I’m in a bit of a dilemma at the moment, I have always suffered from a variety of mental health issues one being sleep paralysis, Its essentially where your mind starts to wake up but your body is still paralysed so you cant move or sometimes even open your eyes properly. For me, I start to panic and it leaves me with an emotional anxiety hangover for days and afraid of going to sleep. Lots of people report that they feel like someone is sitting on their chest and report hallucinations with it. I have only had this sensation once but it was a metal sheet wrapped around me pinning me to the bed. The last one I had, I hallucinated that I managed to lift my arm up and I could see through it.
I have being having episodes since I was about 22. I am also plagued by reoccurring horrific nightmares, cyclical mood swings and bouts of depression and anxiety. All of which I have managed to cope with without medication despite being offered tablets on numerous occasions although I have received and benefited from counselling and am lucky enough to have AK ( my best friend) on hand to go rummaging around in sub- conscious repairing much of the usual psychological damage done by families and life experiences.
But for the last year or so these episodes have been getting worse so I finally gave in and accepted medication at first they tried me on fluoxatine a British version of Prozac which gave me suicidal thoughts and severe de- personalisation, shaky hands grinding teeth and spaced me out mid sentence. Not good when trying to hold down a full time job! So back I went, they gave me the label of PMDD (pre-menstrual dysmorphic disorder). Two versions of the pill a full beard, swollen stomach, and moody as hell and still suffering nightmares I decided to go cold turkey. I kind of managed for about six months but then I woke up a few months ago crying every day for about week, I think it was delayed grief over my grandmothers death. So back I went this time they said I had a generalised anxiety disorder and gave me citalopram, which helps with the anxiety and stopped the crying but makes me really sleepy and apathetic. A few weeks ago I ran out of pills due to my doctors being very busy and me not making an appointment in enough time, and probably my innate fear of being on these tablets in the first place .It sent me completely loopy sleep paralysis, crying, nightmares and now I am completely freaked out as it appears I am now physically and emotionally dependant on these pills which I am very uncomfortable with. When I went back in a very anxious and distressed state my doctor referred me to Psychiatrist. It seems that she was finally willing to accept that the usual 10 minute slot, rash judgments and prescriptions for different pills every time, just wasn’t the answer for me. I am now off work with a chest infection and emotionally and physically exhausted waiting for my first appointment.
Truthfully I am absolutely terrified of getting the label of bi- polar or some other serious mental health dis-order. I know people learn to live with it but intellectually I’m really struggling with making sense of it all. Firstly I have always associated, rightly or wrongly, my mental health with my creativity and am terrified of losing my ability to express myself with poetry it’s my only coping mechanism and the thought of loosing it is terrifying.
I have always had an ad version to the idea of anti depressants. I gave up cannabis because I didn’t want to drug myself up and avoid dealing with my problems and there’s a part of me thinks that pill popping is just a legal version of the same thing suppression/avoidance of my pain and issues.
I find it seriously unsettling that nearly every intelligent creative and inspirational women I have ever met has had some form of mental health label and the majority of them are on pills for one thing or another. Perhaps the problem lies with societies in -ability to cope with or respond to the needs of my tribe. Perhaps we are all just sick of trying to fit in, cope and function within a society which seems to have very little emotional intelligence.
I also don’t trust pharmaceutical companies and a lot of mental health practitioners and their basic underlying assumption that the problem lies within the individual and that there is a physical cure. Rather than looking at the problem of rising numbers of people suffering from mental health issues and questioning whether the modern lifestyle is conducive to our mental health and well being. They continue to address the problem as arising within the individual. I worry that by swallowing these pills I/we are just sweeping the problem under the carpet and preventing the need for this question to be asked.
I am also generally concerned about how hit and miss the whole process seems to be There seems to be very few physical tests to carry out to determine which mental illness the individual actually has and it seems to be based on behavioural characteristics which fluctuate and many of the symptoms seem to overlap. Getting the wrong diagnosis especially in the first instance seems to be common. Then there is the physical and mental side effects, nausea, grinding teeth, shaky hands, the sweats, increased anxiety all pretty nasty even if its only for a few weeks and then if it doesn’t go away you have to try another set and go through it all again unless you are lucky enough to get ones that work for you straight away. Giving something to a depressed person who might, even if it’s only for a few weeks, give them suicidal thoughts seems to me a little dangerous. (But what would I know; I’m only the guinea- pig experiencing them) I haven’t had thoughts of self harm or suicide since I was in my teens so when the pills designed to make me feel better gave me them, I was a little pissed off! (This is all based on my own personal experiences and assumptions by the way)
I am also influenced by my spiritual beliefs about mental health and my own intuitive sense of what depression is. For me it is a process which allows me to clear out many of the deeply held, yet redundant and false, beliefs implanted in me by my parents, society and traumatic life experiences. These beliefs made me defensive unable to connect, have a fear of failure, become my own self –saboteur and a variety of other mental afflictions. For me the initial symptoms of depression are the emotional signals that there are painful memories or negative patterns of behaviour which need to be brought into conscious awareness and released. My own personal periods of depression, lasting roughly three to six months every three years or so since I was 15 were periods of intense spiritual reflection where I managed to release many negative beliefs and behaviours.
Mostly I have managed to work through my bouts of re- occurring depression with a little help from my friends! It is a process which for me has quite defined stages and I’m not sure halting or slowing this process up with drugs just so the person /I can fulfil their/my obligations to society is actually helpful. Perhaps all we need is society to recognize that we as human beings need to do some spiritual and mental house cleaning periodically and that we might need a little time off and guidance during this process?
But on the flip side I know many people whose lives have been vastly improved by taking medication. I know not all the people developing and prescribing these drugs are out to get us, or are part of some conspiracy. There are individuals who are genuinely trying to create and prescribe drugs which will alleviate specific chemical imbalances in the brain.
I think it is one of these issues that is really confusing and there may be no right or wrong answer perhaps it is something which has to be ultimately decided by the individual (which doesn’t help me much) as there is part of me wants to just get out the system refuse their labels and their help but I know /think I know, that this would be shooting myself in the foot and if there is an underlying issue then surely its better for me to get to the bottom of it.
Problem is, I don’t trust those people offering me help not because I believe that they would deliberately fuck me up (although the people making money from these wonder cures might) but because intuitively I sense that my understanding of mental health and theirs is different and I’m terrified of allowing society to label and define me as broken and to lay the responsibility and guilt on to me, when I feel mental health is very fluid complex and not confined to inside one persons mind its causes are often rooted in environmental pressures and I’m not sure doping people up so that they can just smile and get on with it will help us to imagine and create new social situations which are more conducive to our mental well being. (Something I desperately want for me and other people to be able to do)
I don’t know what the correct way to look at this is, or even if there is one correct filter in which to view it, but to be honest there is a part of me senses that the whole mental health machine is inherently wrong and smacks of something sinister designed to create victims dependant on the system and to point the finger away from the very real problems in our society which are damaging our minds towards the individual and there failure to thrive in this competitive environment (but perhaps this is just my irrational unstable mind making me think so?)
No –one seems willing or able to rationalize my fears away. Any thoughts?
