Category: mental health

The Story Continues

November 9th, 2022

If you’re new here, I encourage you to start at the beginning of my story by clicking here.

Now, where were we?

The psychiatrist that had admitted me to the Behavioral Health Unit of the hospital walked into my room the morning after The Neverending Night. She sat down on the bed opposite me to have a little chat. Her goal was to find out how I was feeling, and if I got any rest, and to set up a time for us to chat in her office later to go over my options. I asked “options for what?” Her response was brief. “Medications and treatment moving forward. I’ll have a nurse come get you when I’m ready for you.”

I look back on this conversation and truly wish I knew then what I knew now. Units like these are made for acute care. They treat the patient with whatever symptoms are being presented but don’t exactly have any long-term goals in mind. They reduce each of us to a series of chemical imbalances and reactions when it’s not been proven that those have little to do with the mental health issues we’re currently facing. They are made to solve the problem as quickly as possible instead of getting to the root cause of why the problem occurred in the first place. This can be incredibly helpful for many people and it did serve to help me in some ways while I was there, but ultimately, it didn’t meet the expectations that I had.

The wait for the doctor to be “ready for me” felt like forever. Breakfast came and went, and then a volunteer on the floor named Alan came to chat with me. He was an elderly gentleman who was an army vet, had recently lost his wife, and lived with anxiety. We spent about 30 minutes together talking about what brought me to the hospital, what brought him to be a volunteer there and expectations of moving forward in life with an anxiety disorder. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to truly open up about the big questions that were tormenting me, questions of life’s purpose, its meaning, how we got here, etc. Maybe I didn’t want to be labeled as crazy, maybe I was afraid, maybe I was ashamed. I’m still not sure. Another part of me thinks that my heart had become so hardened to the idea of a higher power, that I also didn’t want to hear that being shoved on me. Alan went on to tell me that he had a prescription for an anti-anxiety medication and that it worked for him. I was hopeful thinking that maybe the doctor would have an option for me as well.

Finally, the doctor called me into her office. I walked down the hallway with so much hope. This woman was going to hear me out. She was going to listen to my big questions and point me in a direction for answers. She was going to reassure me that life wasn’t meaningless and that we all serve a purpose in this world. I just knew that I would go into her office and come out with further directions on where to go. Unfortunately, I was very wrong and my hope was soon extinguished.

After spending around one hour with me in total (my intake and the conversation in my room), she had come to the conclusion that I was bipolar. I was instantly taken aback. This woman hadn’t really gotten to know me or understood what was causing me so much fear and anxiety, and she automatically had a label and diagnosis for me. Even in my fragile state, this didn’t make sense to me. Why wasn’t she asking more questions? Why wasn’t she engaging me in conversation about my big questions?

Wait… why did she just hand me a big book with all of the different medications that I could choose from?

I knew that I had made a mistake and that in order to get out of this hospital, I needed to go along with what she was suggesting to me. We went over several medications that she thought would be a good fit for me and I agreed to try one while asking for her to secure my discharge so I could go home. She was surprised, thinking that I would be staying longer until the meds got started in my system. As difficult as what I was experiencing was, I knew that I wanted to be home with my husband and my daughter. During our conversation about medications, I started to think that maybe she was right, maybe I was bipolar (I have had several professional evaluations since then that all came to the conclusion that I am NOT), but she seemed so confident in her diagnosis, how could I, the uneducated patient, be the one who is right in this situation?

My discharge was secured and the phone call to my husband was made. While I waited for him to pick me up, I spent a lot of time in the community room with the other patients. We got to chatting and started opening up about our individual diagnoses. The curious thing about it all was theirs was the exact same as mine– bipolar. I asked if they had all been in a manic state upon admission and some said no, they were just really sad. Some were like me, dealing with some fears and anxiety that they couldn’t seem to shake. Some said they just needed a break from life. Some said that they wanted to get out a long time ago, but the hospital wouldn’t let them leave.

Before leaving, the social worker got me set up with another psychiatrist out in town who would provide another full evaluation and take over my medication treatment from there. I was thankful for the security that gave me, while also wondering “am I going to need continued monitoring and evaluation for the rest of my life if I really am bipolar?” I had to shake those thoughts. I needed to think about the here and now. I couldn’t worry about the long-term.

The phone call came. My husband was downstairs waiting to pick me up. A male nurse escorted me down to the pharmacy to pick up my meds. Besides the mood stabilizers, the doctor has also prescribed me a medication for heart palpitations, the SSRI used off label for sleep, and a couple of others. These were enough to fill a brown paper bag. This is also where I was introduced to the concept of polypharmacy for the very first time.

The nurse, whose name was Tom, shared with me that politicians, celebrities, and other well known individuals have all spent time in that behavioral health unit. He was gracious in offering the advise that sometimes, we all just need a break from life. He assured me that my time spent there would be something that I look back on as a tiny blip in my life and that from here, I’d be able to move forward with a diagnosis, answers, and a treatment plan.

I got in the car with my husband, my bag of prescriptions in hand, and waved goodbye to Tom, full of hope that maybe he was right. Maybe now I’d have healing. Maybe now I’d be able to move on.

Yeah, no, wrong again Dev.

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The (voluntary) Prisoner

July 11th, 2022

March 1st cont.

I was admitted to the hospital midday. I didn’t have my own comfortable clothes or any of my belongings, and my room was not a very welcoming place. To keep patients safe, they have to make sure that there is nothing in the rooms that could be used as a weapon or for harm. I was on the voluntary hold side of the behavioral health unit. The involuntary hold side looked even less welcoming.

My initial experience was lunch with other patients. I sat down to a delicious meal of chicken, rice, a salad, fruits, soup, juice, and a cookie. My table was filled with other patients, some old and some young. There was a sweet kid sitting next to me who immediately introduced himself and said “I’d ask what you’re in here for, but I’m sure it’s the same as all of us… psychosis.” I remember being taken aback and thinking “I’m not in here for psychosis… I’m here because I’m experiencing debilitating fear that I can’t shake, anxiety that’s causing my stomach to twist into knots, sleepless nights that are impeding my recovery, and I just want relief.” Instead, I just took off my mask, nodded my head, and started to eat.

I looked around inconspicuously at the other people in this room. There were three tables with four seats, but not every seat was filled. There were some patients who looked comfortable, like this wasn’t their first time in this situation and others who looked vulnerable and nervous, much like myself, who had never been here before. The psychiatrist did warn me before coming up that this would be a new experience for me that I would probably never forget. She was right.

After I finished my lunch, which I could only eat a small amount of, I rushed to put away my tray and get back to my lonely room. As lonely as my room was, I was also too nervous to be around the other patients. That stigma regarding mental illness also applies to those of us who experience mental illness firsthand.

I laid down on the bed, which felt like cardboard with paper-like blankets, and tried to close my eyes. You could tell they didn’t give this floor of the hospital much attention when it came to the hospital budget. So much was outdated, and uncomfortable, and honestly, the entire wing felt like the forgotten area of the hospital, only open to those who dared to enter it. After a while of hearing doors open and slam closed, hearing other patients’ conversations through the walls, and thinking myself into oblivion, I knew I needed a distraction.

My favorite distraction? Reading.

There was a book cart outside of the community room so I headed to it to see what was offered. The books were gentle, mostly feel-good subjects, or extremely outdated, but there on the cart, I found some precious gems– three Harry Potter books. If you know me, you know that this was an immediate comfort to my soul. My only choices were The Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, or The Half-Blood Prince. Of course, I chose my favorite title The Prisoner of Azkaban, the third title in the series, and headed back to my room.

I began to devour the book, page by page, being taken back to that world of magic, purpose, friendship, and acceptance. Oh, how these books shaped my childhood. My first Harry Potter book was given to me by my Papa Jack for Christmas one year when I was 10 or 11 years old. At the time, I wasn’t interested, but one day I decided to open it up and give it a chance. It was an immediate connection.

Here was Harry Potter, 11 years old, whose earlier years were something he had no control over due to the death of his parents, who spent most of his time lonely and isolated in a family who didn’t want him and mostly forgot about him. While my parents were alive and well, I could relate to so much of Harry’s early life experiences.

Being the youngest of four kids growing up, I spent a lot of time alone. My sister is 10 years older than me, next is my brother who is 9 years older than me, and then my other brother is 6 years older than me. By the time I came around and wanted to have siblings to play with, they were doing their own thing and I was often left to figure it out on my own. When you are a kid with siblings, I think the expectation is to grow up with them, to have lifelong friends, people who are your blood who just understand you. While my siblings were wonderful to me when they were around, that’s not what I got.

To cope with my loneliness, I taught myself how to read at four years old. Oh, the joy I got from books. From Disney classics, like Peter Pan, to regular classics, like The Babysitter’s Club or Goosebumps, and then diving into magical realms with The Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, my reading knew no limits. It’s still something I spend a lot of time doing to this day.

As I sat on my bed in the hospital and read this book, I was immediately comforted, as if there was a presence with me who made sure this book was on that cart down the hall.

Recently, I learned something incredibly interesting about the Harry Potter series. If you remember when the series first came out, a lot of Christian families forbid their children from reading it because of the focus on magic and witches, which I always thought was funny considering The Chronicles of Narnia was allowed only because it was written by an atheist-turned-Christian apologetic and author, C.S. Lewis. Not bashing C.S. Lewis at all. He’s one of my favorite authors to this day, but his series was also filled with magic and witches. I always felt like the premise of withholding one series because of its content but allowing another was highly hypocritical, even when I was younger.

However, in 2008, J.K. Rowlings made a statement about the Harry Potter series, letting her readers know that it was inspired by her Christian-faith upbringing. When I read that, everything clicked into place. I saw the biblical undertones of the story immediately, especially in regard to the Deathly Hallows.

If you’re not familiar with the Deathly Hallows, it’s the image of a circle with a line through it surrounded by a triangle shape. The triangle identifies the Invisibility Cloak, the circle represents the Resurrection Stone, and the line signifies the Elder Wand. With all of these united, one would have the ultimate power of eternity. Sound familiar?

The Invisibility Cloak represents the Holy Spirit, the Resurrection Stone represents Jesus Christ, and the Elder Wand represents God. My mind was blown several weeks ago when I identified the significance of this series along with how it shaped my life. While sharing my findings with my husband, he laughed and said “you just now put that together?”

One of my favorite inferences from the series is that yes, there is a lot of evil that tries to take over Harry and his friends, but the one thing that always wins? Love. Light always overpowers the darkness, time and time again. One of my favorite quotes of the entire series, which also happens to be in my favorite book of the entire series, is from Albus Dumbledore:

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

I would remember to turn on the light eventually, but it still didn’t happen on this day.

Until next time,
Dev
Grippy Socks

July 5th, 2022

March 1, 2022

Between February 13th and February 28th, my struggles only got worse. Fear had such a tight grip on me and I felt like I couldn’t shake it off. If you’re spiritual, the only way I can describe this is spiritual warfare was consuming me. It was more than just anxiety and depression, it was a battle between what I knew to be correct and the lies these intrusive thoughts were telling me.

I truly felt like life was meaningless like something terrible was going to happen to me or my family and there was nothing I could do to control it. The terrible thing would happen and I would have to live without them or them without me and there was nothing beyond this world. During this time, we were also pretty alone and isolated. My closest friends had spent the last few months slowly alienating me for reasons I probably won’t ever understand. Beyond my husband, no one else knew what I was going through. If I can share anything, it’s this: mental health crisis + loneliness and isolation is a recipe for disaster. Alex was doing the best he could to shoulder what we were going through. He had to take days off of work to take care of me, take our daughter to school, and so much more, all on his own.

One day I hope for this time to be a distant memory, but for now, I remember how I would wake up in the middle of the night with heart palpitations, struggling to breathe, or from nightmares. For two weeks, I didn’t sleep more than 2-3 hours a night and it was awful. The doctor had given me Zoloft and Lorazepam to help with what I was experiencing, but I was terrified of taking another medication after the previous two. Not to mention, benzo’s, like Lorazepam and Xanax, can be incredibly dangerous and habit forming. Not to say they can’t be valuable tools for those who need them, but I didn’t want to alter my brain chemistry anymore, I wanted to get to the root of what I was going through.

The night of February 28th, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned, cried to my husband, and finally around 1 AM, I made the decision to check myself into the behavioral health unit of the local hospital. I didn’t know what else to do. I was afraid that if I didn’t do something, I was going to leave this earth much earlier than I was supposed to. I couldn’t stop thinking about the devastating effect that would have on my daughter and my family so I knew I needed professional help.

After taking my daughter to school, my husband took me to the emergency room of the local hospital. They discussed my options with me and sent in a psychiatrist to evaluate our situation. She talked to me for about 30 minutes, going over my experience of the last couple of weeks, past several months, and even into my younger years a bit. She told me that if I wanted to be admitted, she would allow it. My husband and I agreed that this was probably the best choice. Later, they came in to give me a change of clothes, including grippy socks, and have me take out all of my jewelry (if you know me, you know I have quite a few piercings, so this was a challenge).

The next thing we knew, I was being wheeled away from my husband (for the second time in our life together) and up to another floor of the hospital. I was terrified and hopeful, thinking that maybe this would be the answer to healing. After two weeks of torment, I just wanted to feel better. Being surrounded by professionals, this had to be it for me, right?

My room was empty besides two beds with paper-like blankets, a small triangle-shaped bathroom made completely of stainless steel, a sink, and a built-in shelving unit next to the first bed. The walls were off-white, the blinds were closed which made the room seem bleak and gloomy, and I wasn’t sure what I had gotten myself into.

The nurse came in to take my vitals and get my health history for my chart. She explained that three meals would be served each day, that I would have access to the phone when I needed it, and that it was highly recommended that I attend group therapy that afternoon and evening.

While we were talking, she said “would you like me to have the hospital chaplain come in to talk to you?” I immediately shook my head. The chaplain? Come talk to me? About what? It had been so long since I had even thought about God that the idea just seemed ludicrous.

I had grown up in the church, being raised and baptized as Catholic. I even did my first communion, but in my middle school years, the church was put on the backburner and I rarely ever thought about God. Growing up in Southern California, you don’t exactly see or talk about God very often. Besides that, I was part of the health care community, under the impression that religion was traumatizing, discriminatory, and hateful, causing the voices of women and LGBTQ+ voices to be stifled which was something I just couldn’t get on board with.

Remember: I had never actually read the Bible or explored it in depth. I had stopped going to church many years ago. I spent a lot of time on social media running a virtual business, but also seeing the voices who preach the loudest, not the ones who preach about love.

However, before my nervous breakdown, I still believed in a higher power. My husband and I were raised in homes of believers. We didn’t identify with the Catholic religion anymore, but we still believed God was present in our lives.

However, did we thank Him for our blessings? Never.
Did we pray to Him? Sure didn’t.
Did we attend church? Nope.
Did we share Jesus with our daughter? Sure didn’t. We were the “I’ll let her explore all religions so she can choose” type of people, without ever really exposing her to anything.

My brother-in-law shared a fantastic metaphor with me a few months ago:
Some of us keep Jesus in the trunk of our car, knowing He’s there but never letting him out.
Some of us keep Jesus in our backseat, hearing His voice once in a while, but not allowing him any say in where the car is going.
Some of us invite Jesus to the passenger seat, letting him navigate, but ultimately we’re still driving the car, telling it where to go.
However, all of us need to give Jesus the keys and let Him drive the car.

We totally had Jesus in the trunk. As a matter of fact, we probably saw Him hitchhiking and drove past Him a couple times without even another glance.

You’re probably wondering if I’m about to tell you that this time in the hospital was my “come to Jesus” moment? Nope. Not even close, but it was a time in my life that I’ll never forget. A time I’ll share with you in the next update.

Thanks for reading,
Dev
In the Beginning…

July 4th, 2022

February 13th, 2022

This story has many layers and puzzle pieces that I am looking back at and seeing how they all fit together. My story is about the world around me crumbling and how I found a way to put it back together again.

February 13th felt like a typical day for me. The Super Bowl was on and it was the halftime show of any ’90s kid’s dream, so we went to a neighbor’s to watch it. That night felt like a typical night. My husband, Alex, and I tucked our daughter in, I took a shower, we got into bed, and I started to read a book on my kindle. I was reading the second book of the Crescent City series by Sarah J. Maas. My favorite kind of book is fantasy books with magic and realms and possibilities that go beyond the natural world we live in every day.

The “natural world” we live in… as if the fact that this world even exists is “natural” at all. A subject for another time though…

As I was reading, my husband was starting his journey to sleep. I could hear his light snoring and his breathing changing, those little clues you pick up on after sleeping in the same bed with someone for 11 years that he was drifting to the land of dreams.

Out of nowhere, the flood gates of fear and anxiety opened upon me, drowning me in questions that before this night, I had always had answers to but been too distracted by life to really stop and think about:

“Why are we here?”
“What is the point of human existence?”
“How did we come to exist in the first place?”
“Do we really work so hard just to one day die?”
“Does life have any actual purpose?”
“When we die, is there really nothing after this?”
“One day, I’m going to lose my family… my husband, my daughter, my parents, my siblings, my nieces, my nephews, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins… we all cease to exist. This life can’t just be for nothing.”

Most would call this an existential crisis or nervous breakdown. When was the last time you sat and really thought about these questions for yourself?

Fear dug its claws into my mind and held on for dear life. I sat up in bed, alarming my husband, who held me all night while I panicked and shared my deepest fears with him. I finally fell asleep in the early hours of the morning and awoke the next day with the fear and anxiety still clinging to me.

It was Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t figure out the point of existence. My husband was doing the best he could to show up for me. Our 8-year-old daughter was at school. All I was worried about was Alex going to the store to get our daughter something for Valentine’s Day so we could keep some semblance of normalcy for her while we were clearly in a mental health crisis as a family.

Months before this happened, I started going back to therapy. Now, I’m not a stranger to depression and anxiety. I wouldn’t say we’re old friends, but we have shared time together intimately over the years, but I try my best to see it out of my home, my heart, and my mind as often as it knocks on my door. To do this, I usually drowned myself in busyness, productivity, in accomplishments. In 9 years, I earned five different certifications and three degrees in nutrition and fitness. I started a family, built a business, and moved overseas twice. I went back to school full time and homeschooled my daughter during a global pandemic. I never slowed down long enough to spend time with my emotions. I’m not a physical runner but I am an emotional runner, never confronting the hard stuff for long enough to actually move through it. Going back to therapy was my way of finally saying “enough is enough. I need to move through this so I can put it behind me, once and for all.”

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, most things are now virtual when it comes to mental health care. I’m thankful that this makes things accessible for groups of people that may otherwise not be able to access this much-needed care, but it does take some of the personalization out of it. My therapist was good, but she didn’t challenge me. The service I used came with a psychiatric partner who met with me and mistook my anxiety for ADHD, putting me on an antidepressant commonly used to help with ADHD symptoms.

While I am not anti-medication in any way, I don’t think the first line of defense when we’re struggling should be medication and I believe there are a lot of mental health professionals out there who may share this view. The medications can absolutely make therapy and the other work easier to accomplish, but they can also lead you down a road that is hard to travel, which is what happened to me.

I started the medication and in the six weeks that I was on it, I lost my appetite, my sleep, and my happiness. I sunk deeper and deeper into a hole of depression, though I tried to make it seem like everything was fine and dandy on the outside. Mental illness is still SO stigmatized that those of us who live with it have a hard time opening up about it so I stayed in my bubble, not really telling anyone what I was going through, or making light of it with jokes and deflection.

Finally, I had enough. I told my prescriber that this medication wasn’t working for me. Her solution? To increase it. I said absolutely not and stopped taking it altogether. The therapy company connected me with a different prescriber who then opted for Adderall. Stimulant medications are scary and habit-forming, but if ADHD was what I had, then I was willing to give it a try because I figured this doctor knew better than I did at this time.

For one week I took this medication and at the end of it was when I had a nervous breakdown, on February 13th. Five months later, I’m able to look. back and see that the medications probably played a big role in my breakdown. Medication-induced depression is a real thing, but I have also been told that burnout played a huge role, along with alienation and abandonment by some people who were closest to me, and some interpersonal family issues, things that I plan on touching on throughout my blogging journey. Put all of those things in a shaker glass with some ice, shake it up, and you’ve got a Mental Health Crisis mocktail on your hands.

If anyone has ever experienced severe anxiety and major depression, you know that all you want to do is FEEL BETTER. My next post will be about my experience in the Behavioral Health unit of our local hospital and the misdiagnosis along the way.

Fair warning, this blog is going to be centered around God and faith. I know that mainstream media has made you believe that science has “proved” God to be obsolete (this couldn’t be further from the truth), or that being a Christian isn’t trendy (the loudest Christians don’t speak for all Christians), or that Jesus didn’t actually walk this Earth. I have spent the last three months devoted to figuring out why I believe what I believe and having some of my own supernatural experiences, and I have a different story to tell you.

I was a skeptic, a “my relationship with God is my own,” a “the Bible is a document written by men, for men” type of person without ever reading it myself. I was so prideful that I couldn’t believe that anyone had any say over my life, but me. Trust me when I say, this journey has been transformational and beautiful. I encourage you to join my exploration of existence and faith without bias, without judgment and just hear me out, especially if you’ve ever found yourself in a place of isolation, loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

Looking forward to sharing this journey with you,
Dev

Category: mental health

The Story Continues

The (voluntary) Prisoner

Grippy Socks

In the Beginning…