Monthly Archives: September 2009

Random Thoughts

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As I have been working on my blog today, there has been a question running through my mind all day long.  Why is it when people tell you that you need to change something about your behavior (for example, drama queen, emotional wreck, to involved in things, too angry, too sad, and ore) and you do, they get irritated with you because they have decided that now that you are not such a drama queen anymore, that you are boring?

I am not even sure if there is answer for that question, but if someone has an idea, feel free to let me know.  What I do know is that, I am not the same person I was even a few months ago.  I have been working hard to get the depression and anxiety under control, which in turn has caused me to drop a few bad emotional habits.  Or at least start to drop them.  Also, one of the reasons I started blogging was to give myself an outlet for my emotions, so I did not take them out on other people in an inappropriate way.  It seems to be working, I have less time for drama.

I have a feeling that I might lose some people in my life because as much as they complained to me and about me and how I behaved because of the depression and anxiety, they really prefer the drama I caused to the more rational person I am now.  It that is what happens, I think I will be OK with that.  Obviously, if they prefer the unhealthy me than most likely they are not healthy themselves and I probably do not need to be around them at this stage in my recovery.

Treasure

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Because I have such a hard time keeping a positive attitude, I wanted to set a section of my blog aside where everyday I can point out something that is positive about a person, a thing, or situation.  This exercise is forcing me to be more of a glass is half full kind of person, and helping me maintain a positive attitude.

Today I have spent all day long, reading blogging tutorials and helpful hints about blogging so I can make my blog fancier, more user friendly, and something that is easy to read.  I am proud of myself because I believe I am on my way to accomplishing all of that.  I have also added some new features in.  There were a few times when I became too tired or bored, or both and I wanted to quite before I had reached my goals, but I did not.  I kept plugging away and like the end results.

Scariest Time In My Life – Part IV

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This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

I sat in a chair that was bolted to the floor and used everything within me to keep from bursting out crying.  The sheriff deputy was handing paper work, and my medial file over to someone behind the glass partition.  When he finished with his paper work, he came over and told me it would all be OK, and to remember to cooperate and I would be out sooner.

I looked at my surroundings and everything was gray.  Concrete floors painted gray, cinder block walls painted gray, gray chairs.  I am still holding on by a thread, using all my self control not to cry.  Still sitting.  Finally, a triage nurse takes my vitals, and is concerned because my blood pressure is sky high.  In my head I am thinking, of course my blood pressure is high, I am terrified.  I am told to go back to my chair and wait for a nurse to examine me.

As I am sitting in the gray chair, looking at the gray walls, feeling terrified, barely able to keep myself from crying, I start shaking.  Then one of the men from behind the glass partition came over to where I was sitting and shaking and told me he had to take my picture.  Again, a thought pops into my head, I am thinking they need the picture in case I decide to escape they can use it to track me down better.  Of course the picture was awful considering the fact that I had done a bunch of crying before I left the medical hospital, and I had no make up on and I had not been allowed to take a shower the whole time I was in the medical hospital.  About the time he finishes taking my picture, the nurse who is to examine me shows up.

She calls me into her office.  She tells me that she has to perform a medical examination on me so that I can be medically cleared to go into the regular ward.  Then she tells me that she has to strip search me.  I instantly burst into tears.  My second strip search in less than a week.  So while I am shaking and crying, the nurse conducts her strip search.  When that is done she performs her medical evaluation and I am sent back to the gray chairs in the gray room to wait and see the doctor.

I am not sure when this thought came into my head, but it was in there.  I kept thinking that the doctor at this hospital still had to decide if I really needed to be admitted there, and I kept thinking that once he talked to me he would realize that I did not belong in a psychiatric hospital.  I convinced myself of this.

After a long wait, during which I could not maintain control any longer ad started crying, the doctor finally showed up.  He took my blood pressure again, it seemed the numbers that the triage nurse had gotten from my blood pressure reading earlier was causing them some concern.  My blood pressure was still really high.  The doctor starts asking me questions, a lot of them were about my first suicide attempt and why I was not hospitalized then.  Again, I went through my story of how I got here because of calling my counselor for help and her not being in her office and that I really did not think I belonged there.  The doctor starts questioning the medication that my psychologist prescribed me, he did not do a very good job of hiding the fact that he did not like what my usual doctor had been giving me.  After ten minutes, he lets me know that we are done, and that I am staying in the psychiatric hospital for two to three days, business days not counting the weekend.  I could not believe what I was hearing.  I asked him why and he said “that he felt I was a danger to myself”.  He also wanted to change my medications in a hospital setting.  So then he starts going through the very long list of medications that I have to take for other things, and lets me know that he would be surprised if the unit had the medication I needed for my Restless Leg Syndrome, but he would have them start looking for it.

I go back to the gray chairs, in the gray room.  I do not sit there for very long when two women come up to me and ask me to follow them and go back into the nurse’s office.  Can you guess what they wanted?  If you said to strip search me again, you would be correct.  By now, I am so terrified, and shaking, that I can barely walk.  After they finish their strip search, I am told to get into the back of the security guard’s car and one of the women gets in.  She has a medical mask on her face.  I am then taken to the building where I will be staying. 

When we get to where I am supposed to be, I notice a huge sign on the door.  It basically says that there are patients in this unit exhibiting flu like symptoms and that people are to only come in if they are wearing a mask.  Now I understand why the woman with me is wearing one.  Then I think, what are these people doing, they are sending an asthmatic into a building where there are people who could have the flu.

We enter the building and the first thing that I notice is the noise.  Too much noise.  With my anxiety disorder I have a difficult time handling loud noises, lots of people, and it is even worse when there are loud noises and lots of people in a confined area.  The woman with the mask hands all my stuff over to the nurses in the nurse’s station and I just put my back up against a wall that is in front of the nurse’s station and take in my surroundings.

The best thing I could think of that it reminded me of was of a certain scene from the movie “The Snake Pit”.  “The Snake Pit” is a movie produced in 1948 about a woman and her experiences in an insane asylum, at one point her condition deteriorates and she has to be placed in a special ward called The Snake Pit.  In this ward, the patients are wandering around, making strange noises and fighting with each other.  When I looked out into the room that I had been taken into, it looked exactly like that. 

So with my back against the wall, wringing my hands, my heart in my throat, more terrified than I have ever been before and shaking like I leaf, the reality of where I was finally hit me. 

To be continued…

Scariest Time In My Life – Part V
Back to Part III

Scariest Time In My Life – Part III

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This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

As I suspected, I had a very sleepless night in ICU.  There was a guard in my room, all that night.  I ignored him the best I could.  I was still pissed off at how things turned out.  I wanted to go home.  I was miserable.

A doctor came to examine me in the morning.  Everything was fine, he said I had to stay hooked up to the heart monitors to satisfy the psychiatric hospital.  He then let me know I was going to be moved to a room on the regular floor, for one more night’s stay, and the next day I would be transferred to the psychiatric hospital.  Other than that, the doctor would not talk to me.  What I did not know at the time, is that none of the doctors or nurses would give any information to my husband either.  What I did not understand yet, is that once you have been 10-13nd, you considered incapable of making medical decisions for yourself, and basically whatever hospital you are in has “custody” of you.

Shortly after the doctor examined me I was transferred over to the regular floor, my guard following me over to the new room.  It was at this point that I found out that if I wanted to go to the rest room that I had to wait until a nurse could come into my room and watch me.  As far as I was concerned it was just another humiliating thing I was going to have to endure.  I know this next part is going to sound silly, but at the time it was a serious concern for me.  It is hard enough for me to urinate with someone watching, I am mentally incapable of having a bowl movement with someone watching.  So I quit eating while I was in the medical hospital.  It was not all that difficult to do, considering how nervous, scared and pissed off I was, I really had no appetite anyway.

The guard I had that afternoon felt it was his duty to prepare me for the transfer to the psychiatric hospital.  He let me know that I would be going in a deputy sheriff’s car, riding in the back, as if I were a criminal.  He told me that I might be able to wear my own clothes, that the deputy who would take me would be the one to make that decision.   Finally, he told me that because of the sheriff’s department policy, I would have to be handcuffed.  The shock that I was in deepened, my fear became stronger, and the thought that kept going through my head was, “This would not be happening, if I had not called someone for help.”  I quit talking after that.

That evening, when it came time for me to take my medication for my restless leg syndrome (RLS), I was again given a dose that was less than half of what I am supposed to take.  I asked the nurse who brought it where the rest of it was, and told her that all my medications were brought over from ICU and she needed to check and see what my dosage was.  Her response was to roll her eyes and to let me know either I took what she brought and quit complaining or she would not give me anything for my RLS.  I got on my cell phone and called my husband and told him what was going on, and the nurse left my room, taking the smaller dose of my medication with her.  I was so very angry.  She came back in and told me that the doctor’s orders were for that smaller amount and there was nothing I could do about it.  I believe it was about that point when I said very loudly “that just because I was 10-13nd, did not mean that the doctor or anyone could make medical decisions about me without telling me what was going on.  My husband was still on the phone and he told me he was going to come back to the hospital to see what he could do.  The guard then told the nurse that if this was going to be how I was going to behave, then he was going to take my cell phone away and not let me have visitors.

When my husband was just about to my room, the guard left my room to speak to my husband.  Apparently, the guard told my husband to calm me down so that I could still have visitors and to make their job easier.  My husband went to the nurses station and asked where my bag of medications was.  That is when we found out that between ICU and the regular floor (which by the way are technically on the same floor), my medication bag was lost.  After an hour of searching, my nurse found it.  After verifying on the RLS medication bottle and realizing that I was correct about the dosage, she called the doctor.  At that point my husband spoke with the doctor and let him know that just because I was 10-13nd did not give anyone the right to change my medication dosage because they were unfamiliar with treating people at that dosage amount.  He also asked the doctor why my other medications had not been administered either.  At that point, my husband found out that as a general rule in that hospital, if you are admitted because you are suicidal they take away all of your medications, and only let you have them back gradually.  After much discussion, my husband was able to convince the doctor that it would be a good idea to let me have all my medications, in the dosages I was supposed to.

After another sleepless night, the day that I was dreading arrived.  The day I was going to have to be handcuffed and transported to the psychiatric hospital.  I spent most of that morning crying and thinking over and over again, how this would not have happened if I had not made that phone call for help when I knew I was headed for trouble.  What helped me pass part of the morning was that I was able to get a hold of a friend on my phone using the msn messenger that is on my phone.  He said some encouraging words, told me I would get through this and everything would be ok.

The doctor came into my room to do one final examination before it was time for me to go.  He asked me how I was feeling and I told him I was “pissed off”.  I also told him I felt like I had been railroaded in there, all because I had tried to call my counselor to get help when I realized that I was in trouble and wanted to stop things before they got worse.  His response shocked me.  He told me that anyone who took fifty beta blockers needed to go to a psychiatric hospital, because I could have died.  I remember saying “fifty beta blockers”, and his reply was “yes, that is what I heard you took”.  I let him know that his figure was inaccurate, and told him I took at the most eleven, my regular dosage and ten more. And that before I took anymore I had tried to get a hold of my counselor and some how ended up here.  My only guess is that the crisis team psychologist told him that I had taken fifty beta blockers.  By now I am feeling that  if I ever do get to that point again, there is no way I am going to call anyone for help, and that the attempted suicide will be successful.  

My husband and daughter showed up a bit later to tell me they loved me and to tell me goodbye.  We found out then, which hospital I would be going to, and my husband was given a copy of the address and phone number.  We decided that my husband would take my medications home with him, so that they would not get lost again.  Soon after they left, the nurse came in and told me I would be leaving shortly and the deputy who was taking me said I could wear my own clothing.  Even though I had already been stripped searched and my bags had already been searched several times, the nurse had to watch me get dressed and the guard had to go through my bags.

After I got dressed, I sat on my bed, trying to maintain control of myself.  The nurse came in with a giant white pill and said that the doctor wanted me to take a potassium pill because my blood work showed my potassium was low.  I did not want to take it.  The nurse asked me if I needed anything and I said “No, just leave m
e alone”.  I am guessing that the guard took that to mean that I was going to become a problem, because he stood up and told me I had no choice but to take the pill.  (I did find out later, that 10-13nd or not, no one could force me to take any medication against my will)  I took the pill.  The guard must have also decided that I would become a problem when the deputy showed up to transfer me, because I heard him use his radio to call another guard to my room as back up.

The deputy gets to my room.  He tells me it is time to go.  He gets my bags.  We start walking down the hall.  I am waiting for him to stop and handcuff me.  I ask him if he is going to handcuff me because I had been told that he would have to.  His answer did make me feel some better.  He said “that as long as I did not give him any problems he did not want to handcuff me.”  We are walking out of the hospital, and I realized he had parked his patrol car right in the drive through area of the hospital, so anyone who is coming into the hospital or leaving the hospital, or even just happens to look out their window can see me getting into the back of it.  More humiliation.  In my head I am still focusing on how things got to this point and how I will never call for help again, if this is the end result.

It took an hour to get to the psychiatric hospital.  There was really no conversation between me and the deputy.  That plexiglass thing that is used to separate the front from the back makes any type of conversation difficult.  As we were driving through the front gate of the hospital, the deputy did take the time to let me know that the more I cooperated with the doctors and staff the sooner I would get out of there.  We got to the intake building and I was on the verge of a panic attack.  I have an anxiety disorder anyway, and with all that had gone on the last few days, I think I was just on the verge of really and truly losing it.  I am not sure if the deputy sensed what was going on in my head or not, but he actually had us wait outside of the intake building for about ten minutes.  I think he was giving me time to get control of myself before we walked in.

The deputy took me inside the intake building, gave someone behind a glass partition my bags and I was told to have a seat.

To be continued…

Scariest Time Of My Life – Part IV
Back to Part II

Scariest Time In My Life – Part II

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This is the next section of how I ended up in a state run psychiatric hospital and my experiences there.

After the crisis team and I arrived at the hospital, and the psychologist left me at the front desk, he went back and spoke to someone about me.  Very quickly, I was taken back to triage and then taken to a room in the emergency department.  At that time, no one seemed to be making a big deal about anything so, I started thinking again that a mistake had been made and it would be straightened out.  A doctor came in, asked me a few questions and then everyone’s attitude towards me changed. 

A nurse came in and told me I had been 10-13nd.  Where I live that means a doctor or a judge has declared you a danger to yourself or others and has committed you against your will to a psychiatric hospital.  Shock began to set in again.  My guess, is that the decision to commit me to a psychiatric hospital had been made before I even saw the doctor.  It had probably been made when the psychologist from the crisis team went back and talked to someone in the emergency department and had left me out front.

I was so mentally unprepared for the things that happened next.  That same nurse who told me I had been 10-13nd, handed me a hospital gown and told me I had to take EVERYTHING off and put their gown on.  I asked if this included underwear and she said it did.  I let her know immediately that I was leaving my underwear on and that was that.  She said that she would have to check with the charge nurse.  She also told me they expected me to be leaving for the psychiatric hospital within a few hours, once they found one that had room for me.  I was told that I would have to go in the hospital gown and not my regular clothes.

The nurse left my room, leaving the door open and within seconds a security guard showed up with a chair, which he stuck in the open doorway.   By this time some of the shock was wearing off and I was getting pissed off.  I really felt like I had been handed a bad deal.  In my mind, I was thinking that all I had done was realized I was in trouble, and called my counselor and some how that attempt at getting help before I took any more pills ended up with me being stuck and guarded, waiting to go to a psychiatric hospital.  In fact, that thought is all I focused on for several days.

The charge nurse came into my room.  The guard left the room and shut the door.  The thought I had was that she had come in to take my underwear away.  That is what I was prepared for.  What ended up happening was much much worse, at least as far as I was concerned.  She told me she was going to have to strip search me.  A thorough strip search.  I remember staring at her for a few seconds because my mind could not fully comprehend what she had said for a few seconds.  I then let her know I am not a drug user, nor do I carry weapons, and that I was in here because I had called for help and I felt that things had gone awry.  I also let her know that she was NOT going to strip search me.  Her response was to let me know that all the security guards in the hospital were also sheriff deputies and she would have the guard outside my door arrest me and take me to jail if I did not let her search me the way she needed to.  I promptly burst into tears.  I sobbed.  I relented and let her do what she needed to do.  It was the most humiliating thing I have ever experienced.  My only consolation was she let me keep my underwear. 

After the charge nurse left my room and the guard was back in his place, the doctor let me know they were going to have to hook me up to some heart monitors since I had taken extra of my beta blocker.  Everything looked fine with my heart, but they did leave everything hooked up so they could keep monitoring me.  At that point, I found out that my husband had been out in the waiting room for quite some time and they had not let him come back to see me.  I asked the guard if he would let my husband come back and he said that he would.  My husband came into my room, I explained to him what had happened, and how I felt that if I had not called for help I would not be in there. I did some more crying.  He was great and stayed calm and calmed me down, and then the guard told him he had to go.  

During all of this time the emergency department had been working on getting me into one of the two psychiatric hospitals in our area.  The hospital that agreed to take me, said they wanted the medical hospital to monitor me for 24 hours, because of the beta blocker, before I could go there.  I was taken to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where they decided to start an IV and flush out my system to help get the extra beta blocker out of my system. 

I was getting angrier and angrier because I still felt that all of this was happening because I had called for help, and that things had gone awry.  I really was not pleasant to be around.  I knew I was only going to spend one night in ICU and part of the next day, and after that I was not really sure what was going to happen and when I would be going to the psychiatric hospital.  That also had me very worried. 

I have something called restless leg syndrome (RLS).  Basically, it means that my legs are very uncomfortable, especially at night, and with out my medication sleep is very difficult.  When it came time for me to take my night dose of my RLS medication, I was not given the correct dose.  I was given a much smaller dose.  I mentioned to the nurse that they should have a bag of all of my medication bottles somewhere and they could read it and see what my normal dosages are.  The doctor on call was contacted and he told them to give me the proper dose and I assumed that things had all been taken care of.

After the night medications were sorted out, I settled down for what I knew would be a sleepless night. 

To be continued…

Scariest Time In My Life – Part III

What Difference Does It Make?

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What difference does it make in my life and my family’s life that I have not had any suicidal thoughts in several weeks?  What difference does in my life and in my family’s life that my depression and anxiety do not have as strong of a hold on me as they used to? 

Not having suicidal thoughts for several weeks means, my husband can rest easier and be away from home easier.  He does not have to deal with the constant worry that I will do something to hurt myself.  He will not have to keep explaining to our daughter why Mommy is in the hospital again.  His stress levels will be reduced, his blood pressure will come down, and he will be happier again.  I can work on building up trust with him again.  I will be less cranky and argumentative.  Which means when he comes home from work, he will not have to worry about what kind of argument I am going to start.  I believe we will be closer, because there will be less tension between me and him. 

When my depression and anxiety was very bad, I quit talking to people. I  would just sit on the sidelines and watch as my husband and daughter engaged each other in conversation.  I was not a part of things, and my husband missed me.  He is enjoying it now that I will talk to him and our daughter more, and do not sit silently as much as I used to.  I do not isolate myself as  much anymore either.  I enjoy it when we go places together and they are really having fun when I go with them. 

My grandmother, who I have never seen cry, not even when my grandfather passed away, has cried about me.  She cried because she was worried, and confused about why her granddaughter would want to die.  I think it is incredibly sad that I caused her so much pain.   At least now, she can worry less and I will not reduce her to tears anymore.  She is a loving, caring grandmother and it is unfair that I have caused her to carry such a huge burden of worry for all these months.    She is 82 years old, with a few health problems, I do not need to cause her anymore worry than I already have.  I am looking forward to spending many more years with her.

My brother and sister-in-law can spend less time worrying about me, and helping my husband, and spend more time taking care of their daughter and themselves.  They have been absolutely wonderful.  They have really helped me.  They have made sure that there is always an open line of communication between me and my family, and them.  They willingly listen to me express my frustrations, worries, and concerns without forming judgments.  They have been a huge source of support to my husband as he has had to help me through things.  At least now, with me not having suicidal thoughts, they can relax a bit and not have to sacrifice as much time in taking care of me and my family.                                                                                                          
For me personally, not having suicidal thoughts for several weeks means I feel free.  I look back at how things had been going, and how I had isolated myself, and it feels like I was a prisoner during that time.  Now that the depression and anxiety are lessening, and I am not having suicidal thoughts, I feel as if I have been freed from a prison cell.  I feel lighter.  Having all those thoughts in my head, and the sadness I always had, and the anger I always had, I always felt as if I was carrying a huge load on my back.  Bits and pieces of that load are going away, so I feel lighter.  My stomach feels better.  Every single day I woke up with a huge knot in my stomach because I was so anxious and nervous all the time.  As the day went on the knot in my stomach got bigger and bigger because I would become more anxious and nervous as the day went along.  That knot is gone.  I can wake up in the morning and not start the day already feeling bad.  I feel so much better.

I realize that not every day is going to be a good day and that I could have some more medication issues, but at this point I am more hopeful than I have been in a very long time.  Hope brings on a more positive attitude and  I feel like I am moving away from that dark cloud that has surrounded me for so many years.

Attack Of The Blank Mind

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I have to admit that today it has been a struggle to come up with something to blog about.  I have managed to catch a cold that has settled into my chest.  Besides having major depression, diabetes, and an anxiety disorder, I also have adult onset asthma, so I always get a little concerned when a cold settles into my chest.  I just feel pretty crappy today.  I also have not been sleeping very well, so I have been dozing on and off during the day. 

Right before I was diagnosed with depression and an anxiety disorder, I was hardly ever sleeping.  I had the typical early waking that many people with depression experience.  This lack of sleep is a bit different.  I am just not sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time when I do sleep, and I got at least three nights during the week without getting any sleep at all.  I am starting to think that it is the Effexor causing it.  That can be one of the side effects.  When I mentioned my lack of sleep to my psychiatrist he told me to take extra of my anti-anxiety medication, vistaril, since it is nonaddictive and makes you sleepy.  It is not having the desired results.  I do not want to stop taking the Effexor, since it seems to be working for the depression.  The next time I see my psychiatrist, I will tell him that I am still not sleeping and get him to prescribe something to help me sleep.  He said he would if the extra vistaril did not work. 

Part of me really enjoys being the only one awake at night, part of me does wish I could sleep a little more.  Before I started getting help with my depression most of my time at night was spent crying for hours, researching how to kill myself, and trying to decide if that night was the night to go through with it.  Now, I spend it enjoying the quiet alone time, watching what I want on TV, spending time with my dogs, reading, and just generally enjoying myself.  Hey!  I just now realized that I have not had any suicidal or self destructive thoughts in several weeks.  That is wonderful! I  had not even been aware that I had not had those thoughts until I started recalling how I used to spend my  nights.

That is exactly how my counselor said it would happen too.  She said I would just quit having those thoughts, and would not really notice until sometime later.  Even when  I was taking the other medications and they seemed to be working, I still had almost daily suicidal thoughts, I was just not as obsessed with them as I had been before treatment.  I feel like I have reached a huge milestone in my recovery.  No suicidal thoughts for about three weeks.  I never really believed that there would come a time when I would go so long without wanting to kill myself.

My dogs are my constant night time companions.  Well, they sort of are.  They tend to fall asleep too.  Buster is my boxer, and Minnie is my chihuahua/shitzu mix.  Minnie is younger and smaller but she is the dog that is in charge.  This is what the dogs are doing now, while I am still awake and blogging.

I Am Going to Draw A Line In The Sand

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Today I had my weekly appointment with my counselor. I went with a topic in mind. How do I deal with my resentments, most particularly held against my mother, so that I do not get consumed by my resentments? When I am consumed by my resentments I become very angry and spiral down into a “rabid dog” type of mentality, I am sad, and I know that it contributes to my depression.

As usual, my counselor had a very simple solution, that is going to be super hard to implement. Basically, she said that if I would start being very clear with my mother about what my boundaries were and stuck with the consequences if she chose to cross a boundary, I would feel empowered. She believes that much of my resentment is born out of frustration, because I am not very good at making clear what is acceptable behavior towards myself and what is unacceptable behavior, especially where my mother is concerned. She feels that if I can accomplish this with my mother, that everyone else will be easy.

Let me just put it this way, my mother is a very manipulative woman, who tends to behave in a very passive aggressive/childish way when she does not get her own way. She knows what all my buttons are and knows exactly how to push each and everyone of them, and I always get sucked into whatever game/manipulation she has going on at the time. At times she can be so wonderful and be exactly the mother I have always wanted, and then when I start depending on her and really need her support, it is as if she snatches that away and I am left once again with the mother that makes me feel inferior, unintelligent, abandoned, not worthy, frustrated, disappointed and sad.

My challenge then, is when she is acting appropriate and loving to take it for what it is and remember that it will not last. That when she has has gotten whatever emotional need filled by me, she will revert back to her usual manipulative, passive aggressive self. Most importantly, I cannot change her. I can only change how I react to her. That means I will have to be assertive and set up boundaries to protect myself from her manipulations and behavior. Only when I can accomplish all of that will I be able to let go of my resentments towards her. For my peace of mind and sanity, I really need to start working on this immediately.

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Check this news article out.

Study: Over 8 Million Americans Consider Suicide Each Year – Health News | Current Health News | Medical News – FOXNews.com

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A closed mouth gathers no feet

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Today was one of those days.  Just one of those yucky days where resentment rules my day. When I get that way, no matter what, I am going to prove how right I am, and I WILL have the last word.  At least that is how it usually goes.  I call it my “rabid dog behavior”  It is not pretty, it makes me feels stressed, sad, and angry all at the same time. 

I have a family member that I follow on twitter and they follow me.  That person believes I made the wrong decision about something and so has spent the last week tweeting some passive aggressive stuff on a daily basis.  They did this either to make me feel bad about my decision and make the one they wanted me to, or they were trying to have the last word about the situation.  It has been irritating because for me twitter is mostly about tweeting the most random and odd stuff I can think of.  That family member was putting up stuff that was taking away some of my tweeting fun.  Today, I felt like I had enough.  So my “rabid dog” mentality kicked in.  I started finding all sorts of quotes, to back up my side of things, and tweeting them.  For every passive aggressive thing they tweeted about I had ten quotes to back me up.  Not only was I going to be right and have the last word, I was going to win and I was damn proud of myself. 

That is until my brother slammed me back into reality.  In a private message he said “Getting revenge is like picking up a hot coal to throw at someone.  You both get burned.”  That definitely sucked the fun out of my twitter war.  Then he told me that he did not “want me to be consumed with resentment”

I have spent the day thinking about what he said.  Seeing as this was not the first time that I have engaged in the obsessive behavior of having to be right and having to have the last word, or being so consumed with resentment about how someone acted, I decided that I needed to examine this “rabid dog” behavior. 

I realized that every single time that I have behaved this way, I have always been left with a yucky feeling in the pit of my stomach.  The situation never turns out how I think it should.  Things usually get out of hand and either I or the other person or both of us, will eventually say more than one thing that would have been better left unsaid, resulting in hurt feelings on both sides and even more resentment.  I am always embarrassed when the situation is over.  Acting this way leaves me emotionally and physically exhausted, often in a bad mood, and the person I am trying to prove a point to actually takes away nothing because they are often too busy trying to respond to me to actually think about anything I have said.  I also realized that the negative emotions I have at the time, (being consumed with resentment, and obsessed with being right and having the last word) actually make my depression worse.  Sometimes it is only worse for a few hours but sometimes it can last for days. 

I had what I call an AHA! moment.  I suddenly realized that anytime I gave into the “rabid dog” mentality I was allowing someone else to have control of me, instead of me being in control of myself.  I also realized I was getting in the way of my own recovery from depression by putting myself in situation where I know that outcome will involve the worsening of my depression symptoms.

I took the time to look up the words obsessed and consumed in the thesaurus.  What I found was very interesting, especially given how things turn out when I am obsessed with being right and am consumed with resentment.  Some words that mean consumed are ruin, destroy, eat up, devour and waste.  Words for obsessed are preoccupied, and haunted.   Hmm.  What comes to mind is that I seriously need to figure out how to get over being consumed with resentments and stop being obsessed with being right and having the last word, or I will be eaten up by the obsession, I will continue to ruin relationships and my own mental health, and be haunted by the consequences of my actions. 

I am very thankful my brother had the guts to give me an honest opinion about how I was behaving.

My Mind Powers Can Turn You Into A Frog

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During the last few years there is a special someone who had the ability to make me smile no matter how much my depression and anxiety were affecting me.  That person was my little, four year old niece.  She was the one person in my family that I felt had no expectations of me, and just accepted me as I was, good days and bad.  Most of the time she thinks I am pretty funny, but likes to tell me all the time how silly I am.

I was very fortunate when my niece was born.  After her mother had to go back to work, my brother and sister-in-law trusted me enough to babysit her during the day sometimes.  It has always meant so much to me that I had the opportunity to play such an important role in her life when she was so young.  I will always appreciate my brother and sister-in-law for allowing me to do that. 

My niece calls me MeMe.  My family calls me Missy and when she was younger she could not say it properly and it came out MeMe.  I thought it was a great aunt name and asked if they would let her keep calling me that so I could be the aunt with the cool nickname. 

Over time my brother and sister-in-law moved to another house a bit further away and my health started to decline a bit so I could not babysit anymore.  Plus with the depression and anxiety, I could not really get out like I used to.  However, I had opportunities to let her come to my house and spend the  night, or hang out with her a bit.  I loved those times.  She was so much fun to play with.

One time I was bringing her to my house, she saw some cows in the cow pastures around us.  There were a few brown cows.  I told her the brown cows made chocolate milk, and the black and white cows made white milk.  To this day she still talks about brown cows making chocolate milk.  She has such a great sense of humor for a four year old. A few of months ago we had gathered at my grandmothers to cook out and spend some time together.  My mother had bought some bubble guns.  With no prompting from me, she would fill her gun up with the bubble mixture and go shoot her father with the bubbles and then she would always tell him “MeMe told me to do it!” 

She was a life saver when my family had gathered at a restaurant.  Between the depression and my anxiety, being in a crowded restaurant was a nightmare.  I could hardly stand it.  I had brought my niece some toys and a package of punch balls and some bubbles, she really wanted to play with them.  So every so often she would ask me to take her outside on the front porch of the restaurant. Once we got out there, she and I would punch each other with the punch balls (she always declared herself the winner), or we would blow bubbles, or we would just sit there and talk about Disney Princesses.  She and I both like Cinderella the best.  The thing is she accepted me on whatever level I could give her at the moment and if I was quiet for a bit she would play by herself, she made no stressing demands on me.  I know a few adults who could learn a thing or two from her. 

A couple of weeks ago we went to my brother and sister-in-law’s house to hang out, and have pizza.  My niece was just great!  When she saw us pull into the driveway she came running out to welcome us.  She showed me a few of her wrestling moves, and in a discussion that involved me trying to convince her that she should share a stuffed animal with me I learned that she could not because “they were all her favorites”  By the time the pizza arrived she was dressed in a Tinkerbell outfit, carrying two wands, trying to impress me with the “power” that was in her wands.  Again, there was a sharing discussion between me and her about the wands and she let me know that I could not handle the “power” her wands contained and then promptly turned me into a pepperoni pizza.  Then told me that because I was a pizza I could not talk. 

When I was released from her pepperoni pizza spell, I let her know about my mind powers, which I could use to turn her into a frog.  Then I turned her into a frog.  We went back and forth turning each other into frogs and pizza over and over again.  Her wand was waving all over the place, my mind was working very hard with all those frog spells.  We had a lot of fun! 

Once again, that cute little kid brought me out of my own depression and anxiety better than anyone else could do and had me concentrating on other things and had me laughing.  One of the things I am going to do when I have a bad day or days again, is remember “My mind power can turn you into a frog” and think about the good times I have had with my niece.  What a little blessing she is!