to say. I could do a separate blog post on most of this. And maybe there will be on some. In the meantime, take your time reading and understanding this post. It could save lives. 

So, how do we become stigma-free?

To be stigma-free, we must be judgment-free, label-free, comparison-free and shame-free. The answer is the same two-word sermon that Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught. STOP IT! Stop the judgment. Stop the labeling. Stop the comparison. Stop the gossiping. Stop the shame. Stop it.

Show compassion one to another and yourself. Be merciful. Be nonjudgmental. Be kind. Listen. Be understanding and supportive. This is not just the blues that someone can "shake off" or simply "just cheer up." Empathize with them.  Believe them. Believe that what they are enduring is real. 

Mental illness itself is not scary when understood, supported and treated. If you fear mental illness or those who have mental illness; if you do not know how to respond or what to say, know that an underlying cause is a lack of knowledge and too much stigma getting in the way. Sadly, the result is too many people with mental illness that are left untreated and unsupported.

I want to share a few things to help set aside myths and confusion that add to or encourage stigma. There are a lot of different mental and emotional challenges. I intend to speak mostly broadly about them, but may touch on a couple of specific ones as I go.

• First, understand that mental and emotional disorders are not rare.
• "They are more common than cancer, diabetes or heart disease."
• One in five Americans has some form of mental health diagnosis.

• "One in four people in the world will be affected by mental illness at some time in their lives." 
• Many of these people are the people you regularly interact with. - A friend once told me that part of the reason people were slow to reach out to help me was that they could not conceive in their mind that someone like me might be depressed or have anxiety.
• More people are suffering than you know. They often suffer in isolation and in shame.

• Second, understand that mental and emotional disorders do not discriminate. 
• While there are many causes and certain risk factors, it can happen to anyone.

• It can happen to YOU.
• These illnesses can develop in the best of environments.
• Children can, and do, have mental health conditions. This is not an indication of bad parenting.
• There is not one stereotype for mental illness.

• Among the more globally known and respected people who have experienced
• depression or anxiety: Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, Steve Young, Robin Williams, Jeffrey R. Holland and Donny Osmond.
• bipolar: Carrie Fisher, Patty Duke, Mariah Carey, Mel Gibdon, Demi Lovato, Russell Brand, Ernest Hemingway, Sinead O'Connor and Frank Sinatra.
• autism: Dan Aykroid, Temple Grandin, Daryl Hannah, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Roseanne Barr and Jerry Seinfield.
• ADHD/ADD: Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Justin Timberlake, Adam Levine, Howie Mandel and Glenn Beck.
• OCD: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Radcliffe, Cameron Diaz, Howie Mandel, Justin Timberlake, Billy Bob Thornton and David Beckham

• Third, understand that mental illness is as real as any other illness.

• We know that mental or emotional health disorders are no different than having high blood pressure, cancer, a seizure disorder or diabetes. Individuals with these disorders are not told to "just snap out of it." This is no different. 

• We also know that there are proven treatments to help many feel better.
• We know that mental heath problems are not a personality weakness, character flaw, a lack of willpower, or a spiritual or moral failing. 

• In fact, most people who experience mental health challenges are among the most faithful, compassionate, creative, hard working, strong and brave people you will ever meet. 

• A mental illness does not make someone less of a person. They just have different experiences that not everyone has to face.

• Fourth, understand there are many factors that can contribute to our mental and emotional state; both internally and externally. 

• Too often people want to compare or minimize what the person is experiencing; often thinking they are faking it or that the solution is simple. Take a pill, think positive, have faith, just exercise. It can be much more complex that that. 
• We all experience down days or some anxiety; mental illness is more than a bad day.

• The following is not meant to be a complete list, however, all of these can affect the state of the brain. Often, more that one is involved:

• Biological factors
• Nutritional deficiencies or toxicities
• Chemical imbalances
• Hormone imbalances
• Brain chemistry
• Brain damage due to a head injury; other injuries
• Chronic or ongoing medical concern or illness
• Imbalance in intestinal flora
• Neurological issues
• Even something so simple as an infection or allergy can put the whole chemistry situation upside down.
• Genetic predisposition or family history of mental health problems
• Life experience
• Abuse: including physical, verbal, sexual, mental or emotional
• Neglect: physical or emotional
• Trauma related to military combat
• Prolonged and/or repeated trauma
• A traumatic event, such as the death of a loved one, financial loss or divorce.
• In the case of PTSD and Complex PTSD, "unprocessed trauma changes physiology. It rewires the brain. Trauma leaves traces on the mind and emotions, on our capacity for joy and intimacy and on our biology and immune systems." (Bessel van der Kolk).  

• Fifth, understand that there are a range of mental illnesses and they effect each individual differently.  They vary in length and severity.
• Sometimes these challenges are temporary, sometimes intermittent, sometimes mild and sometimes they are severe and persistent, sometimes throughout a lifetime.
• Sometimes those who develop mental health challenges or illness can be impaired in their ability to cope with the routines and daily demands of life.
• Sometimes they manage just fine with supports in place.

• They often "contribute to a host of problems that may include disability, pain, or death."
• One of the inherent challenges in these struggles is that, "Mental health affects our thoughts, emotions, behavior and relationships."
• Such conditions are often emotionally draining and confusing for the individual, as well as for loved ones.
• The way the mind works when thus afflicted may not make sense, but it does not  need to make sense to be respected.

• Speaking of major depressive disorder, Jeffrey R. Holland describes it as "an affliction so severe that it significantly restricts a person's ability to function fully, a crater in the mind so deep that no one can responsibly suggest it would go away if those victims would just square their shoulders and think more positively -- though I am a vigorous advocate of square shoulders and positive thinking! No, this dark night and spirit is more than mere discouragement.

• Be gentle with yourselves and with those who struggle.

• Sixth, understand that the vast majority of people with mental health problems are no more likely to be violent than anyone else.
• Only  3%-5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious illness.
• Actually, people with mental illness are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population.
• You probably know someone with a mental health problem and don't even realize it, because many people with mental health problems are highly active and productive members of our communities, as noted above.

• Seventh, understand that everyone has his or her own path to healing or managing mental illness. Just as symptoms and concerns can manifest in unique ways even when individuals have the same diagnosis, their approach to healing or managing these disorders will be individual.

• Many forms of treatment can and do help. Each person must find his/her own path, walk his/her own journey and do what works for him/her. No stigma. 
• The approach or treatment may change from time to time. That is okay.
• We can learn from the journey of others. It is very unhealthy, however, if one is comparing with someone else or contributing to blame or shame. If so, Stop It.
• We may not be able to alter the journey, but we can make sure no one walks it alone.

• A daily walk through the mountains or daily exercise is often enough for some.
• Yoga or a spiritual practice helps some.
• Therapy is vital for most. At least for a time.
• For some, balancing brain chemistry takes a different approach with vitamins, minerals or other supplements. Many have found excellent results there.
• Medications are effective for some and not for others or they did not find the right one. There is no shame in taking pills if it helps someone to feel better and function better.

 

• Please, please, please STOP THE PILL SHAMING. If you have high blood pressure, diabetes, or a seizure disorder, it is rare to have someone shame you for taking a pill. With mental health, that stigma shows up in the form of PILL SHAMING and the reality of this it that it is hurting people.

• Taking medication is something that needs to be done thoughtfully, carefully and with patience, It is not always simple to find the right medication or combinations of medications or dealing with the side effects.

• From many of my experiences I recommend finding someone who specializes in these kinds of medications, such as a psychiatrist.

• Most often medications are only a part of the puzzle.
• Often it takes a multi-faceted approach to treatment.
• For me, my journey has taken me a lot of places and I have tried many things. 
• My journey includes an approach that addresses the physical, spiritual, mental, social and emotional. 
• I have a small but deliberate support system and a wellspring of tools in my wellness toolbox. 
• Counseling plays a big part in my healing and coping. It is a life line for me.
• Vitamins, yoga, mindfulness, DBT group, EMDR, neurofeedback have all been a part of my journey at one time or another and each one has helped me and empowered and contributed to my healing and coping process.
• Acceptance has been key.
• Overcoming stigma has been key.
• Discovering false beliefs or thinking errors has been key. 
• Learning new ways of seeing and thinking has been key. 
• Diligence has been key. 
• Medications have been key. 
• I have always needed a multifaceted approach.

• Eighth, understand that all emotions are part of our human endowment, even those that have received the label of "negative emotions". 

• We live in an emotion-phobic society. 
• We normalize the false idea that emotional struggle is a form of weakness.
• We are often taught to suppress emotion, be intolerant of it and respond with shaming, punishment or neglect. We are told to "cowboy up!" Don't cry, Don't be sad. Don't be afraid. And yet we are told in Holy Scripture that there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven ... a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
• Joseph B. Wirthlin said, "How can we love days that are filled with sorrow? We can't - at least not in the moment. I don't think my mother was suggesting that we suppress discouragement or deny the reality of pain. I do not think she was suggesting that we smother unpleasant truths beneath a cloak of pretended happiness."
• You see, "good mental health isn't about feeling happy and confident 100% of the time and ignoring any problems. It's about living and coping well despite the problems.
• Hank Smith said, "It is not about forcing happiness, it is about not letting sadness win."

• C.S. Lewis wisely said, "The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say, 'My tooth is aching' than to say, 'My heart is broken.'"
• We all need to be honest with our feelings. Embrace them. Feel them. Acknowledge them. Just sit with them without judgement. Observe.
• Be real when talking to people. Yes it is vulnerable. Yes, there are some people that you will not need to be that vulnerable with. Vulnerability takes courage.
• Mr. Rogers observed, "When we can talk about our feelings, they can become less overwhelming, less upsetting and less scary." "There are times when explanations, no matter how reasonable, just don't seem to help.

Ninth, understand that everyone matters, everyone is needed, everyone is important.

          --There is not one person above another. We are all the same -- human beings.

--Our worth is infinites and divine.

--Our worth is not changeable.

--We did not come here to earn our worth, we brought it with us.

--We are worthy of love. Unconditionally.

--We are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously.

          -- It is OK to be brOKen.  

Brokenness is a gift.  Our brokenness brings us together.  Our Brokenness is how we learn and grow and become. 

Think about trial for a minute. When we are broken in trial, that is where we learn our strengths and knowledge. We cannot learn to embrace our own strengths and knowledge without breaking first. 

If pain were not involved we would not esteem our new gained knowledge with such value and treasure.  Our brokenness makes us beautiful.

HOPE ON! JOURNEY ON!

Molly Grace Daniels

 

LIVING WITH COMPLEX PTSD

A DIFFICULT DAY.

 

Today was painful. A trauma response in the doctor's office. Embarrassing. Discouraging. This is my life. Not everyday; just sometimes. Gratefully it is getting better.

After an episode, I seem to always experience a period of grief. That is where I am at right now. 

Other than that, I am in a good place. It exhausts me though. Sometimes the day after is the hardest, I often have to accept what is again. And remember my whys for carrying on. See the sunshine. 

I cannot help feeling grateful for the progress I have made and for the sweet that comes after the bitter. In the beginning I only saw the bitter. I am much different now.

Here is a Window Into My Soul as I saw it and experienced it three years ago.

LIVING WITH COMPLEX PTSD

December 2017

It is hard to relive the worst moments of your life over and over and over again. It is painful. It is scary. You feel helpless and hopeless, and desperate. 

It is more than a memory, it is a reliving of the experience, the trauma,  including all the sensations and emotions, some times even the sights, smells and sounds. Sometimes it is re-experiencing the emotions and sensations without the visual or cognitive memory of the actual event. This is harder in its own way because you do not know what is happening or why. You only feel it and experience it with great intensity. And because Complex Trauma is about interpersonal trauma, the triggers are frequent, sometimes it feels constant.

Sometimes these flashbacks last minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days and sometimes weeks. Sometimes they even persist for a month or more. The experiences and traumas compounding on one another. Sometimes you run, in all of its various forms, you run. Sometimes you fight and sometimes you freeze. Freezing is paralyzing. Sometimes you just shut down. Sometimes you just give in and let people throw you under the bus, let them hurt you, ignore you, do their bidding, whatever needed to please them because none of the previous options are available or are ineffective. You submit to the abuse or neglect so it does not get worse from the resisting. And sometimes you fold, losing all will to live.

Sometimes living with PTSD gets messy. Often during those times of reliving the worst moments of your life over and over a desperation sets in. Living is too painful. You want the pain to stop. And you consider things that normally you would never consider. Death seems so inviting because death will end the living hell and torment that seems to never end.

Working in the recovery and healing process is often both bitter and sweet. It gets worse before it gets better. It gets messier and the pain intense. You become ever more vulnerable as you require help and open yourself to strangers such as therapists and doctors and then you break down or flashback in times and places most inconvenient, in front of strangers, associates or friends. You have to feel it to heal it they say. It is all so very bitter. The sweet part is ... well, I will get to that later.

In the midst of the healing process, in the midst of the reliving episodes, life continues on. People die, cars break down, dinner burns, your child gets sick, your husband cuts his hand and all the big and little life stressors occur and you are required like everyone else to meet the daily and present demands of life, all while reliving the worst parts of your life over and over. All with a nervous system that is broken, a brain that does not work, a body that is weak, a stress-response system that is thwarted. 

Holidays, birthdays, vacations and things that are normally fun and rejuvenating are triggering, stressful, and disappointing. There is not energy for such things and what used to be is no longer and things have changed and you have changed and you don’t recognize yourself or even know who you are or how to have fun. 

And no one really knows or understands what you are experiencing, so getting any support is almost nonexistent and yet you need it so desperately and it hurts all at the same time and strangely it is okay no one is there because people and relationships are what caused the problem in the first place and you cannot trust and don’t know how relationships work and you hate people even though you long for them. You crave connection and you hate it. Experience tells you it is not worth the risk or the pain.

“... CPTSD means I have survived and now I don't want to. ... I survive without hope. I survived to go nowhere. I survived to suffer. I guess had I known the cost of survival i would have given up a long time ago. Instinct to survive allowed me to experience self hatred, failure, abuse and solitude. ...”

But continue to survive I must. Even though I want to die more than anything else. So you continue in the recovery process. And hard though it may be, it is where you find hope ... when you do find it... hope for something more, something better.

So what is the sweet in the recovery, healing process? It is the moments when in the midst of torment, you remember the Savior and you call to Him and right there in the very midst of the suffering, there in the darkness, you feel his grace and you know He knows and He cares and you feel a depth of joy you never before knew existed. His love holds you. You are not alone. Lonely but not alone. And you can distinctly feel this and know this, not just hope or believe. In recovery it becomes very real. Grace has always been there but you could not always see it or feel it. Sweetness is being able to feel and see and know.

It is the sweet peace and lessons that come after the storms rage. You know what you did not know before. You are now somehow different. Somehow better for having experienced it all and come through it alive. You realize that some healing has in fact taken place, some pieces put together, you feel a little less broken and for even just a moment a little bit whole, a little bit of hope, a gratitude for the release and it is sweet.

It is the shifts and the insights. It is the epiphanies that come so many, so strong, so wonderful. It is in those moments of knowing that even though you don’t know why or how exactly that this all has purpose for yourself and for others. That you are not this illness but much more than the illness or anything that has happened to you or even that has not happened to you, for truly much of it is not what happened to me but what did not happen to me, for me.

The sweet in recovery is coming to understand and know in the midst of the torment that it will not always feel so intense. It feels like endless torment but you have experienced it enough now to know it lightens up or ends, even if temporarily. Before recovery, you did not know this.

Sweet is remembering. It is the good side of remembering. It is remembering that you have been in the pits of hell before but you came through, it is remembering what you have learned, it is remembering how far you have come, it is remembering that grace and joy you felt in your darkness. Sometimes it is only the memories that keep you going in the midst of the torment, the reliving of the worst moments of your life. Recovery is having something sweet to remember, something sweet to hold onto.

The sweet in recovery is learning new tools to get you grounded quicker. Sweet is letting go. Sweet is embracing truth. Sweet is greater ability to act, if only for a moment and having those moments come more often.

The sweet in recovery is experiencing calm. True calm. Not freeze, not dissociation, not fight or flight, not please. Just calm. It is a beautiful feeling.

The sweet is learning to dance and being able to dance. The sweet is flying, the freedom, the perspective, the beauty of flying. When you fly, you reach higher heights than you ever could climb to and you see things you could not otherwise see and you feel totally free.

The sweet in recovery is learning to rest. Allowing yourself to rest. Sweet is in the being. Just be, nothing more. Sweet is being present. Sweet is acceptance. Sweet is surrendering to what you do not know and cannot know. Sweet is in this very minute.

The sweet in recovery is coming to know what is happening when you don’t know what is happening. Oh, this. This is so sweet.

Before the recovery and healing process there was no understanding of what was happening to you. You were just weak and pathetic. The tools you had were insufficient or unhealthy. In recovery that begins to change. 

The sweet in recovery is finding acceptance and non-judgment, acknowledgement and validation from gifted therapists. Less than ideal, it works and it is sweet. The sweet is the solutions they offer, the solutions they help you find in yourself, the encouragement to do so. It is having someone finally hold space for you, bear witness, to listen and even if you have to pay for someone to do that for you, you finally have it. Sweet in recovery is finally being able to feel safe if only for a moment.

So while you relive the horror and the torment and while it gets worse before it gets better, you are now able to have someone sit with you through it, you are able to understand the process some and you know the intensity will lighten and a lesson or shift is coming. You know that this is the path of healing, even if you do not know what healing ultimately looks like or who you are, you have someone right there who sees beyond what you can see, someone who trusts the process, someone to help you be safe, someone there which means you are not alone. And that is sweet.

I still want to give up more often than I don’t. I would welcome death if it came. I still live in torment too much. I still do not know what amount of healing I will ever have. I don’t know who I am or what I can expect out of life or this process. But I can at times just be. Just rest. Catch my breath before the next storm rages. And cope the best I can in my circumstance. I live with complex PTSD. It is crippling, it is debilitating, it is painful, it is hard to live with. It is humbling. Every breath I take is done in faith and because of love. At least I am not alone. Even when I isolate myself. Something greater than me calls me to carry on. Something greater than me compels me to continue in recovery and not to give up even though I am done.

Living with complex PTSD is hard. It is no way to live. I could even argue it is not really living. But maybe some day I will know what it is to really live. That would be sweet! 

Today was a difficult day. It was also a good day. A good day to be alive! A good day to live! Resilience is the key!

Hope on! Journey on!

Molly Grace Daniels