Arrrrggghhhh…
This was meant to be a new thread. In GQ. Sorry. Could someone move it? Thanks.
Ever since the introduction to the world of the cell phone, no one notices it any more. If they don’t see you holding one, they assume you’ve got earbuds on.
My experience with military and VA psychiatrists was iffy. The Navy shrink I saw was more interested in talking at me and making notes than he was in talking to me and listening to what I had to say. IOW, he was more concerned about my fitness for duty than he was in getting me any kind of real help. The other Navy shrink I saw was OK; he admitted me to a day-hospital program where I played BS games all day and drank at night, then shipped me back to the States where I got to deal with the aforementioned bozo.
The VA shrinks, IM(limited)E, are used to dealing with patients who have been traumatized in some way. So if you don’t have PTSD, there’s not much they can do for you.
Robin
Oh, get off the cross. People were not complaining because you posted too much in general. The problem is that nearly everything you had to say was not really about depression, but about you and your depression. Believe it or not, there are ways to address the issue – any issue – that do not start with “this one time, at depression camp, I …”
Bullshit. If you really thought this, you wouldn’t have posted. Instead you’re making like one of those people who say “I’m never speaking to you again” and then proceed argue with you for an hour. Actually, come to think of it, its far more akin to a four-year-old who is told that the picture might be prettier if he didn’t keep using just the one crayon and instead tried some other colors, and whose response is to throw it across the room, make a face and say “I’ll never draw another picture again.”
If you can honestly read that post of yours and not see that passive aggression, as well as the epic amounts of self-involvement that cause it, well… I’d suggest getting professional help, but that hasn’t seemed to work. Score another one for Ahunter3, I suppose.
Her contributions to this thread are so much more valuable than yours that it’s not even funny. You have already bitched about people talking about their depression. Why in holy fuck do you read the threads?
Jesus, some of you people are stupider than a pig wallow.
As a guy who has called you out in the past, you should know that it wasn’t because of hijacking. It’s because you’re amazingly narcissistic. This post, which I’ve altered in the quote below, is just chock full of references to yourself. While there’s nothing wrong with sharing personal anecdotes, you are in desperate need of a new writing style. A simple copy & paste to Word with a search & replace yielded an amazing “me, myself & I” ratio of 71 instances in 453 words. That means you specifically refer to yourself once every 6.4 words!
It’s hard to address the content when the style is so painfully annoying. Granted, this post was in direct response to people goofing on you, so it’s no big surprise that your “me-ness” was on overdrive, but it wasn’t far removed from your norm. Let’s look at how your first post in this thread rates:
The “me, myself & I” ratio here was a not as shocking but still notably annoying once every 8.1 words. One sign of hope is that unlike the much longer post above, this one actually contains one whole sentence without a single reference to yourself. Kudos.
You better watch out Ellis, jsgoddes is gonna go all ballistic on your ass…
not a single reference to me…well except that one, but other than that, none.
Incidentally, I am quite touched by the number of people (including those who disagree with me about psychiatry) who came into the thread & expressed appreciation for my posting about psychiatry.
Your anecdotes were suitably horrifying, but aren’t they the exception rather than the rule?
He was wondering around the Commons almost naked and pooping on people’s lawns. When you tried to speak to him, he could not respond with anything resembling an answer. I think he needed to be in the hospital. While not homicidal or suicidal, he was manifestly not able to care for himself at all.
Right. I have insurance but they still didn’t want to lock me up. I was talked out of it, and obviously not because I couldn’t pay. They didn’t think I needed to be hospitalized. This just goes to the point that not all mental health professionals are eager to commit people, even people who might be open to the idea of being committed.
I guess I’ve been lucky wrt shrinks, then.
People go to the ER hoping to be made popular, outgoing, and courageous? Talk about decompensated.
Why? Did they have reason to worry? I understand if you don’t want to go into it. I guess I’m wondering how much of a problem involuntary commitment really is. It doesn’t seem like it happens all that often.
I will!
When I was in my last years of college, I suddenly found myself without purpose. I’ve always been an overachiever- but I was suddenly left with nothing to achieve except a few extra tips for doing a good job at my hostess job at Denny’s. Growing up I always wanted great things, but after 17 years of schooling I found myself no closer to making something of myself than when I cheerfully pronounced I wanted to be an astronaut in first grade. The weight of all the sheer work I’d have to do to make my dreams come true felt like a million pounds. Living is, after all, a tremendous responsibility. Each day felt like years, and I kept counting my regrets (why didn’t I major in something else? Why didn’t I look for a job during school?) And so I gave up. I gave in. I decided I was no longer up with the challenge of living. I decided to become despair.
And it was some dark times. I spent two years in deep mourning for my own life.
I tried medication at one point, but it didn’t work. I didn’t want to get better, I wanted to get worse. I tried because the ghost of the overachiever in me didn’t want me to fail my classes- and I was at the point that I was leaving early every day because I was making a scene crying in my chair while trying to write notes about Russian Cinema. But the side-effects were too much for me to be able to concentrate anyway and I couldn’t afford those side effects on finals week, so I grit my teeth and made it through. I graduated (weighing 90lbs, sores on my cheeks from sleeping on tear-soaked pillows, and drinking tumblers of vodka far too often) with honors.
Drugs couldn’t have saved me. I have the will of steel.
Then one day about two years ago, I woke up and felt okay. It was a different okay than the semi-manic euphoria I was used to, or the false hope I’d occasionally try to conjure up just to make my failures seem more romantic. It was the feeling of a a sunny day after a rainstorm. I walked to work, put in my day, came home, cooked dinner, and went to sleep. And I kept doing that. Every day. It wasn’t easy. I felt like I was reborn- like I’d had all my bones broken and they’d been put back together. Not quite as strong, and a little unsteady, but workable. Soon I was doing positive things again- moving to a better town, finding a better job, writing applications, traveling…and I haven’t looked back. I know I can’t say this for sure, but I can say as sure as I can that I will never go there again. I have conquered that demon.
I can’t say for sure what changed. But I think the the biggest part was me starting to re-invest in living. To take on the challenge. To look the next 80 years straight in the eye and say “I will live those”. And to finally let go of all the depressive thoughts that had become my world. It was an act of bravery to give up my entire philosophy of life. A leap of faith. The world of being ‘okay’ had become an unknown, and I had to invest in it without even a hit of reservation to get better. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I had to go through every bit of that agony to figure out that nothing less than wholesale living was going to work. Ultimately it came down to trust. Trusting myself. Trusting the world. Putting myself out there where things could hurt me again, and trusting I could make it through.
And no drugs could have done that work for me. A good councilor might have been able to help me recognize my false starts, crutches and excuses. Love certainly helped me feel not as alone. But the most drugs could have done was delay that final battle.
I wish people would lay off Siege.
Count me in as another former mental patient who was hurt by doctors. I come from a family with a strong history of mental illness. My maternal Grandmother died in a mental hospital (my mother is convinced the treatments made her worse), my mother takes a variety of medications, my younger brother Mark was treated for ADD and major depression the same as I. I first went to a shrink in grade school. The third one we tried was very helpful. She put me on Ritalin and my grades soared. When I was in high school I was hit by a major bout of depression and was hospitalized at one point. There were a variety of doctors that came to see me and a lot of them didn’t know what the hell they were doing. One of them became convinced that I had Multiple Personality Disorder and since I believed authorities back then, I became convinced I had it too. If I hadn’t insisted on my long-term doc being in charge of me for other reasons, I could’ve been treated for a bunch of conditions I didn’t have.
I am my happiest and healthiest now that I am no longer seeing any shrinks or taking any drugs. I found that I was relying on the drugs and docs to make me happier rather than making positive changes in my own life. When the random bouts of depression strike me, I no longer run for pills or docs but sit and think about it logically until it goes away. A few weeks ago I learned that when a depressive disorder strikes, the right hemisphere of the brain is far more active with alpha waves than the left hemisphere. There has been some evidence (although no controlled studies) that individuals with depression can cure their illness by consciously increasing the alpha activity in their left hemisphere. (cites: 1 2 3) I think this is what I managed to figure out on my own. I was discussing this with a friend two nights ago and he said that he found meditation helped him far more than any medicines did.
Furthermore, one of the scientists who is working in this field also found that hormonal changes in women during their menstral cycle can change the pattern of these waves. This would explain why women tend to be more prone to depression than men.
How is your experience “…feeling crappy about the rough spots in life, and medicating so you don’t feel them”?
You specifically say that medication didn’t work for you, so how can you use your experience as an example of “medicating so you don’t feel them”?
You got better without help. That’s great. I experienced something similar a couple of years ago, though without even a rough spot for excuse. Neither of us is an example of medicating so we don’t feel the rough spots, you because the meds didn’t work and me because I didn’t take any.
Yes. Most shrinks aren’t going to incarcerate anyone for some cavalier reason. Most heroin dealers aren’t going to shoot uninvolved bystanders, either, but it happens often enough to generate concern.
My story, including upsetting the woman heading up the Rape Crisis Center.
It happens often enough that when we have regional meetings, large conference rooms are filled with people who define themselves as “psychiatric ex-inmates”, “survivors of the psychiatric system”, “mental patients liberation front”, etc., and aobut 70% of us have experienced involuntary psychiatric treatment. It happens often enough, in other words, for there to be a movement of people pissed off because it was done to them. Often enough to fill conference rooms despite the absence of the ones who aren’t together enough to attend conferences, don’t have the resources to get to them, don’t know of the movement or its conferences to begin with, or are too “in the closet” about having ever been a psychiatric inpatient to even consider appearing at such an event.
Too often, in other words.
Me too. The things that raise hostility in people here never ceases to confound me. I just don’t get it.
I skip over posts I don’t like. Unless something is directed at me personally, I see no reason whatsoever to let it bother me emotionally. Pitting someone because of their posting style strikes me as about as petty as pitting someone because of how they dress–it just isn’t something that affects me.
I’m not talking about trolls, or people who consistantly and successfully hijack and derail conversations, or people who make insulting or offensive statements. Pit them all you want. But pitting someone because, basically, you don’t like their personality?
Even in real life, where I don’t have the luxury of skimming over people’s words, I don’t do that. If I don’t like someone, I either avoid them or tollerate them. I would never dream of insulting someone just because they have different interests than I do, or come across as self-interested, or even obnoxious. Unless someone is personally insulting to me, cruel, or malicious, I just ignore them.
Why the rules should be any different on-line, I just don’t understand.
The fact that all this hostility is directed at Seige, who, AFAIR, has never been rude or insulting to anyone on the boards (and please, if you do recall a moment of rudeness on her part, don’t be so petty as to bring it up just to correct me) just baffles me completely.
I’m with** Alan Smithee ** and monstro.
I find is really baffling that **Ellis Dee ** would struggle so hard to come up with something to beat B] Siege ** about.
He can’t accuse her of being a jerk or rude so he flays her for using “I” too much.
Oh please.
Although it’s trite and overused, this really does call for the phrase, 'Get a life, **Ellis Dee ** "
It’s not the first time I’ve [post=6531416]noticed[/post]. Kinda stuck with me, somebody so amazingly self-involved that her reaction to the disaster in New Orleans was that she wished she didn’t have to see it on her local news. This was, of course, just after the clusterfuck of a thread wherein we learn that she was “harmed” by somebody taking a photo of her at a convention.
I admit that those two threads were my introduction to Siege, never having come across any posts of hers that stood out before. That certainly colored my impression of her negatively. Since then I’ve only seen her rarely, almost always in the pit, and it’s always with the “me me me” posts. If I had called her out every time, the recommendation to get a life would be more reasonable than trite. But twice a year? She’s plenty capable of handling herself. It’s not like she’s a stranger to the pit.
I call bullshit. You didn’t skip over my post, which wasn’t directed at you personally. So why did you let it bother you?
Unlike Siege, you are a stranger to the Pit, which you avoid with 97% of your posts. (That’s an actual stat; not hyperbole.) You clearly find all pittings to be petty. Since you don’t like the meanies over here, maybe you’d feel better back in GQ. Be sure to stop by MPSIMS on the way to load up on enough {{huggles}} to make you feel all better.
I’d just assume let this hijack die. I’m not really motivated to pit Siege proper, but if you guys really want to get into it, I suppose I could. Just don’t whine that I struggled mightily to find some obscure thing to attack her with; this isn’t from out of left field.
Uh, there’s this little invention called the “Ignore List”. I suggest you use it if it gets your blood pressure so out of wack.
Look, for those that were able to sort things out with out “running to the doctor for a new pill”, good for you. Must you look down on those who found that medication works for them? Do you honestly think I LIKE taking meds everyday? In my case, I have OCD, and behavior modification techniques combined with meds is what worked. If you have a problem with that, that’s just too goddamned bad. It ain’t your life, it ain’t your body, so you do not have a say.
As for reacting to negative situations, I wasn’t in one. I had just graduated high school and started college. And I actually liked school, but I was miserable. I think it was the change in my life that triggered things, but I wasn’t in a period where one would expect me to be upset. Depression will often strike when NOTHING is apparently wrong. And again, in my situation, it wasn’t depression itself, but depression was a symptom of anxiety, and unreasonable, irrational fears. And knowing they’re unreasonable and irrational doesn’t make them go away. In fact, trying to reason with yourself as to WHY they’re unreasonable only makes it worse. That’s where the obsession comes in-trying to analyze to death what’s going on and you end up obsessing even more.
I am NOT saying everyone needs to take meds. Not at all. I am saying, whatever works FOR YOU, but do not look down on those who decided that meds worked for them. Why does that bother you so much? Maybe, just MAYBE they tried things YOUR way, and it didn’t fucking work. So fuck off.
There’s no one perfect method for anyone. Everyone is different. Don’t knock someone for having a different experience than your’s. And don’t assume that I just pop a pill and everything is hunky-dory. There’s a lot more to it than just that, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to further elaborate. You seem to assume that I just down some drugs and that’s all I do. It’s not-but I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to tell anyone HERE anything else.
AHunter3, quite honestly, some of what you wrote in your anecdotes does sound pretty off to me. BUT, as long as you weren’t a danger to yourself or others, there was no reason to lock you up. On the other hand, if you were running around throwing your feces at people and screaming incoherantly, then we’d have to talk.
She says in the thread she started called “AHunter3-SHUT THE FUCK UP about psychiatry!”.
Touche.
:smack: :o