Friday Free Association

---I want to get my psychiatric record already. It's about frickin' time. Yet at the same time, I'm afraid to read it...

---I have an assignment from the shrink (which was originally going to be "due" next week, but our schedules clearly don't work and so the due date's been delayed until the 30th of the month). I have to make a list of my conditioned reactions and what triggers them - when, where, how they happen. And then we're going to deconstruct the list.
I like assignments like that - when he tells me "why don't I leave this with you to work on...", and then I go off and come back feeling like a proud little school-girl because I did what I was told. I'll probably go back through the archives of this blog for examples... I'm challenging myself to come up with 3 typed pages (my handwriting looks like doctor scrawl, and it hurts to write a lot at a time).

---i'm iron deficient, so I'm taking an iron supplement which is wreaking havoc on my gastro system. Enough said about that.

---I also wish there were more hours in the day so that I could work a few more hours (and get paid more) but at the same time go to sleep more. If I'm not working, I'm pretty much always on my couch.
If I don't feel better a week from Monday, I'll call the shrink...


---It's 11:25 pm so I'm going to go to bed.

If only I had a boyfriend that called as often as my shrink

Seriously. My shrink and I played the most ridiculous game of telephone tag today.
It started at a phone call at 8:10 am with an offer of an appointment - at multiple times, none of which worked for me.
He told me he would call me back.

Fast forward to 10:30 - I had just gone to see a client. He left a message offering me two more times, both of which happened to be times I would be busy with my own clients.
11:15 - I left him a message saying the times wouldn't work, but please call if any cancellations come up.

12:35 - The shrink calls to say I can come this evening - he had a cancellation.
1:10 - I call back and say, ok.
1:30 - He calls back to remind me that I have to buzz up because the building's doors lock.

Unbelievable, uh? Thank GOD my phone works again.

Gah, my phone - Part II

My phone is alive. Hallelujah!

What did we all do before the days of cell phones and blackberries?

Gah, My phone

My blackberry is DEAD. As a doornail.
Here I go to get yet another phone. Which I should have, in 3 to 5 business days.
Ugh.

At a loss

I am honestly at a loss for what to write on this blog. I keep composing things and then saving the drafts - not actually posting what I write. A good blogger, I am not.

I'm actually completely tapped out when it comes to writing. There's a list of subjects I want to write on... a lot about therapy, about myself, about gaining access to my psychiatric records...
More on my friendships, my past, my future. I just can't put the words together.

In some ways, I do wish I was manic... just the :::eensiest, tiniest bit::: manic for the purposes of being able to write something with some sort of emotion, motivation, power. That being said, I'm too tired.

So I'll go to bed instead.

Admission

Since April 26th I've been intent on losing the 10 lbs I put on as a result of going back to school. Well... that 10 turned into 20.

I don't know why I sabotage myself - I realise that I don't have a concept of long-term pleasure (well, in some ways I do considering that I'm planning to go to Israel where I hope to have a happier life); that I don't understand how to soothe myself, console myself, love myself, without food.

For the first time in... a long time, I am on NO meds, with the exception of an essential amino acid. Yet I can't control my eating. At all. It's out of control. And for the first time in ages, clothes I bought in 2006, 2007 don't fit, or look terrible, and I find myself trying to avoid being photographed, or in public. Note: I wear a bathing suit to work.

This isn't a woe is me post, but merely me trying to figure out where to start on the road back to getting my waistline, and my confidence, back in my personal possession.

Definition Part II

Biederman has apparently coined a new syndrome: "Developmental Mood Modulation Disorder". Yet, I can't seem to find any information or papers or anything on this.
Am I out to lunch with my PubMed searching skills, or is my psychiatrist just throwing up words in order to try to convince me that maybe I don't have Bipolar Disorder.

Seriously.

Definition

How does a person with a mental illness define themselves in that context? How does one give life to a definition that will, most likely, be with them for the rest of their lives? And when does this definition become stigma?
- During the 7 floor elevator ride to the shrink's office?
- Upon approaching the front of the pharmacist's pick-up line and realising that the pharmacist is yelling "HAVE YOU TAKEN THE PROZAC BEFORE?!"
- When breaking down for whatever reason and knowing that despite the same reason, no one else is breaking down?

Does the stigma have to pop up in such public encounters? Or is the fact that perhaps one's shrink (audibly) grapples with the idea that maybe the individual doesn't have the diagnosis that was originally put forth. Yet to look at the psychiatric records from past hospitalizations, to glimpse upon those HealthWatch reminders ("what is depression?"), one would assume that that label, those simple words, would be etched into cement forever. A human being's record permanently tarnished and stained.

How does one reconcile the possibility that it is actually possible to be sane without meds... to live a meaningful life (on another continent, no less) and that happiness actually happens independent of small colored capsules. It's a lot to take in.

Remember when I wanted one of these?

Remember this?
My incredible friends got me one (engraved with my name!) for my Birthday!