Tag: Abilify


What Others Think Of Me

3
June

Haven’t you heard the phrase: what other people think about me is none of my business? Stop being so paranoid.

That was a tweet I received this morning from someone who had already said she wasn’t going to say anything else to me.  While I know that she has a point, I also think it’s too simplistic of a perspective.  I can’t just stop being so paranoid.  Believe me, if I could, I would.

Paranoia has been ingrained in me.  When I would be sick and staying home from school, I would be afraid to go outside (to go to the doctor or go with my mom to pick up my medicine) and I would be afraid to go by windows and doors.  I was always afraid that the truancy officer was out there waiting to cart me into court for missing school.   Part of why I had to quit going to high school was that when I would walk down the halls, I would hear other people talking about me and I would know they were judging me.  Even though they weren’t, I still felt that way.  The first time I explained it to a psychiatrist, they upped the antipsychotics.  That helped, but that’s not an option anymore.

Paranoia is something that I come by honestly.  My mother, too, has always been paranoid.  Hers manifests in the form of little men following her around and writing down everything that she does.   She didn’t tell me until I asked (as a teenager) if this feeling was normal.  She said yes.  My dad, who isn’t paranoid, said no.  We both had a reality check.

I know that my life isn’t the stuff that most people would look at and critique or anything.  On some level, I know that the paranoia is ridiculous.  It’s the same way that I know that my obsessions and compulsions aren’t realistic and that my hallucinations aren’t real.  But there’s that level of my mind that I can’t seem to conquer; the level that tells me that all of my thoughts about it being unrealistic aren’t true and that I have good reason to think people are judging me or are out to get me.

I don’t know how to fully get rid of the paranoia.  The only way that helps now is to sleep, but sometimes that doesn’t help.  I’ll end up having dreams that I’m being kidnapped, raped, or murdered.  I’ll wake up screaming, agitated, or crying because (by the end of the dream) I will have died or gotten so upset that I just feel so horrible.

I can’t go back on the anti-psychotics.  It isn’t an option.  The Geodon reaction (seizures + pseudoparkinsonism), the Abilify increasing my dreams instead of helping, and the Zyprexa sky-rocketing my weight.  I would have continued the Risperdal, but the more I took it, the more I like it was having the same effects that the Geodon had had.  I also realized, after I quit taking them, that I quit gaining weight when I went off of the pills.  I even began to lose it.  So, in order to be more physically healthy, I knew I had to stay off the pills.

I know I’m nuts.  I’ve been fairly open about that part of my life for a good long while.  This is why people who know me in real life don’t generally take my insults and stuff too seriously.  This is why they don’t chastise me.  They know that if I could keep it under control, I would.  They know that I have been trying since I was a kid to be normal.  They know that I’m more than just this angry paranoid girl.  Unfortunately, people on the internet don’t always realize that.

1 comment » | +acquaintances, +ex-internet friends, +internet friends, 10 Years of Madness, Facebook, Friends, Twitter

The Weighty Issues

22
March

We have all experienced some form of discrimination in our lives. I’ve learned, though, that people have this tendency to just accept certain forms as being okay, while they will be ready to “cut a bitch” on others. For example, in Jenn’s entry on weight discrimination, she had some fairly good points, but most people seized on the opportunity to tell her off because she made some generalizations. Oddly, in their comments, they generalized or, in so many words, accused some people of exaggerating what goes on in their lives.

For a little over 10 years now, I have been on a fairly constant stream of psychiatric medication. Now, while I was obese before taking the medicine, my weight skyrocketed on it. In the first year, I gained over 50 pounds. Later, I lost the weight after I had gastric bypass, only to start gaining again after certain medications were added into the mix. A combination of medication-induced hyperthyroidism, the removal of said medicine from my treatment, and the addition of a mood stabilizer [Depakote] at a dose that caused concern for everyone who saw it, except the psychiatrist, seemed to contribute to the regain. I kept telling the doctors that I was gaining weight because of medicine. No matter what doctor I saw, the doctor would say that the gain couldn’t possibly be related to the medicines. They would accuse me of being in denial of how much I was eating, much like this comment. Sometimes, I would doubt myself and think that they might just be right.

When I quit taking Risperdal a while back, I stopped gaining weight. A few times, I would lose the weight, except when I would be close to my period. In the past year, my weight has pretty much stabilized. I have taken 1 form of psychiatric medicine, Effexor, and I have stayed within a limited (20 pounds, which is my general weight gain amount prior to my periods) weight gain & loss range. My eating has stayed about the same, with me only eating more on very rare occasions. So, I would say that that would be fairly good evidence for the cause of the weight gain being related to my medicine and not me gorging on Ding-Dongs and Ho-Hos. (I’ve never had either, btw.)
And, as I pointed out in my response to Angel‘s comment regarding any possible studies linking a difference in treatment with weight, there actually has been at least one.  A group of Johns Hopkins researchers actually did a study that was reported on in ScienceDaily.  The study reported that, “In a group of 238 patients, each 10-unit increase in BMI was associated with a 14 percent higher prevalence of low patient respect.”  Now, this might just be something that applies to doctors, but I have a feeling that it might also apply to some people who work in non-medical fields.

I know that when I was at a skinnier weight, my mom had a sales person almost refuse to let her buy a pair of size 12 jeans for me because they could tell that my mother wasn’t that small.  This wasn’t at some high fashion store.  It was at Walmart in a state with an extremely high rate of obesity.  You would think there would be less judgment in a Walmart.  Of course, I’ve written about disrespect at Walmart, when my mom was pretty much laughed at because she asked for assistance and refused to get a wheelchair cart/scooter for her.  (I know that a lot of people have a bit of a preconceived notion about obese people who use scooters, but my mother didn’t have the strength in her ankle to walk and [a month later] had broken the other ankle because of the lack of strength in her bones.)

And for those who say that the cause of the difference of treatment is related to self-esteem, I must say this.  I hate that kind of statement.  People claim that low self-esteem leads to people being more disrespectful, which I think is shit.  I have a poor body image, but my self-esteem probably borders on too high sometimes.  While a person might hate the way that they look, it doesn’t mean that that person is suffering from some great amount of self-hatred.  A lot of us grew up learning that we are more than our outward being.  My shell may be ugly, but that doesn’t mean that I think I’m unworthy of respect.  And saying that a lack of self-respect might warrant a lack of respect from folks who work in retail is utter crap.  If a customer walks into your store, it is your job to be nice to them.  Even if you think they are ugly, smell bad, have bad hair, talk funny, etc., you are supposed to service them in the same way that you would service someone who is more to your liking.  You don’t get to pick and choose who you’re nice to.  As an employee at a retail store, you become the face of the company and you really do not want to represent the company as being snobbish.  Why? Blog entries could be written, tweets could be made, but more importantly, the business might lose (potential) repeat customers and you might lose your job.

None of us will ever know what any other person goes through on a daily basis.   None of us would really want to know it either.  We can’t walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, and we shouldn’t judge them based on their circumstances either.

Comment » | +internet friends, General, Internet, Mental Health, Purchases, Rants, Sickness and Health

Application Status

23
February

I just sent an application this morning to another university in town to see if I could pursue a degree in psychology while I’m waiting on the lawsuit. I also sent it because I’m really afraid to go back to my old school because I think that people there will give me a hard time over the suit. I’m not as naive as I seem. I know that people can take it out on you when you try to prove to them that they’re wrong.

I’m going on Tuesday to see my new therapist. She isn’t completely new to my life. She’s Stephanie’s old case worker. (I can only see Licensed Clinical Social Workers because I’m on Medicare.) I think I’ll be comfortable with her, but I’m not completely sure yet. If I’m not comfortable, then after my intake, I can always request a new therapist. This will make for about 10 different therapists that I’ve seen since I was eight.

So why the new therapist? Well, I could no longer afford to see my psychiatrist, so I had to switch back to the Mental Health Center. :( It sucks. I have an intake to go through with the therapist, then a psychiatric evaluation to go through on March 21st. Not cool. They asked what my diagnoses were on the form, and I marked a few because I’ve been diagnosed with a few. Actually the only one listed that I hadn’t been diagnosed with was Schizophrenia, though it was suggested that I have it back about 4 years ago, and Schizoaffective Disorder is in that class of problems.

I had to go to crisis counseling on Tuesday when I went to sign up to go back to the Mental Health Center. Why? Well, apparently, I was deemed to be in crisis. I had marked that I had a lot of symptoms over the past 48 hours, including feeling hopeless, seeing things, and hearing things. The person scheduling me was like, “You’re not on anything for the psychotic symptoms.” I pointed on the form to the Abilify and told her I was. The thing about it is, I barely recognize that I have those symptoms most days, even when I have them. Eventually, I think you can just get used to having them.

5 comments » | Alabama A&M, General, Mental Health, UAH

     

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