June 7, 2012
Quote of the Day
"I have The Joker of ovens: Some kitchen appliances just want to watch the world burn."
May 27, 2012
Quote of the Day
"Y'know, if you teach a dog to play fetch on purpose, it's awesome, but don't ever teach a cat to play fetch by accident. It will ruin your life. It turns into 'hey man, I'm a cat and I'm going to just MESS UP EVERYTHING until you throw this thing to me - also it is 5 in the morning! LET'S DO THIS!'"
April 21, 2012
March 24, 2012
March 23, 2012
Quote of the Day
Gabrielle: "Hey, can you throw me my Buspar?"
Donald: "No, I ate it, sorry."
Gabrielle: "Well, that's unfortunate...I'm not sure you CAN overdose on an anxiety med, actually..."
Donald: "Either way, I won't really be worried about it!!! Yeah? Yeah?"
March 18, 2012
Quote of the Day
"I think I'm quite possibly the only guy who would blow a kiss to his girl over Skype, then follow up with "Allow 3-6 weeks delivery."
~ Cole
March 5, 2012
March 2, 2012
twitter data
This may interest some people. An article about Twitter's data policies and a sale it recently made to a data mining company.
Struggling not to get paranoid about this information :P My attitude towards Internet privacy involves taking precautions about my full name, caution about my pictures...but I try to not avoid it TOO much. I dislike living in fear.
Time will tell whether that attitude is liberating or stupid, I guess.
February 29, 2012
Quote of the Day
"I debated trying to blog about anxiety while in the throes of a panic attack, and I’m kind of sad I didn’t, since the mental math that you find yourself doing while freaking out is both OBVIOUSLY WEIRD and yet COMPLETELY UNAVOIDABLE."
February 28, 2012
diagnosis deets
Might start posting here regularly again. I don't know. Taking a bit of a break from Tumblr because I compulsively read every post that's been shared by everyone I'm following - near 200 people. Most of them don't use a queue, which means multiple posts per day, frequently long text posts that require intellectual engagement. I follow a lot of people interested in social justice-y topics.
The social justice part is another reason I'm taking a break - arguments/discussions on there can end up incredibly virulent, extremely quickly. It's frequently an unhealthy emotional environment for me. I am extremely empathetic and reading lots of posts about negative things that have happened or causes that need urgent attention can direly affect my moods.
Ah yes, my moods. That brings us to another topic - my mental health! I have mentioned on here before that I'm bipolar, and refer to a period in 2009 as May Mania (though to be perfectly honest it was more like March-May mania).
I was diagnosed initially by a psychiatrist my parents took me to when my behavior became erratic enough that they finally noticed. They're not inattentive parents, but I was attending college at the time. Living at home, yes, but the majority of my social life was conducted on campus and I was frequently there until dinnertime or later most nights. However, my parents felt this diagnosis was made too hastily and took me to a therapist instead, one who seemed from the environment of her office to work mostly with children.
Perhaps this explains her casual dismissal of HIPAA. I found out last year during a conversation with my current therapist regarding a conversation she'd had with my father that my previous therapist had told him information regarding things I'd told her during our sessions together. Quite illegal, since I was an adult at the time.
I talked to her until about July, when I cancelled an appointment due to not feeling well. I believe she wanted...an hour's notice? More than an hour? Now that I have more experience with mental health doctors I know 24 hours seems to be the standard 'let me know about cancellations x far in advance please,' but hers was distinctly shorter than that.
In any case, my parents were billed for the session I had missed despite me calling in. This annoyed them. They managed to talk her away from billing us for it, but I didn't continue with the therapy after that. Mostly it seemed I talked at her and she didn't say much back, but I was clearly not the stablest in the world at that point, so my memories may be faulty. We talked about her referring me to a psychiatrist in our last appointment together right before I left for diagnosis/possible medication, but nothing ended up coming from that as I stopped seeing her. My disposition was notably calmer, and this made my parents breathe easier as well.
I started dating my now-fiancé, Donald, in April 2010. We've been engaged since May 2011, since I apparently didn't post about it here. Whatever. We met on an online dating site, OkCupid (which I highly recommend, if it matters). I messaged him first, mostly because he was open about struggling with depression on his profile. I had been trying to come to terms with my mental health issues firstly after the mania and then after a suicidal depression that took hold in November-December 2009 and caused me to drop out of university, and felt someone else with experience in this area might be good to date.
He and the sibling he got an apartment with in June 2010 got me accepted onto the year lease for that apartment. He was and is fully cognizant of my bipolar, and also aware of my family's attitude towards it - that my 'issues' in the past were mostly caused by lack of sleep. I disagreed with that, obviously, but since I was on their insurance and already tired of fighting with them about other things like job situations and Donald himself I wasn't eager to start up talking about it.
In November 2010 I recall lots of unreasonable energetic times and sudden rages that seemed to appear and vanish like smoke. I didn't acknowledge that it was the mania returning because I was hoping that what happened in 2009 was possibly a one-time thing, or else something I could control. I'd also been self-harming on and off for about a year. December 2010 and January 2011 were not good. Donald finally got me to agree to seeing a therapist, and helped me talk to my parents about it and getting their help, if not their overt support at times. I lost my job after one or two sessions with her, due to depression/lack of motivation. Despite efforts, I haven't worked since.
It only took about a month with my new therapist before I was exhibiting manic symptoms again and she recommended we try to find a psych and get another diagnosis and possibly try medication. Our other roommate had lost his job back in December and Donald would lose his a few weeks after I lost mine, however, so money as well as brainspace for considering a massive lifestyle change like medication would induce were tight.
We managed to scrape together enough money to complete our year lease, at which point everyone moved back in with their respective parents. Donald asked me to marry him roughly two days before we were scheduled to move out of the apartment. I'll copy and paste an entry discussing details once I finish this post, since I apparently neglected to mention it here.
Summer rolled around and I began drinking to excess. I finally found an alcoholic beverage with high enough alcohol content that I could get drunk quickly - I'm a notoriously slow drinker, lingering over beers and whatnot, so this was an advantage. The months from July 2011 to now blur together in terms of distinguishing specific mental health events. Suffice to say that I continued to abuse alcohol by attempting to self-medicate with it, as well as continued self-harming and mulling half-assed suicide plans.
November was a period of mania with possible psychotic features. Not as strong as I've had before, but extremely unnerving, of course. We finally made a serious effort to find me a psychiatrist, with Donald's support all the way. I was supposed to have an appointment with one recc'd by my therapist in mid December, but a misunderstanding about appointment times meant I missed it and had to reschedule - the next appointment available on February 8th.
An episode of intoxicated cutting that danced around the edges of being an actual suicide attempt happened in the days between Christmas and New Year's. January was spent holding on for dear life, hoping that this psychiatrist thing would work out.
I got my official diagnosis of Bipolar 1, anxiety with PTSD aspects, and prescriptions for Lamictal and Wellbutrin - an anti-seizure medication and an antidepressant, respectively. Yes, bipolar apparently impacts the part of the brain that seizures impact, and medications used to treat seizures can help with bipolar. Who knew? The Lamictal in particular takes a little more than a month to ramp up to the full dosage that my psychiatrist wants to start me out on. She warned that this particular cocktail does nothing for anxiety, and indeed, it's been a rough couple of weeks. However, I have another appointment with her on Wednesday. I can only look forward from here.
The social justice part is another reason I'm taking a break - arguments/discussions on there can end up incredibly virulent, extremely quickly. It's frequently an unhealthy emotional environment for me. I am extremely empathetic and reading lots of posts about negative things that have happened or causes that need urgent attention can direly affect my moods.
Ah yes, my moods. That brings us to another topic - my mental health! I have mentioned on here before that I'm bipolar, and refer to a period in 2009 as May Mania (though to be perfectly honest it was more like March-May mania).
I was diagnosed initially by a psychiatrist my parents took me to when my behavior became erratic enough that they finally noticed. They're not inattentive parents, but I was attending college at the time. Living at home, yes, but the majority of my social life was conducted on campus and I was frequently there until dinnertime or later most nights. However, my parents felt this diagnosis was made too hastily and took me to a therapist instead, one who seemed from the environment of her office to work mostly with children.
Perhaps this explains her casual dismissal of HIPAA. I found out last year during a conversation with my current therapist regarding a conversation she'd had with my father that my previous therapist had told him information regarding things I'd told her during our sessions together. Quite illegal, since I was an adult at the time.
I talked to her until about July, when I cancelled an appointment due to not feeling well. I believe she wanted...an hour's notice? More than an hour? Now that I have more experience with mental health doctors I know 24 hours seems to be the standard 'let me know about cancellations x far in advance please,' but hers was distinctly shorter than that.
In any case, my parents were billed for the session I had missed despite me calling in. This annoyed them. They managed to talk her away from billing us for it, but I didn't continue with the therapy after that. Mostly it seemed I talked at her and she didn't say much back, but I was clearly not the stablest in the world at that point, so my memories may be faulty. We talked about her referring me to a psychiatrist in our last appointment together right before I left for diagnosis/possible medication, but nothing ended up coming from that as I stopped seeing her. My disposition was notably calmer, and this made my parents breathe easier as well.
I started dating my now-fiancé, Donald, in April 2010. We've been engaged since May 2011, since I apparently didn't post about it here. Whatever. We met on an online dating site, OkCupid (which I highly recommend, if it matters). I messaged him first, mostly because he was open about struggling with depression on his profile. I had been trying to come to terms with my mental health issues firstly after the mania and then after a suicidal depression that took hold in November-December 2009 and caused me to drop out of university, and felt someone else with experience in this area might be good to date.
He and the sibling he got an apartment with in June 2010 got me accepted onto the year lease for that apartment. He was and is fully cognizant of my bipolar, and also aware of my family's attitude towards it - that my 'issues' in the past were mostly caused by lack of sleep. I disagreed with that, obviously, but since I was on their insurance and already tired of fighting with them about other things like job situations and Donald himself I wasn't eager to start up talking about it.
In November 2010 I recall lots of unreasonable energetic times and sudden rages that seemed to appear and vanish like smoke. I didn't acknowledge that it was the mania returning because I was hoping that what happened in 2009 was possibly a one-time thing, or else something I could control. I'd also been self-harming on and off for about a year. December 2010 and January 2011 were not good. Donald finally got me to agree to seeing a therapist, and helped me talk to my parents about it and getting their help, if not their overt support at times. I lost my job after one or two sessions with her, due to depression/lack of motivation. Despite efforts, I haven't worked since.
It only took about a month with my new therapist before I was exhibiting manic symptoms again and she recommended we try to find a psych and get another diagnosis and possibly try medication. Our other roommate had lost his job back in December and Donald would lose his a few weeks after I lost mine, however, so money as well as brainspace for considering a massive lifestyle change like medication would induce were tight.
We managed to scrape together enough money to complete our year lease, at which point everyone moved back in with their respective parents. Donald asked me to marry him roughly two days before we were scheduled to move out of the apartment. I'll copy and paste an entry discussing details once I finish this post, since I apparently neglected to mention it here.
Summer rolled around and I began drinking to excess. I finally found an alcoholic beverage with high enough alcohol content that I could get drunk quickly - I'm a notoriously slow drinker, lingering over beers and whatnot, so this was an advantage. The months from July 2011 to now blur together in terms of distinguishing specific mental health events. Suffice to say that I continued to abuse alcohol by attempting to self-medicate with it, as well as continued self-harming and mulling half-assed suicide plans.
November was a period of mania with possible psychotic features. Not as strong as I've had before, but extremely unnerving, of course. We finally made a serious effort to find me a psychiatrist, with Donald's support all the way. I was supposed to have an appointment with one recc'd by my therapist in mid December, but a misunderstanding about appointment times meant I missed it and had to reschedule - the next appointment available on February 8th.
An episode of intoxicated cutting that danced around the edges of being an actual suicide attempt happened in the days between Christmas and New Year's. January was spent holding on for dear life, hoping that this psychiatrist thing would work out.
I got my official diagnosis of Bipolar 1, anxiety with PTSD aspects, and prescriptions for Lamictal and Wellbutrin - an anti-seizure medication and an antidepressant, respectively. Yes, bipolar apparently impacts the part of the brain that seizures impact, and medications used to treat seizures can help with bipolar. Who knew? The Lamictal in particular takes a little more than a month to ramp up to the full dosage that my psychiatrist wants to start me out on. She warned that this particular cocktail does nothing for anxiety, and indeed, it's been a rough couple of weeks. However, I have another appointment with her on Wednesday. I can only look forward from here.
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