Crazy, mad, batty, and nutty. Those are the words we use to describe someone with a mental illness. Can we all stop using those words because they are not compassionate and display a lack of understanding? I ask this as someone with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. I ask as the daughter of a woman with depression, anxiety, and PTSD. I ask on behalf of my maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother both of whom had bipolar disorder. I ask for my uncle who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. I also ask for my cousins on both sides of my family who suffer from various mental illnesses.
I took a trip with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law to Bass Lake, located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains above California’s San Joaquin Valley, near Yosemite. While browsing around a thrift store in nearby Oakhurst, I found four books, including Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. The book chronicles the author’s two-year stay at a mental health facility when she was in her late teens. At the age of 17, I swallowed a bottle of antidepressants. I ended up getting my stomach pumped. It’s not an experience I recommend unless you enjoy a long tube down your esophagus and into your stomach.
I stayed in the adolescent wing of a mental health facility in Fresno called Cedar Vista for nearly two weeks. Since buying Kaysen’s book on Saturday, I am 48 pages in. Memories of my time at Cedar Vista flood my mind. I remember having a staff member take my WalkMan away. Yes, I know that makes me sound ancient. It was in 1989, and a WalkMan was cool. A staff member told me that I had to wait to get it back. I didn’t get it back until the end of my stay there. Fellow patients told me that they used electronics as bribery. You received them back when they realized you would follow the rules. It would only take a minute of talking to my teen self for a staff member to realize I was a rule player and not a rule breaker.
Nothing during my almost two weeks at Cedar Vista helped my depressed, suicidal teen self–the group therapy or talks with staff. Because my therapist at the time didn’t have privileges at Cedar Vista, I couldn’t see her. Instead of assigning me one that could, I was left without therapy during my stay. The only thing that place gave me was a determination to avoid anywhere remotely similar. I think it also sparked a desire to live and not die. About two months after my stay, all suicidal desires and thoughts disappeared forever.
Flashing forward to 1994, when I remembered the childhood sexual abuse, a desire to beat my gene pool grew to dinosaur-sized proportions. I decided I would not become a family statistic of a life ruined by mental illness and trauma. While my mental health struggles significantly hampered my life, it was and is not ruined. I am becoming stronger and healthier every day.
I stumbled upon tapping in the spring of 2020, during lockdown. My heart started racing every evening. I felt overwhelming and crippling anxiety. I searched for a meditation app and found The Tapping Solution. My heart stopped racing the first time I tapped. I began practicing tapping daily. My anxiety decreased by half. I started meditating daily in April 2021. Meditation gave me more mental clarity. A year later, I started taking an antidepressant called Celexa, and it took away any remaining anxiety. I started taking an additional antidepressant (Wellbutrin) two weeks ago hoping it will reduce depression.
I am on a journey necessitated by childhood trauma and my crappy mental health genes. It is a journey that is a marathon and not a sprint. For the first time in my life, I feel free. Anxiety is a crippling disease. And yes, it’s a brain disease. I’m still struggling with depression, but I know I will detach myself from its grasp through medication, meditation, tapping, exercise, and healthy eating. My genes might be crappy, but I am so much more than my DNA origin. I am a strong, feisty, determined woman who descends from a long line of the same kind of women. While my mental health DNA is awful, the women in my ancestry were tough. I grab the strength passed down to me and do so much more than merely survive. I will thrive.
Application
If you are feeling discouraged by your recovery progress, email me at thepossiblepath@gmail.com for a word of encouragement.
Resources
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
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Love you and thankful for your open heart to help others on their healing journeys. I am grateful for the tools God has given us to heal from childhood trauma and other things that have hindered our mental health. Bless you, dear Gina <3 Yes, you are more than a conqueror in Christ JESUS.