I'm an ER Nurse so I would see a lot of people with mild to severe mental disorders. Watching these people through years battle with these disorders I concluded that a lot of their behaviors came from Trauma as a Child or experiencing a Death in the family. One young Lady that came into ER went from walking to being completely paralyzed from the waist down and was even put on a Cath for her Bladder. Her grandfather had recently passed away and she was so traumatized by his death her body just shut down. Trauma and disease are real and millions of people struggle just to get through the day. Prayer and meditation and having a connection with God daily will greatly benefit.
Thank you for sharing a very deep and painful time in your life with so much mental conflict. I was raised around aunt who constantly demanded we repeat our conversations back to her not once but many times before she could let it go so to speak. She also had many daily activities that needed to be repeated...we loved her very much and always tried to make it seem normal, good or bad, I don’t know. Then my mother was her sister and she had schizophrenia all my life. Thank God for drugs which made living with my mother somewhat tolerable. I loved my mother even though my life was scattered and salvaged by my grandmother. I believe it is in the family pool. Love and caring, connecting like you have done through your writings are the connections to holding on to our sanity. Love your stories...thank you.
Thank you for sharing such a raw insight to the inner workings of your mind. It got me thinking this morning. I deal with what i would consider mild OCD, anxiety, control issues and wonder are we all just hard wired for that? The gene pool is strong and since so many people in your family share similar afflictions it makes one wonder or is it perhaps some learned behavior; maybe both? I don't know too much of the clinical side to Mental Health other than just what I experience and see from others. My daughter started showing signs of OCD around 2 years old, then morphed into rituals and by the time she was 8 it was checking. Finally got her a child psychologist who suggested that she might be mirroring me. (that was hard to hear). So I've come to feel very guilty about her issues because of that but should I? IDK. What I do know, because of your piece, I'll make sure to check in with her (mental health) when she comes home for the summer. I think the healthiest thing we can do is recognize our behaviors if all we can do is manage them.
Thanks for sharing this, Michael. I'm glad that you are doing better. You mention cognitive distortions, and I think this is a universal thing. We all personalize things that aren't about us or project meaning on other things that is not objectively true. But the writer is supposed to be, in Henry James's words, a person upon whom nothing is lost. So it can be disorienting to feel that you can't trust your own perception of things. I'm not sure any writer believes they have the whole truth (we're all postmodernists in that regard), but most writers think they see a little more clearly than the average person. It's humbling to realize that sometimes the best we can do is compensate for how much we get wrong about ourselves and others.
I'm an ER Nurse so I would see a lot of people with mild to severe mental disorders. Watching these people through years battle with these disorders I concluded that a lot of their behaviors came from Trauma as a Child or experiencing a Death in the family. One young Lady that came into ER went from walking to being completely paralyzed from the waist down and was even put on a Cath for her Bladder. Her grandfather had recently passed away and she was so traumatized by his death her body just shut down. Trauma and disease are real and millions of people struggle just to get through the day. Prayer and meditation and having a connection with God daily will greatly benefit.
Peace
Thank you for sharing a very deep and painful time in your life with so much mental conflict. I was raised around aunt who constantly demanded we repeat our conversations back to her not once but many times before she could let it go so to speak. She also had many daily activities that needed to be repeated...we loved her very much and always tried to make it seem normal, good or bad, I don’t know. Then my mother was her sister and she had schizophrenia all my life. Thank God for drugs which made living with my mother somewhat tolerable. I loved my mother even though my life was scattered and salvaged by my grandmother. I believe it is in the family pool. Love and caring, connecting like you have done through your writings are the connections to holding on to our sanity. Love your stories...thank you.
Thank you for sharing such a raw insight to the inner workings of your mind. It got me thinking this morning. I deal with what i would consider mild OCD, anxiety, control issues and wonder are we all just hard wired for that? The gene pool is strong and since so many people in your family share similar afflictions it makes one wonder or is it perhaps some learned behavior; maybe both? I don't know too much of the clinical side to Mental Health other than just what I experience and see from others. My daughter started showing signs of OCD around 2 years old, then morphed into rituals and by the time she was 8 it was checking. Finally got her a child psychologist who suggested that she might be mirroring me. (that was hard to hear). So I've come to feel very guilty about her issues because of that but should I? IDK. What I do know, because of your piece, I'll make sure to check in with her (mental health) when she comes home for the summer. I think the healthiest thing we can do is recognize our behaviors if all we can do is manage them.
Thanks for sharing this, Michael. I'm glad that you are doing better. You mention cognitive distortions, and I think this is a universal thing. We all personalize things that aren't about us or project meaning on other things that is not objectively true. But the writer is supposed to be, in Henry James's words, a person upon whom nothing is lost. So it can be disorienting to feel that you can't trust your own perception of things. I'm not sure any writer believes they have the whole truth (we're all postmodernists in that regard), but most writers think they see a little more clearly than the average person. It's humbling to realize that sometimes the best we can do is compensate for how much we get wrong about ourselves and others.