Showing posts with label NEDAweek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NEDAweek. Show all posts
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Friday, February 28, 2014
february 28/29th: TV taught me how to feel, now real life has no appeal
In yesterday's vein, it not only shocks me how I can fangirl and disorder all over everything at once, but how I can be so very ready to die and also care about school at the same time.
At some point I want to write a much longer piece on fangirling and mental illness, because I have lots of Strong Opinions on this. I don't care how cheesy or ridiculous it sounds, but fandom has truly saved my life, on many levels. It's given me an outlet for emotions I never had growing up. (Related, I find it hilarious that my parents & sister had a mini "intervention" for me. Said they thought I was "too attached" etc etc. OMG ARIA, YOU HAVE FEELINGS. STOP THAT.)
Anyway. Here continues my saga of downward spiraling. This weekend I'm planning (migraine-permitting...) to make a more comprehensive post of my experience. I will probably continue these posts on an off for myself.
February 28th + February 29th
usual trigger warnings.Thursday, February 27, 2014
february 27th: apocalypse
It will never fail to astound me, the rapidity with which I can switch from fangirl to disorder.
I am also so, so glad a bar of chocolate can no longer ruin my entire weekend.
February 27th
(warning: pictures - some covered nudity)
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
ED Qs: eating disorders & their relation to other mental illnesses
The depression, is it a cause or a consequence?
It depends on the person. Not everyone with an ED has depression, although it is very common. Anxiety is common as well, as are addiction problems, OCD, bipolar disorder, etc. I personally have found that although the ED is the most deadly part, it's rarely the underlying issue. It's usually a reaction, a coping mechanism for something else that was there first.I personally couldn't tell you which came first; I used to think it was the depression (I have distinct memories of having depression attacks in pre-school), until I got out of treatment and my anxiety went through the roof. The ED was a way of managing the anxiety, of numbing the brain, although it unfortunately did nothing for the depression (shocker: low body weight & malnourishment makes you depressed. It also makes anti-depressant medications basically non-functional). I honestly couldn't tell you which came first, and which came as a reaction to another. All are genetic, to a certain extent.
In the past 4 years I've found that I have to maintain a sort of balance between my disorders - if I focus on the depression, the anxiety goes up. If I focus on the anxiety, the depression goes up. Or maybe it's the other way around, when one is bad the other is tolerable. Either way, it comes down to tradeoff management. My therapist once compared me to a patient with schizophrenia, who had medication to treat the symptoms. If she didn't take it, she was non-functional because of the illness. If she took enough to completely negate the symptoms, she was non-functional because the meds made her so out of it. So she had to learn to live somewhere in between.
Have I mentioned mental illnesses are Hard?
february 26th: death and living reconciled
Warning: tonight's post is depressing. It has no inspirational tea bag ending. Sorry.
Related, I think I should get a few weeks off at the end of February annually for my own personal suicide watch.
You see so many statistics when you read about eating disorders - 1/5 people with anorexia die. 1/3 people with untreated eating disorders die. Anorexia is the most deadly mental illness. Having been in school for a nauseating number of years, and reading endless studies and papers and methods, I never put all that much stock in numbers. (Ha, eating disorder, see what I did there?)
These are statistics that I know: during my 6 weeks in IP, we started the day twice with news that recent patients had died. I know that out of the 100+ girls I was in treatment with (and one guy), at least half went back in after discharge. I know that one of my good friends had a heart attack and died a few months after she discharged, and another two overdosed and were admitted to the hospital. I know that about once a month, a friend of mine will post a RIP status on facebook, and I'll wonder who died this time. If I knew them. How they died.
The mental health community is exhaustingly heartbreaking to be a part of. I have so many friends who have dropped off the face of the earth, who I hope are still alive somewhere. Some, I track with horrified fascinating, waiting for the inevitable moment when the tributes start pouring in on their facebook pages.
I only know what I've experienced, and personal accounts of friends. I know that for me, even after 10+ years of malnutrition and starvation and exercising to the point of collapse, my body refused to die. To the point where it became maddeningly frustrating, my body refused to give up and die no matter how hard I tried to make it.
This is not to say that eating disorders aren't dangerous, of course. My point is that of the many deaths of people with eating disorders that I know of, at least half were because of suicide. You hear many different statistics and points of view on recovery, on whether full recovery is possible, on the percent of people in treatment who do recover. I spend far too much time contemplating this, because for me, being "fully recovered" feels like it would require rewiring my brain.
The academic part of me is organizing studies in my head, ways of coming up with better statistics, better numbers. I think there are two "levels" of eating disorders: the first is self-punishment, a method of coping; the second is suicide. Thinking about all the girls I've met, the majority of those who consider themselves "recovered" were part of that first level. Those who hang in the gray area between disordered and recovered, living and dying, existing and thriving... those were part of the second.
I honestly don't know where I'm going with this. I only know that once you've stepped off certain cliffs, I don't know that there's a way to really get back.
Related, I think I should get a few weeks off at the end of February annually for my own personal suicide watch.
You see so many statistics when you read about eating disorders - 1/5 people with anorexia die. 1/3 people with untreated eating disorders die. Anorexia is the most deadly mental illness. Having been in school for a nauseating number of years, and reading endless studies and papers and methods, I never put all that much stock in numbers. (Ha, eating disorder, see what I did there?)
These are statistics that I know: during my 6 weeks in IP, we started the day twice with news that recent patients had died. I know that out of the 100+ girls I was in treatment with (and one guy), at least half went back in after discharge. I know that one of my good friends had a heart attack and died a few months after she discharged, and another two overdosed and were admitted to the hospital. I know that about once a month, a friend of mine will post a RIP status on facebook, and I'll wonder who died this time. If I knew them. How they died.
The mental health community is exhaustingly heartbreaking to be a part of. I have so many friends who have dropped off the face of the earth, who I hope are still alive somewhere. Some, I track with horrified fascinating, waiting for the inevitable moment when the tributes start pouring in on their facebook pages.
I only know what I've experienced, and personal accounts of friends. I know that for me, even after 10+ years of malnutrition and starvation and exercising to the point of collapse, my body refused to die. To the point where it became maddeningly frustrating, my body refused to give up and die no matter how hard I tried to make it.
This is not to say that eating disorders aren't dangerous, of course. My point is that of the many deaths of people with eating disorders that I know of, at least half were because of suicide. You hear many different statistics and points of view on recovery, on whether full recovery is possible, on the percent of people in treatment who do recover. I spend far too much time contemplating this, because for me, being "fully recovered" feels like it would require rewiring my brain.
"I should have died tonight. and now every damn second is just too fucking painful."How does anyone really come back from that? I don't feel like I have, or that I ever will.
The academic part of me is organizing studies in my head, ways of coming up with better statistics, better numbers. I think there are two "levels" of eating disorders: the first is self-punishment, a method of coping; the second is suicide. Thinking about all the girls I've met, the majority of those who consider themselves "recovered" were part of that first level. Those who hang in the gray area between disordered and recovered, living and dying, existing and thriving... those were part of the second.
I honestly don't know where I'm going with this. I only know that once you've stepped off certain cliffs, I don't know that there's a way to really get back.
February 26th
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