What I have come to know of myself is that I cannot help to be an outside of the traditional style of thought process thinker. It was recently that I began to visualize myself as having been placed inside this box. Over the course of my entire life what has repeatedly happened has been my slow observation and taking in of the world around me. While doing this I found myself back towards whatever corner or edge I could find. At this time, I began to work myself slowly up the side and out of the box completely. Someone would then come along and see me standing there, holding this box, pick me up and put me back in the middle once more. Finally, I realize the box has been the problem all along. Living within the confines of societies script of who and how I was to be quite literally led me to madness, and ultimately almost killed me. You know how they say what almost kills you only makes you stronger? I will affirm this in my case, but only as it pertains to the strength in my conviction. What I have gone through has weakened me physically to an unrecognizable extent by my internal self and who she has always known herself to be. My seventy-year old father whose brain works most similarly to my own and has had a front row seat to witness the fullness of my self-destructions, battles, and triumphs will tell you I am of the most sound mind he has ever seen. A lifetime of turmoil and conflicted choices added to an imminent autoimmune riddled maternal inheritance has left me physically worn and weathered. Yet, I am filled with an indescribable joy and desire to create pathways to overall healing for others.
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We are at a unique time in mental healthcare which I have seen coming for some time. This is where we are bearing witness to an abundance of need which we do not have the services and if we’re being humble enough to admit also lack the know-how to be able to assist without many if any positive long-term outcomes as guides. I am not saying there aren’t increasing numbers of persons with complex mental health diagnosis and experiences working at the professional level. I am absolutely saying those who are in this group are largely isolated to the affluent crowd, such as myself, and most will say there is not a level of comfort and acceptance by colleagues across this board in fact the majority of challenges with stigma professionals face is that from other professionals. It is alarming to hear the rhetoric towards the symptoms that create behaviors in people experiencing mental health turmoil by those whose positions in society are maintained through the financial exchange for their ergh care to them. There is little interest in taking the perspective of how someone became the way they are and even less inkling of optimism towards real potential for recovery. It is not for a lack of good-hearted people. It’s systemic. And it always has been.
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It’s not my fault I was born to a system not ready for me. There have been extended times I have been resentful for the level of maltreatment I underwent when it came to my healthcare. As a person of privilege, my family had the means to obtain better than what I received, and for many reasons just didn’t. Of the many – I was the great-granddaughter and granddaughter to the town doctor. We trusted and supported our local healthcare options. Increase this complication with my parent’s notion that my brothers and I were not indebted to anything special in the form of accommodation. As a member of the “other side of the tracks” I did not earn the same lessons in how to use my class to my advantage from the same-sex parent, rather I was raised by a mother who taught me to fear the power it had over me. A primary pathway to my own healing has been to make purpose out of all that I have gone through. One of the silver linings that I can assess from my situation, a person who went through what’s been described by a renowned colleague as “the worst of the worst” in mental health maltreatment, is that I had the ability to make it through what most don’t. I am not attempting an arrogance in my saying that I am of the higher intellectually abled. I tend to refer to myself as having traditional intelligence as I have come to know so many other abled in ways that I can only admire. I feel a heavy amount of survivor’s guilt in regard to the less than subpar services I was subjected to and cannot fathom the increased severity with which these systemic issues have impacted those who began in far more oppressed classes and with far fewer advantages than my own. It was around this time fifteen years ago that I was processing the totality of my experiences with my therapist. I was in the middle of my post-partum psychosis when I first declared something had to come of all I learned in what I went through. At the time of course, I was speaking in riddles and sentence fragments without a ton of control. I remember a lot of 1990’s girl scout slogans coming out, “Dare to Dream” stands out in particular in my recollection. At the same time, there was an immense awareness in the need to have an inability of rushing the sequence it would happen.
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A Bachelor’s in Psychology with Spanish minor and impressive research and volunteer work to accompany it would follow the event of my postpartum psychosis. You see, I became inspired when I attempted to explain the revelation I had come to in 40 weeks of therapy during one three-minute inpatient interview with a psychiatrist. The complete arrogance in his eye roll in his refusal to make eye contact through his thick, black rectangle eye frames with his greased slicked back wavy hair that extended just as long as the back of his hairline, adorned in his authoritative white coat was enough to inspire fifteen years of action. What I would tell the Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner I saw in 2019 was that I decided to “white knuckle it to prove everyone wrong” prior to returning for my undergraduate work. What my final Clinical Supervisor for the duration of my 600-hour Master of Social Work Clinical practicum would ask me in affirmation was “are you about finished?” It was during a requested informal supervision with this person that I would share my choice in going off my medications which included for ADHD and a mood stabilizer and a multitude of physical health combats that surrounded now confirmed autoimmune symptoms. I had gone from no medications up to nine medications and it was past time for a voluntary clean out. What I shared with her revealed an immense amount of self-awareness and level headedness. In part, I also revealed my ability to experience the world, particularly nature, in a more fulfilling way.
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The stripping of my medication was done with assistance of the rheumatologist I am working with towards a goal of all out remission and no medication. These are words I never could have dreamed hearing from a doctor previously. I am fully aware that I am only prepared for the level of healing I am at due to the appropriate biomedical support I sought and received for a period of time in combination with the intense work I did to analyze and repair the complex medical and relational trauma that added up to my flawed functioning as an adult. Now, I’m left to make my way out of the mud I slipped into so to speak. This includes having engaged in an ongoing trauma bonded marriage, though rooted in deep love and commitment, is going to take extended time and intention to repair. This includes the setting of boundaries which previously did not exist meaning a need for added room for practicing new behaviors than those which have been enabled nearly two decades to this point. This also means a needed reparation to the flawed systems of attachment we have passed on to our now teen and pre-teen. While this is difficult, I believe it can be done with the addition of grace to a family unit. And change, big change.
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The ultimate healthcare dilemma I experienced led to my initial and unexpected change. This was an abrupt exit to my nearly decade long tenure in an emergent mental health intake position. You see, I had previously worked an unidentified autoimmune disorder to a manageable albeit not fully remitted level at hiring to this position. When the COVID19 pandemic came about, I was smack in the middle of processing the forced overmedication I had gone through during my teenaged years following me into my early adulthood. I was the primary breadwinner and benefits holder for my family. When the hospital I worked for mandated the shot masked as a vaccine, I was initially going to attempt a medical waiver but then the graduate school I was to begin jumped on the mandating bandwagon and I felt I had no options. The reaction to this shot has been crippling at times. The painful symptoms and persistent fatigue have at times been more than overwhelming and there was a potential TIA in there. Ultimately, it was the flu shot which I had been mandated to get that I had approval for medical exemption but did not get filed in time. I will never forget the day I went to get the flu shot, I looked to my husband and said “I will get it one last time”, words I couldn’t have known I would almost die by. This shot incited a Guillain-Barre Syndrome reaction. Something I had only previously googled to research on behalf of the maybe handful of people I met while working acute mental health who said they had experienced it. I am so fortunate to have made the richest and most robust network of trusted colleagues to seek counsel through this month-long, intense mind-body-spirit near-death experience. I am forever a changed person because of what I have underwent through nearly four decades of mistreatment through the traditional American Medical system. I am choosing to take a leap of faith on myself for my family and for the betterment of communities like the one I was raised within. This will include a shift towards minimalism and simplicity by my family in the form of a downsize and move with a goal at unifying and learning new behaviors together. It also takes place in the form of my business plan, one with room for creative approaches and fruit-filled research and extensive long-term partnerships. It’s time to refocus on the rural neurodivergent whose population and potential have been left behind.
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