Losing Logic

Got into a spat last night. I caught myself so there was no rage. Doesn’t mean I say nice things all the time but at least I’m not yelling.

I hate hearing the words “logic”, “rational” or “adult” when I’m upset. There seems to be this belief that if a person doesn’t agree with why I am upset then that means I am illogical, irrational and childish.

As I have admitted in the past I am delusional. All that really means is that I have a strong belief in something despite evidence telling me otherwise. Acknowledge this flaw in my processing and thinking I still cannot wrap my mind around how things cannot be as I perceive them to be. This inner struggle is one of the most frustrating.

My logic lost last night but that is only because I think with my emotions. This is not always bad but it is when my emotions are telling me something that isn’t happening.

I feel bad for my partner, I really do. He can’t explain anything to me without me thinking that he’s trying to control and hurt me. I am incapable of logically telling myself, in the moment, that he is not trying to hurt me. Instead, I tell myself that in the past he has done things or past people have done things that hurt me therefore I have reason to feel I’m being controlled. There is some truth in this but when I have someone telling me that he’s not trying to control me why would I continue thinking this?

I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that I will not be controlled and if I ever get into a DBT program I think it is going to hurt like hell.

 

Ruby Wax: What’s so funny about mental illness?

Thinking About My Brain

I have often wondered about my brain. I do believe that the brain is so complex and smart that it will never let us completely figure it out. I’m ok with that. What I’m not ok with is not knowing the current state of my brain.

While I can usually avoid entering a rage, and I’m getting better at this, if I’m unable to do so the rages are just as severe. I’m essentially down to two options: calm control or severe rage. Even my attempts at improving my behaviour are becoming black and white!

This is leading me to believe that my brain may have undergone some development issues during my youth which could put certain things out of my control. The two things I want to focus on are trauma and psychiatric medication. 

My brain is either almost done developing or has just finished but what it has done up to this point I would expect to be fairly cemented into place.

Trauma can change the brain. What constitutes a trauma is completely up to the individual and not all traumas lead to behavioural, emotional or mental issues.

I am curious if my early experiences with low self esteem, depression, self harm and the situations I found myself in because of my emotional state caused my brain to develop abnormally.

“Exposure to trauma (particularly chronic exposure) not only has an effect on emotional regulation processes in the brain, but also on the ability to process the memories of those events. The unnatural storage of traumatic memory has an impact on one’s ability to handle future exposure to adverse situations. The circuits in the brain are less connected to the frontal lobes, where thinking and considering can mitigate the emotional reaction, leaving the amygdala on its own to evaluate the threat…Without the mitigating effects of executive functioning, the limbic system activates fight/flight response in the brain stem, causing an inability to regulate or cope with an overwhelming flood of emotion.” – KidsPeace Institute

This is exactly what I could through. Everything I experience now is turned into a trauma, a crisis, something so horrible that I feel like my life is being destroyed. Could past instances of where my life was in danger have cause my brain to develop in away that it not interprets any threat as life ending in order to protect me?

Psychiatric medication can change the brain. They are chemicals and many people are taking them very long term. We would be stupid if we believed we took these strong drugs and nothing in a body was being damaged.

When I read Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker I read about how Prozac can cause changes in the brain after the first few months. Since I was on them while my brain was developing could the drugs have altered something in my brain that now makes it difficult for  me to process stressors?

“Antipsychotics, antidepressants, and antianxiety drugs create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions. In response, the brain goes through a series of compensatory adaptations. For instance, Prozac and other SSRI antidepressants block the reuptake of serotonin . In order to cope with this hindrance of normal function, the brain tones down its whole serotonergic system . Neurons both release less serotonin and down-regulate (or decrease) their number of serotonin receptors . The density of serotonin receptors in the brain may decrease by 50% or more . As part of this adaptation process, Hyman noted, there are also changes in intracellular signaling pathways and gene expression . After a few weeks, Hyman concluded, the patient’s brain is functioning in a manner that is “qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state.” – Anatomy of an Epidemic

Did I give myself a chemical imbalance? I would like to think that since I was on psychiatric medication for a short period of time that I escaped the possibility of long term damage but the research in this area is still new so I don’t have much to go on.

I was a sensitive child from the get go so maybe I was born with a brain that was a tad more sensitive than others so much of what I experienced was inevitable. Maybe it was trauma, drugs or a combination. Maybe I’m being to hard on myself because I’m not changing as quickly as I would like so I have “blame” something?

Regardless this thought process has led me to thinking maybe I should try medication again.

BUT WAIT!

There are a lot of conditions on this!

The first is that I would only take a medication if it’s on a “as need” basis. I take it when I feel a rage coming on and I know I can’t stop it.

The second is I would research the hell out of the drug. I want to know the best and the worst that could happen to me.

And third I would give myself 2-3 months so try it out and if it’s doing nothing then I would stop. If horrible things happened sooner I would stop right away.

I still have time to think about whether or not I want to do this since my psychiatrist appointment isn’t until August 1.

Sources

KidsPeace Institute- Trauma and the Brain

Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker

Stop Denying Environment

This is the final ad that CAMH has created for the Defeat Denial campaign.

This ad, like a few of the others, upsets me.

Ok, maybe I’m being to nit picky and every advertisement and campaign in the world, no matter what the topic or issue, won’t have everyone agreeing with them but I feel it is the responsibility of the advertiser to think about everywhere their ad could be spun negatively and try to counter it!

This ad is an obvious supporter of the biomedical model. The problem is in YOU!

This excludes any social and environmental factors that influence a person’s life.

 I was told my depression was genetic. Other factors were never acknowledged, not even toyed with. There was something wrong with my brain. I firmly believe that my former depressive years were caused by my environment, not a brain issue. I responded to the bullying I received at school and then it all just spiraled from there.

Now, I believe my issues are strictly behaivoural. I am now dealing with behaivours that I developed as coping mechanisms or as a way to adapt what was happening to me.

We need to keep looking at the WHOLE person! Bio-psycho-social model is what is mostly used and the model I support.

Ok, I’m done ranting about these ads

5 Reasons Being Left-Handed Screws You for Life!

I am left handed! It’s actually interesting that my sisters and I, our handedness goes left, right, left, right

Cracked.com published a list of 5 reasons why my life is harder than everyone else!

5 Reasons Being Left-Handed Screws You Life

#5. They’ll die sooner

• Studies have shown that the number of left-handers who make it to old age is drastically lowerthan the number of their right-handed peers.
• One study surveying nearly 2,000 college students found that lefties report far more accidents than righties, especially car accidents.
• Another study of around 1,000 people living in Southern California showed that the risk of getting into a fatal accident was nearly six times higher if you were left-handed, and the risk of getting into a deadly car crash was four times higher.
• Research done on “true” left-handers (excluding those fence-sitting ambidextrous types) showed that lefties were 2.7 times more likely to suffer from immune disorders and 2.3 times more likely to have been hospitalized at some point.
• The most agreed upon explanation is that lefties get in more accidents simply because they’re trying to maneuver in a world that’s upside down and backward to them.

#4. They’re more likely to go “insane”

• Although left-handed people make up only 10 percent of the population as a whole, they compose a full 20 percent of schizophrenics.
• Left-handedness is also associated with dyslexia, ADD and some mood disorders.
• Clyde Francks, a researcher at Oxford University, believes that it might have something to do with a newly discovered gene called LRRTM1. The gene is closely linked with left-handedness, as well as being related to increased odds of mental illness. Francks believes the gene affects the symmetry of the brain.
• Scientists have known for a while that schizophrenia and other disorders are caused by a kind of confusionbetween the two about which side should handle what. Now they think that a similar glitch in brain symmetry is one reason people might favor their left hand over their right.
• Metten Somers, a psychiatrist and brain researcher in the Netherlands, suggeststhat most of the left-handed population still have normal brain symmetry.

#3. They’re screwed at school

• At school, they do worse on timed examsand suffer awful back and neck cramps in the process. Why? Right-handed desks. And scissors. And everything else.
• Most school desks are biased toward right-handed people, forcing lefties to contort themselves uncomfortably in a desperate effort to reach across and take notes in our awkward left-to-right written language, their hand smudging everything they write, on a desk designed for their reflection.
• In a recent survey of left-handers in 50 different countries, the number of lefties who were evertaught how to operate as a left-hander in a right-handed world sits frequently around 10 percent.
• Pens, pencil sharpeners and other tools are also designed for the right hand, making life difficult (and even painful) for lefties.
• On computers, the mouse is set up on the right side.
• In wood working or metal shop the safety switches on all those spinning and stabbing blades are set up to be quickly accessible to right-handed people.
• Being a left-handed student in this day and age isn’t as bad as it used to be in your grandparents’ time, when teachers tried to solve the problem by beating left-handed kids with paddles.

#2. They’re more easily scared

• Studies have shown that, if you’re left-handed, you’re twice as likelyto suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
• They did a study to test left- and right-handers on their tolerance for terrifying things and forced a test group to watch a gruesome eight minutes of The Silence of the Lambs. They then measured the emotional response. What they found was that reactions differed depending on which hand the subjects used to cover their eyes during the gory bits. Right-handers were usually able to recount details of the entire scene they just watched, while lefties were more likely to give fragmented accounts.
• In left-handers, the right brain tends to be dominant, and you guessed it, that’s also the side involved in the shit-your-pants response.
• Studies agree that the opposite-side dominance in lefties tends to make them more inhibited, spending hours making basic decisions and then worrying that they’ve made the wrong call. To test her theory, behavioral psychologist Lynn Wright of the University of Abertay Dundee conducted a series of behavioral inhibition testson 46 left-handers and 66 right-handers. On the tests of restraint, both left-handed men and women scored higher than their right-handed counterparts, while on tests monitoring lack of inhibition, to the surprise of no one, the opposite held true.

#1. Hating them is ingrained in their culture

• In certain parts of Africa, Europe and much of the Far East, it’s actually offensiveto do anything with your left hand besides wipe your ass. For this and other reasons, the left hand is considered unclean and carries a cultural stigma. This makes being left-handed especially perilous in social situations, since waving hello or (God forbid) trying to shake another’s hand with your left is akin to dick-slapping them in the face.
• Lefties also have to be careful not to use their left hand to give or accept gifts, eat, or pass food. If they forget, it’s not uncommon to see their dinner partners gaping in abject horror, like they just passed them a steaming bowl of their own feces, which isn’t far from the actual implication.
• A backhanded compliment, when you deliver an insult disguised as flattery, is also known as a “left-handed compliment.”
• Even the dictionary defines being left-handed as something that implies being “clumsy and awkward.”
• The word “left” derived from the Anglo-Saxon word “lyft,” which meant “weak.” And “sinistra,” the Latin for “left,” is also where we get the word “sinister.” “Gauche,” which we use to refer to a social faux pas, is actually French for “left.” And in the Akan language of Ghana, to say that someone has “slept on his left side” is a euphemism for death. Why do you think your partner in crime is your “right-hand man?”

If you’re one of the 10 percent of the population who have become progressively more depressed reading all this, for obvious reasons, then you should know that there’s an upside — you’re more likely to be president. Of the seven U.S. presidents since Nixon, only Carter and Bush Jr. were right-handed. So good luck, but don’t get your hopes up!

Borderline Personality Disorder Workbook: Session 2 Part 6-Activities

Session 2 Activities

Can you inherit BPD?

 1.      Do you know a family member that also suffers from BPD?

No, but other mental health issues such as depression/anxiety do run in majority of the females in my family.

Is it something to do with the brain?

 1.      What do you know about the brain?

The brain controls everything in your body. I am a firm believer that the brain does whatever it wants so that anything is possible.

2.      How many neurons do you that are needed to do all the tasks the brain does?

I think this is a silly question but I’m sure it is a hell of a lot of neurons! Millions! Maybe billions?

 3.      It is believed that BPD could be caused me high stress during childhood causing changes in brain development. Did you experience high stress as a child?

I was very shy when I was younger. I was put down for my looks, was ignored by “friends”, developed depression, engaged in self injury, had thoughts of and attempted suicide, engaged in drug and alcohol use, had many unstable partner relationships, was made fun of and hated for certain things I did, had no support from friends or family and a few other things that I’d rather not mention…..no I did not experience high stress as a child……

 Does the environment in which you grow up in cause you to develop BPD?

 A number of indicators of someone developing a Borderline Personality Disorder may be due to traumatic experiences whilst they were growing up which include:

• Loss of a loved one either through divorce or bereavement.
• Neglected of their basic needs, for example, love and protection.
• Emotional abuse, for example, criticized or verbally abused.
• Painful illnesses.
• Treated inconsistently by caregiver.
• Exposed to domestic violence.
• Physically abused, for example, beaten.
• Sexually abused by carers they trusted.
• Separated for whatever reason from caregivers or loved ones.

Words hurt just as much

 1.      Did you experience any of the above?

I did lose my aunt, I personally feel that some of my basic needs were neglected, I experienced emotional abuse, painful illness, yeah depression. A few others.

What famous people suffer from BPD?

 1.      Do you know any famous people who may have suffered from BPD?

I personally do not want famous people to be my focus.

Next: Session 2 Part 7- End of Session Questionnaire