Mixed Nuts

I've been avoiding writing because I don't exactly feel very stable. It would be much easier for me to draw on my dissociative capabilities right now. I really want to go to bed even though I slept for 8 hours last night and I don't think that's happened for years The kids are out seeing a movie and its still and quiet here, except for the playlist coming through my headphones. Thank goodness for music. I started taking an anti psychotic just over a week ago for anxiety. Most of the time people take benzodiazepams for anxiety but they are very addictive and i am a junkie. I just don't use, My anxiety has been reduced hugely and the bonus is that my hallucinations have pretty much gone. I didn't realize how many hallucinations I experienced. I used to see people's shadows on the walls in my peripheral vision and when i quickly turned to see them front on they were gone and that felt very dark and sinister. I saw bugs and spiders. I saw constant movement in my peripheral vision , so i was forever turning my head, re-directing my eyes, watching places , searching for movement to confirm that i had seen something. My audio hallucinations seemed far more invasive, which is why I wear headphones. Even when i have no music playing I still wear headphones. It helps me tell the difference between a real sound and one inside my head. A real sound would be a little bit muffled with my head phones on and a not real sound is just as loud as always.My audio hallucinations are; telephones ringing, whispers, someone calling my name, cats meowing and probably that most distressing one is when i hear what sounds like three houses down a woman screaming like she is being murdered. I leave a tv on in the house at all times as it grounds me. I can focus on the one source of audio output and feel calmer.

I wanted to write a post that read more about bipolar because that was the subject that i touched on last. But I just can't unpack my illnesses to make sense of them one at a time. You see, I believe that mental illnesses live on a continuum. some people are way up the left hand side and are clear headed and don't even have to consider mental illness in their lives. Some people live in the middle and might feel reactive depression if something bad happens in their lives and then we have the good old right hand half of the continuum. Here we have a mixed bag of labels and behaviours and symptoms and services required. My labels that live on the crazy side are; Bipolar disorder #1, Post traumatic stress disorder, dissociative disorder and schizoeffective disorder. Oh and i have severe anxiety and agoraphobia too. The thing with mental illness is that these disorders are different for everyone. While one person may have an anxiety disorder and be treated for that with anti-anxiety medication and therapy, another person, like me might have several disorders that cross over each other and require treatment that takes them all into account. And when you have multiple disorders sometimes something happens that can trigger one disorder which in turn shocks another of your disorders into gear and then i can get so effected that like a set of dominoes they all come crashing down.

I will give you an  example of how this may happen. In fact it has happened, many many times. My kids and I come from a very violent husband and father, and growing up, as adolescents in particular, when you've had the level of violence in your life like we have, things can get pretty scary between two adult sized, angry young men who both have their own PTSD to contend with. For me, the natural competitive, testosterone filled, large physical behaviour that the boys display is enough for me to unknowingly start holding my breath and clenching my fists and render me unable to do anything besides monitor their interaction and know when I need to get out of the room. Before I do leave the room, as a mother doing what I can of a mother's job i speak up and tell them to stop fighting. My kids learned from the master of manipulation and violence so just as my husband did before them, my kids might look at me for a second before they rip into me. Sometimes i am invited with swearing and yelling to be judge and jury to their situation. This is really difficult for me when i see white rage in their faces and the physical signs of violence, like something is broken, a door is off its hinge, someone is thumping the wall or someone is crying. I can't think straight. I can't say anything without being yelled at. I can't say anything that will guarantee the cessation of violence.i can't breathe.

The boys start to look like their father, not so much physically as ...my mind and my body are flashing back to him and his fists and his yelling and his habit of throwing dangerous objects at my head, and his threats, big threats like threats to kill, threats to do as i am told and if i walk out i will be hunted down like a dog and put down. even now, writing this, its hard to breathe. It's hard to breathe when the boys fight so I leave. I retreat to my room. The dog might follow me but i can't pat him. I need to breathe and not scream and concentrate on slowing down and feeling safe and not seeing Mark. I get in the bed and draw my limbs in close and pull the blanket up high and shut down. I don't need to go to sleep as i can just shut down completely. No input, no output. mind is blank. If i don't shut down I will be oblivious to my kids and i will be catapulted back to mark, and the violence will get worse and i'll be stuck on the wrong side of his fists and his yelling at me and his every effort to provoke me into defending myself physically so he can look at me with a sick satisfaction on his face as he either accuses me of being the instigator or looks at me like i am crazy for wanting him to hit me. This is one form of episode that my PTSD and dissociation may take.

Usually, thank goodness, this is as bad as it gets for me in my current life. No-one hits me, or threatens me, or pursues me with a dark agenda which justifies his abuse or gives him the opportunity for more. If my kids see that i am not ok they stop fighting and help me. The yelling between them stops and they are in tune with my needs and try to give me reassurance but most of all, try to keep me in the present. They know whats going on and they are good boys.  If i can't be reached i might go -on to have nightmares that night, and then next and the next. Sometimes I wake hearing myself crying out over and over and i wake with Jesse in the doorway, just making sure everything is ok. PTSD. Sometimes i go for a few days having what are called absent seizures. I might be in the middle of a sentence and it feels like my eyes go a bit funny, like roll back or something and i just black out.It doesn't last long. A minute maybe and i come back, sometimes to the boys looking at me weirdly and asking if i am ok.. This symptom is another from the dissociative disorder basket.

I don't know how to introduce bipolar into this situation.I can tell you some extreme bipolar episodes that i have had but i might save all that for later and continue with how bipolar comes into play in this example of the boys fighting as my trigger. A trigger is something that sets off the illness, brings it out of a manageable state and into action. If i were to feel unable to sleep due to the stress that i feel with my PTSD and dissociation, I may set off a run of sleepless nights, because one sleepless night can easily lead to two and the stress increases  and before i know it i haven't slept in four nights and i will be either hysterical with ridiculous banter and want to play the "who can be the most outrageous and immature" game. We don't really call it that here, we just do it. Or I could go the other way and feel so depressed that all i can do is cry and ask the boys if they will look after things, including the administering of my medications because i cant move or speak or see or hear anything anymore and i need to please be left alone. For how long, no-one knows. My poor boys look so worried when this happens. I don't really do it much anymore....i couldn't stand what it did to them. So I take lithium to lower the risk of a bipolar episode. When it does happen this way its so sad. So fucking sad. I think "why did I leave Mark? What have I done to these boys? How much more of this do i have to take? Why can't i break the cycle? I thought i was bigger and better than this" I start to fantasize about suicide. Soothing myself with thoughts of how i can do it. Over the years i have made strategies for what is probably about 6 to 8 fairly reliable was to kill myself. Depending on what circumstances surrounded me and what mood i was in would determine the method i would fantasize about. i believe this suicidal ideation is a part of my bipolar.

I think i always have schizoaffective disorder hanging around . I think it lays quietly in my mind doing it's thing like an old friend, not causing a fuss and being really familiar. My understanding of schcizoaffective disorder is that it is basically schizophrenia that is triggered by stress. So all my hallucinations i put down to shcizoaffective disorder and my delusions, which are few and far between these day but when i tell you about the old days of about 10 years ago, well, then you'll have you some delusions. It's also responsible for paranoia, which effects me every so often. A definite symptom for me is anhedonia  which is an inability to experience pleasure. The times I have felt this way remind me very much of the few times in my life when i have experienced what i believe was catatonia or very close to it. I could not move, I could not speak, I could not make eye contact with anyone. I could not feel a thing. Looking back i want to say that occasionally i would feel very very sad but i really think the point of my catatonia was to not feel. So while schizoaffective disorder lies around my mind sunning itself with my grey matter pretty much all of the time, it doesn't really effect me so much if i take the anti-psychotics and try to steer clear of stress, another reason why i am agoraphobic...the world stresses me and i really don't want to be seen as a crazy person having a psychotic reaction to it's hustle and bustle.

So those are my 4 main mental illnesses. I hope i have explained well enough how they feed off each other and i need a wellness plan and caring people around me who know me to assist me in living successfully. I really wanted to make this post a "bipolaxin #2" but i really don't know how to talk about one of my mental illness without talking about them all. Anywho, time to go/ This post was a bit exhausting to think about and write. Time to leave it alone.