My Psychiatrist is Making Me Crazy!!!

This day has been more than we could handle.  Was so anxious about therapy that I didn't sleep for 2 days, nor did I eat.  Once there, the myriad of questions I'd had for her completely vanished from my mind and I couldn't remember what it was I wanted to talk to her about. I pulled out my notebook, in which we've been noting things like questions for the shrink and ideas for blog topics.  I read her several of our questions, but she was no help at all. Yesterday, I was ready to accept my DID.  Today, I flat-out asked for a diagnosis.  She says she doesn't believe in putting labels on her patients.  So all I could get her to verify is that I have  a lot of dissociative episodes and I also have at least one mood disorder. (Again, she would not be specific) 

So I don't know which disorder I have, only that I have a great deal of trouble with dissociation and amnesia and losing time and dozens of other symptoms which you'd think she could use to give me a motherfucking specific diagnosis.  FUCK ALL THIS SHIT!!!  Just fucking say what you want to say for God's sake.  I am upset with my psychiatrist because she refused to give me a specific diagnosis.  I want a label.  I need to know who and what I am.  This shit can't be normal. I've been pretending my whole life and we're absolutely exhausted by it at this point.  I don't think I can fake it anymore.  I don't think I can paste on a smile and be whomever you need me to be without blowing my cover, so to speak.  I need to be ME, who happens to be an US.  And I'm OK with that.

Obviously there must have been something terrible in my childhood to mess me up in the head this badly.  We can't even discuss this shit with our doctor.  To my horror, we talked about psychiatric hospitals, and she pretty much said that if it comes down to it and we get worse, she won't hesitate to hospitalize me.  NOT what I wanted to hear. I've had some horrific experiences in mental hospitals over the years.  Most important question I asked her was this: "Do I have to remember the childhood abuse in order to get better?"  I was relieved to hear that no, it isn't always necessary or desirable.  I don't think I could handle the truth anyways.

Fuck this shit.  Just fucking take a pain pill and go to bed.  Your head feels like it's been hit with a hammer.  You've been in a manic state and haven't slept but 3 out of 48 hours. I've eaten one meal this whole week. I think I might be dying.  And FUCK ME I haven't told you the rest of it.  How Hubby says I'm spending too much time on the computer and he says I don't do anything else anymore.  Nothing. No eating, no sleeping, no sex.  He says I'm obsessed.  He's right.  I'm obsessed with learning about my mental illness so that I can take better care of myself and live a better quality of life.

FUCK ALL THIS SHIT just fucking give it up.  You're beyond help.  You can't even talk to your own husband about your true feelings because it freaks him out.  None of your Real Life friends know you're sick, except for some depression.  I'm living a LIE.  Our life is a sham.  I'm not K, I'm an imposter.  I don't know who or what we are anymore. Just want to sleep away the pain.

(The Next Day:)

Which I did.  Took a handful of pills and slept for 12 hours straight.  God I needed that.  Still, woke up feeling frustrated and angry, at everything it seemed.  To make things even worse, Mom had a talk with me about how I'm being a terrible wife and am going to lose my man if I don't stop spending every minute on the computer.  Apparently, I'm ignoring him, the housework, cooking, laundry, etc.  I don't mean to. It just seems less important to me than this project I'm on, this project of self-discovery.  I just need some support from people who understand some of what I'm experiencing.  I'm going through a major mental health crisis right now.  I mean, I just found out that the diagnosis I've had since 1998 is incorrect. I'm NOT Schizophrenic.  It's going to take me some time to realize that I'm not that person anymore.  As soon as the diagnosis was stuck to me, I became that.  This is why my current shrink says she won't label a patient; she says they become the label.

So how am I supposed to fill out forms which ask about my mental health?  Just put down "non-specific madness"?  Or "Sometimes psychotic weirdo who's kept heavily sedated"?   Every so often, paperwork comes in the mail to reassess my mental health for The System.  I just hope that Dr. H refusing to give me a clear-cut diagnosis doesn't cause me to lose my benefits, i.e. my health insurance.  FUCKFUCKFUCK   What a miserable day.  Too much worry about being hospitalized, too much worry about losing my husband, too much worry that Twitter has taken over my life.

Well, this morning, I started my hand-written diary, just as my psych told me to do.  I didn't know what I was going to say, but it took 7 pages front and back anyway.  And I'm 99.9% certain that I'll be writing in it some more tonight.  Man.  I wish I could talk to someone in Real Life about this, someone who also dissociates, someone who also doesn't recognize them self when they look in the mirror half the time.  Someone who won't be freaked out if I switch and start speaking differently or acting differently.  Fuck.  This just fucking blows. I'm not important enough to wear a label I guess. And the kicker is, I've always resented the labels.  I've worn so many over the years....it's ironic that I'm now label-free and feel lost without one.  Who the hell are we and what the fuck is wrong with us?!?  Be specific, doc. We need to know.

Incidentally, while I was in therapy, I asked my shrink what her job was and why I come to see her.  (I'm not sure which K was at the session, but she had a ton of information and questions and wanted answers)  She told me that the reasons I came to therapy are whatever I want them to be.  She said it's her job to help me anyway she can, but that what I got out of it depended upon what I put into it.  Once again, non-specific answers. Fuck this!  I think I"m just going to get trashed tonight and be pissed off and drink til I pass the fuck out. Yeah, that sounds like a plan. And I bet I'll be an angry drunk tonight. Oh fun.

Major Breakthrough or Break From Reality?

(When we started writing this blog post, it was yesterday? Last night? Some time in the past, not terribly long ago, yet it seems I've been typing for so very long...at least 12-16 hours now, but since time is foreign to us there's really no way to be certain)

I'm not sure how to start...Something has happened. To me, to us, to K.  She really, very much needs to see her doctor!  That's not a viable option for us right now, however, as it's currently either horribly late or ridiculously early, take your pick.  Now it could be that she's just experiencing what is known as a psychotic break...

(Wikipedia says: A psychotic break is a term used to describe an occasion of a person experiencing an episode of acute primary psychosis, either for the first time or after a significant period of relative asymptomaticity.)

This has happened to us before, I can't say for sure how often it happens or even when it last happened, but it's certainly not something we are unfamiliar with.  If that is not the case, (and I have my suspicions) then we are having a MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH. I really can't stress enough that we're not sure at the moment what is happening to us, and I'm not sure if THIS has ever happened before. (I have a terrible memory, for a number of reasons which I'm not going into but which include my mental disorder(s) and my medication side effects)

psy·cho·sis [sahy-koh-sis] noun

1. a mental disorder characterized by symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, that indicate impaired contact with reality.

2. any severe form of mental disorder, as schizophrenia or paranoia.

I feel, at this moment, that something profound has occurred to us. I'm not sure exactly when it happened and I can't be certain how long this has been going on.  I've tried to trace this "event"(?) back to the beginning, using Tweets and Facebook posts and my phone data.  I would normally just check out my personal journal, but we were shocked to discover that K hasn't made an entry in that particular journal since October 21, 2010, so that really didn't help us much at all.  K has spent her entire life trying so hard to hide her symptoms from the outside world, that it feels somewhat liberating for her to open up and let things show now.  Several of the K's are shy, but I am not.  I guess that's a good place to start...

Hello. I'm the K that takes care of business, the K that gets things done, the K that is responsible and does necessary things such as pay the bills and take care of our mother (who is frequently in poor health) at times when things are just too stressful for K to handle them on her own.  K is currently unavailable but will (hopefully?) return at some point and things will settle back down to what we know as "normal". Not that it is normal in any way, mind you.  That's one thing I'm starting to realize.  There's something strange going on around here, and I intend to get to the bottom of it.  This feels SO important, I really can't stress that enough.  This feels like something of vital importance to our very existence, we being the K.  Now K has been in therapy for most of her life.  For over 20 years, we've gone from doctor to doctor, looking for answers, and hoping someone would say "Oh, you have this condition and you should take these pills and then everything will be fine. You'll get better."  We are painfully aware by now that this is just NOT going to happen for us.  I don't know if it ever happens for anyone (but I sincerely hope that it does). But television commercials and the media in general would have you believe that everything can be cured with a magic pill or X number of therapy sessions.  If either of those things were true, I'd be long cured.  I've been placed on a veritable cornucopia of psychotropic drugs since I was given my first prescription (for Lithium) at the age of 16. I know for a fact that I'd never be able to name them all, as I've been on so many, and of course because of my memory problems.  Depakote, Trazodone, Zyprexa,  Ritalin, Paxil, Zoloft, Celexa, Ativan, Valium, Lexapro...I could go on but I won't. You get the idea. I've been on different combinations of different drugs for years now; for so long, in fact, that I can no longer remember what it feels like to be completely drug-free. I'm currently prescribed 60 mg Prozac, 300 mg Wellbutrin, 50 mg Seroquel XR, 3 mg Risperidone and 4 mg Alprazalam per day, plus a Folic Acid tablet for what my relatively-new medical doctor (non-psych) tells me is a deficiency which supposedly affects your moods. The last time we were without our pills, we turned to self-medicating to help us feel more "sane".  It's very common behavior in people with mental illness and since I have an obsessive-compulsive personality, it can lead to a lot of problems, physically, mentally, legally, financially,,,(sigh) You get my point. I tend to overdo things, become obsessed, act impulsively and compulsively. K, according to some people, "just doesn't know when to quit", but the obsessions themselves generally come and go over the course of "time".  Time is something we have a special relationship with, and no realistic sense of, but I'm afraid I don't have enough of it at the moment to go into that story, so please let me continue before I switch again.

I have both a relatively-new medical doctor as well as a new psychiatrist (I can't remember how long I've been seeing her, but she was unable to get my medical records and/or therapy notes from my last doctor, whom I disliked).  OOH just checked my neglected hardbound journal and found out that I started seeing this new shrink sometime after Feb. 9, 2010 and before April 17, 2010.  (WOW I had no idea it'd been that long; maybe she knows me better than I give her credit for) I saw my last therapist (not to be confused with my psychiatrist, whom I usually refer to as my shrink, even though I know they hate that) sometime in early April of 2010.  She dumped me after 7 years together!  Because I missed 3 appointments at various times throughout our relationship.  She said that was the limit; that after 3 misses you're automatically kicked out of the system on your 4th miss for being a "non-compliant" patient.  So even though I have this alleged illness-which she herself was attempting to properly diagnose and treat, and which she herself brought up first in our sessions-and even though she knows that we have issues with understanding time and "reality", still she cut me loose just as soon as I had walked into her office and plopped down on her up-until-that-moment-"comfortable & familiar" couch.  Well, actually I think she let me rant first for a minute-I recall I was dying to talk to her about my (often-recurring) then-current obsession (suicide) so she let me spill for a few minutes, then asked the obligatory questions: "Are you thinking about hurting yourself?  Do you have urges to harm yourself?  Are the voices telling you to hurt yourself or someone else?"  I told her that at that time, I did NOT have any plans to hurt myself, and I'd certainly never hurt anyone else!, and so as soon as she was satisfied that I wasn't going to leave her office and kill myself, she dumped me like a bag of garbage.  Up until that point, I'd been seeing her at least every other week, or weekly if I was struggling., for 7 years. A few times I had more than one appointment in a single week.  And I tried to always see my psychiatrist in tandem with my therapist, as they shared a clinic location, and because I was driving an hour to get there from my home. While I may not recall the exact date of our last appointment, I do recall parts of the session.  It was quite brief, or at least it seemed so to me.  I described to her my obsessing over suicide, and how I'd been Googling it and researching and reading news articles and how everyone around me seemed to be doing it at that time, like the voices were trying to get me to "do what everybody else was doing" and how fascinated I was by the whole process. At that time, I explained excitedly, there had been a number of prominent suicides in the news, including a famous fashion designer as well as a former television actor. I had intended to tell her how the TV was speaking to me personally about these things. She didn't like that I was talking about people killing themselves, and as I've stated earlier, she quickly asked me the "suicide watch" questions...and I gave her the answers I knew she needed to hear.  Don't get me wrong.  I had NO intention of killing myself that day, or any day soon, as K was and still is a big believer in Karma and I think that killing yourself is bad karma, regardless of your religious beliefs. Plus I'd never put my family through the humiliation and pain and suffering of the whole suicide event. (some of us do indeed have suicidal tendencies though) I love them too much to do that to them.  Also, I don't think that anyone would be able to style my hair nor do my makeup as I would like, or even pick out the right outfit for me to wear to my funeral.  This may seem trivial to you, but to K,  it is really important.  Damn.  Now I've gone off on a tangent and can't recall where I was in telling the story...

Interesting.  I just left the safety of my bedroom, wherein I've been holed up for roughly 9 hours now, and went into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, which K is almost always able to make (she's a coffee fiend) and which, sure enough, she had prepared much earlier, as in last night.  Now we must interact with our mother, for she is in said kitchen and expects some sort of recognition and acknowledgement.  I'd been wondering what would happen as I walked up the hallway, before I ever saw her.  And then-BOOM-I'm in the room with her and the Good Daughter is hugging her mom and asking how she slept and how she was feeling that day, which is today. I know because I've begun taking notes in a notebook, and I see the date and time written on the notebook and I can compare it to the date and time on my new cell phone, and I can get an idea of "when" I am existing, I being the current K, the smart one, the one who used to attend college and hold down a job (hard to believe now).  We are the K that has ambition.  We are the K that dreams of going back to school and finishing her degree, and of having an actual career that she could nurture and benefit from and perhaps even earning a living and being completely self-sufficient, which up until this point, we don't think she's ever been.  She has always ended up needing some help.  She just can't do it on her own.  She can't make enough money.  She can't have the proper benefits of medical insurance and retirement funds.  As much as K HATES to admit it, she is completely held hostage by, and controlled by, The System.  The System currently considers K "mentally disabled" (due to schizophrenia I believe) and we get a Disability check every month for a set amount of money.  Not a lot, let me tell you.  In fact, I've NEVER been able to afford to pay all my bills in addition to buying food and gas for the car.  K is really ashamed of that fact.  She came close to being self-sufficient once; she had a full-time job and was in management, and she had a checking account and a house and a car and a seemingly "normal" (only NOT) life. Sigh. (That was before our first, and most severe, "nervous breakdown") We're really rambling here.  I need to wrap this up before some other K comes along and messes it up, or erases these words without posting or saving them because of our over-the-top paranoia. I still very strongly feel that these events, happening to us "now"-whenever that may be-are going to have an enormous impact on K's future, hopefully for the better.  Hopefully, this is a brain-altering, life-changing moment of clarity within our foggy, crowded existence.  Hopefully this is K taking the first steps at realizing how she can go about getting the sort of help that she really needs, and not just drugging us to keep us at bay.

We've tried to explain this, or some of this, to K's husband, but he is having quite a difficult time in wrapping his brain around these concepts. We have, in fact, completely blown his mind by telling him openly and honestly what K was thinking and feeling. Now K feels completely vulnerable and fragile and I have to alter my train of thought before the stifling paranoia takes over again... My husband is my best friend, but even he has never seen me like this before,  he's never witnessed me switching from one K to another. I imagine it is quite upsetting and disturbing to him, as it would freak anybody out who wasn't prepared for it. Sigh.  I really, REALLY hope I don't scare off my husband...!!! I tried, very hard, to warn him, to prepare him, for the day he'd see the real me.  "US".  And now it turns out he can't handle it, or at least not at the moment.