Monthly Archives: May 2014

Amazingly, I have gone through life undiagnosed with any mental illness, but if one were to know me, they’d know that this doesn’t necessarily mean much at all. As a young teen, I struggled with food issues that turned into anorexia and bulimia that lasted until my 20s. I was also a cutter and had difficulty dealing with my moods and emotions. It wasn’t so much a secret, but I didn’t talk about it too openly either; I was still trying to get away with it.

As I grew and matured and started to think about having a family, I knew I didn’t want to continue those behaviors. However, without a suitable outlet or caring professionals to talk to, I found myself increasingly picking at my face. We’ve all done it, a few pimples or blackheads here and there. In a few years, my face went from mostly clear as a teen to a shredded, angry and infected mess. I don’t know when the turning point was, since I always liked to pick at my face, but somehow being able to stop myself has become almost impossible. It goes something like this: I see either one or two ‘pimples’ (possibly because my sensitive skin reacts to almost everything), I tell myself I’ll just pop those, but then I see a few small bumps and move on to those, and then before I know it I’ve tried to get every little tiny bump I didn’t even notice before. While I’m doing this, I realize I’m destroying my face and may even tell myself right in the middle of doing it “Don’t do it. Stop. It’s going to be horrible once you step away from the mirror. Don’t pop that one, ok, don’t pop that next one…” but at the very same time, another part of my brain is telling me, without words, how much I hate the bumps and imperfections. When I wash my face and feel bumpy skin, when I look in the mirror and see sallow, red or pocked skin, all I think is how clear and smooth I want it to be. So illogically, I think if I can just smooth out these few, I will have clear skin. It will work this time! It never works. I get out of control and end up feeling broken and defeated, instead of triumphant.

Most of them get re-infected and when I pop two, three, four times, it leaves a big hole and scar. A bump that was so unnoticeable before becomes massively infected. Some are so deep I scrape skin off trying to get whatever I think is beneath the surface out. Even that doesn’t stop me from continuing in the same spot. I must get it. The small ones don’t just leave a dot of the same size; the whole area gets red and inflamed. It spreads bacteria and compromises my skin integrity. Usually as they heal, they end up as small bumps that either are- or I believe to be - whiteheads and I pop them again. It doesn’t ever stop. They never go away. I will find something. I have almost promised myself that these pores will forever stay open and become full with something that needs to be expelled. It’s a vicious cycle, I know it but I can’t stop.

I know this is a disorder called dermatilomania, closely related to OCD and body dysmorphic disorder. I know people who have it as well. I’ve tried many tricks to beat it, yet it doesn’t change much. I have my own culture around popping, my own world and terminology: ‘exit wound’, ‘slug’, ‘repop’, ‘performing surgery’, ‘pothole’, ‘crater’. I plan my life around it. My life, around it. I have to be near my products at all times, constantly putting something on my skin. I’ve cancelled plans because I looked too awful. I’ve gone at my face worse before an event thinking it will look better, or maybe knowing it won’t. I scratch at it without thinking or even looking at what I’m doing. Sometimes I just want to sleep; maybe that’s the only time I can heal without my own interference.

I’ve thought very frequently about what all this means. Sometimes I think it’s as simple as my skin reacting to some ingredient and when I feel that painful pressure under my skin of course I want to remove it. But I know it’s more than that. I know that I often go at my face the worst when it’s getting clear. I almost think I want to ruin it. I want to make myself hideous and hide from everyone, or at least attempt to. When I am forced to go out with my skin looking its worst I feel ashamed. Do I want to punish myself? Do I want to hurt? Do I even want to look pretty? Is this all a replacement? Maybe I want the outside to match the ugly inside; a throwback to ideas of cutting culture. And yet, it’s cathartic. In some deep corner of my mind, it feels good. I know that sick secret is true. Maybe I want to purge myself of all the poison inside, as I’ve done many thousands of times before in another way; the twisted feeling of satisfaction at successfully completing still the same. Maybe I don’t feel I deserve more, maybe I like self sabotage, self destruction. Maybe I want that misery that comes with having a face so ugly you don’t want to see the world anymore, and them to see you. All the same feelings I had practically my whole life.

Every time I cry and swear I’ll never do it again- I’ll never touch my face or pop any bump, EVER! I don’t want to be amazing; I just want clear normal skin! That can last all of three seconds. I want to believe I have control over my hands but I’m not so sure. As frightening as some of these thoughts are, I can skate through life just looking like I have uncontrollable acne. As unpleasant as that is, what would a label of mental illness do? What would I be ‘diagnosed’ with, and would I now have to define my life by this new label and all it implies? I’ve become so familiar with my mindset, my habits, and my thoughts. I am considering taking the steps for treatment, but it’s disheartening when we find it easier to retreat because the stigma may be worse than the demons we live with and even embrace.

Cordula lives in Far Rockaway with her husband, two daughters and cats. She is a sociology graduate and is a fierce fighter against racism and inequality. Strong principled and ever-negative, she has no accomplishments to brag about. While she battles many demons and it’s incredibly difficult, she walks around looking just like this, because fuck what people think.

My fourth decade is only just around the corner and every day I pinch myself not quite believing that I lasted this long, and that I go about my daily life with most people never suspecting that I’m anything other than a happy popular woman leading a nice “middle-class” existence.

You see I’m a survivor of child abuse which started suddenly when I was four years old and my parent’s marriage started disintegrating. Some of the abuse was physical but the worst was the emotional abuse All of this heaped on me by my own mother.

I did my best to hide the cuts and bruises, but it was much more difficult to hide the emotional effects that the abuse had on me. It has often been suspected by a number of psychologists that I’ve seen that I may have a mild form of Aspergers Syndrome as I exhibit many of the characteristics, but they were unable to fully distinguish autistic traits from behaviours could be associated from having survived such an emotional trauma.

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Until my early twenties I was unable to make eye contact with people without intense discomfort – even now, while I am generally comfortable it doesn’t come naturally to me.
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I often blunder my way through social situations as, unless I concentrate really hard, I miss a lot of the social cues. Those which I know of I learnt almost entirely from books.
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I often seem to be the last person to “get” a clever joke.
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I am terrified of sudden loud noises and I startle if people touch me without warning.

I have overcome clinical depression and a suicide attempt in my late teens, but the childhood trauma has still left me with a number of anxiety related illnesses including OCD, body dysmorphia and dermatillomania.
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The first thing to note with anxiety is that it is really really tiring you just don’t have as much energy as other people and sometimes you want to be social but you flake out at the last minute because you just don’t have anything else left in the tank. Anxiety sucks away at your self-esteem. Anxiety tells you lies, speaks in bold, judgemental black and white terms. Tells you what you can’t do, what you’re not, what you never can be.

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The body dysmorphia that I experience is the mismatch between the pleasant little avatar in my head and the unpleasant reality of the mirror each day. It makes me see a distorted untrue image staring back at me – all I see is imperfection and that to me is devastating. It triggers me to pick at my skin (dermatillomania) and reinforce the miserable cycle.

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OCD means although I am able to drive, I dare not to. My head fills with terrible premonitions of accidental killing and guilt. Too much. I am a bad person.

I read a book last summer called “Pretending To Be Normal” by Liane Willey. This is a story of a high functioning woman on the Autistic spectrum and how she has managed to hide her condition and live a normal life. To a great extent I have survived early adulthood by using similar tactics, but what it meant with me was to learn to hide my scars with clever make up application, learn a special anchoring technique to stop me crying when I felt tears coming on, to laugh and pretend that everything was okay even when it wasn’t.

I’ve learnt that hiding from illness doesn’t make it go away and that sadly, as good as laughter is its not always the best medicine.

Stigma survives through ignorance, ignorance through lack of information, fear and silence. That is why I feel it’s time to speak out.

Rose Wiltshire is a mental health activist, aspiring writer and supporter of Wiltshire Mind (a local mental health charity).

She started a blog roseversusblackdog.wordpress.com as a way to document and motivate her through a 30 week experiment designed to defeat her illnesses, and to provide support and inspiration for others hoping to make a similar journey.

Twitter: @RoseWiltshire

I consider myself a well-educated woman, but postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety blindsided me. I am a planner by nature. If I had known that I was at risk, I would have prepared myself, my husband, and my family. As a lover of words, I devoured everything that I could get my hands on regarding postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. I had no idea that I had three of the risk factors associated with postpartum mood disorders: previous history of an anxiety disorder, C-section births and gestational diabetes. I began my blog to smash the stigma of postpartum mood disorders. I wanted to help the other moms like me who were struggling. I found so much community, love and support within the Warrior Mom community that I wanted to pay that support forward.

Stigma still surrounds one of the symptoms of postpartum depression: rage. No one likes to talk about postpartum rage. It is so common in women suffering with postpartum mood disorders. I had no idea that the extreme hulk smash rage was a symptom of depression. I yelled and screamed like a banshee. After these outbursts I would break into tears, horrified at all the vitriol that had come out of my mouth. My oldest daughter and my husband bore the brunt of my wrath. To this day I well up when I think of how poorly I treated two of the most important people in my life. Anything and everything would cause me to fly into a rage – someone cutting me off in traffic, forgetting a pump part, spilled pumped breast milk, a sleepy toddler who didn’t want to get dressed, a husband who forgot to put out the coats in the morning for the girls, a slow moving car, traffic, questions from well-meaning family members. I isolated myself from everyone – my husband, my parents, my sister, my in-laws, my co-workers and my friends.

I felt like a horrible mom, a horrible wife, a horrible person. I did not want to reach out to anyone because they would see the ugliness that was inside of me. No one would want to know me. I hated myself. I hated the person I had become. I felt like I was sleepwalking through my life. I woke up on Mother’s Day of 2011 in a yoga class taught by a dear friend. I finally relaxed enough to notice that I had spent the past seven months living in a fog of anxiety and rage. That day I took the first steps towards getting help. I left a voice-mail message for my therapist, and I was in her office a few short days later. Therapy, medication, help from my family and friends and the Internet saved my life. I am proud to call myself a survivor. This experience has made me into the woma , wife and mother that I am today. The more I share my story, the more I hear from friends and family “me too”. Stigma feeds on silence, and I no longer will be silent.

Jen is a quality/regulatory professional, wife and mom to two young girls. Jen met her husband while tap dancing into his heart during Anything Goes. She blogs at Tranquila Mama where she blogs about postpartum mood disorders, health and fitness, and parenting. You can also find Jen writing about postpartum mood disorders on Postpartum Progress

“Fatty Fatty Two by Four….Can’t Get Thru the Bathroom Door”…I was 12 when I first heard those words from a family member. The way we perceive beauty and our own image starts with our own family. Right? The torment I experienced of being called “fatty” by family members and even being “oinked” at will forever be etched in the fabric of my mind. This was my first perception of myself. I don’t think the family members who did this meant anything by it. They weren’t being cruel on purpose. They were only teasing me in what they thought was all fun and games. Little did they know, those words became etched into my being.

I was far from being obese. I carried baby weight as most 12 year olds do. I was a small town girl with big dreams and I desperately wanted to fit in somewhere. I wanted to be apart of something. I tried out for the cheerleading squad and failed to make the team several times. I needed this sense of belonging somewhere but I just didn’t know where I’d find it. I had gone thru a great deal personally and those events would continue to haunt me for years.

We didn’t have a lot of money at this time in my life so we were forced to wash our clothes at a laundry mat as we didn’t have a washer and dryer. It was there that I found magazines and read articles about Tracey Gold, the young actress on Growing Pains. She had battled an eating disorder. It was from her story that I learned about anorexia that would eventually lead me to an 18 year battle. It was easy for her to lose weight so why couldn’t I?

I learned the tricks to make others think I had eaten more than I really had and exercised for hours daily. I don’t like sharing every detail as I’d never want to give another vulnerable young individual any ideas. Basically, the weight started following off and very quickly. Of course, years later, I now know this was baby weight and the frightening number I saw on the scale was unhealthy for me. I went from 110lbs to 80lbs. I was about 15 years old when this really came to light.

At that age, you don’t think about the consequences of your actions. Even after getting down to eighty pounds, I still saw myself as fat. A great amount of time went by before it was “noticed” that I was dealing with an eating disorder. Growing up in a small town, you really didn’t hear about things such as anorexia or bulimia.

After dropping to such a low weight, I felt faint constantly and then I began passing out. I remember the first time very clearly. I was in 9th grade and woke from the middle of the night and knew something was definitely off.

When walking to wake my parents, I collapsed bouncing off a door frame and fell head first onto the tile floor. The bang was loud enough to wake my parents and I believe it was that moment they realized something was terribly wrong. Then began a million tests trying to determine what was wrong. The result? Ok ….sure I had low blood pressure and an erratic heart rate but what caused that? Anorexia was the culprit.

My organs were basically starting to shut down. The doctor said if I didn’t immediately gain weight I would be admitted to the hospital and would have to get a feeding tube. This was something I was terrified of. Food frightened me. I thought being skinny was the answer to all of my problems. I truly thought I would be loved more. I would fit in. It would repair every relationship in my life. It would help my family in the long run. How? I don’t know.

NOW I understand this disease to be about control. I usually refer to the anorexia I battled as ED but this can stand for any eating disorder. You see when someone with ED feels like they can’t control anything…..like they are out of control….this can send them spiraling. ED is often times about control and in reality doesn’t always have to do with physical beauty. Society thinks differently. Many times, society thinks that those with ED are just full of themselves. Just want to be the prettiest and the most accepted. While acceptance may be true, physical beauty isn’t the #1 thing on the mind of someone with ED. This is usually a mask for something deeper.

For me those ‘deeper’ issues were things I had faced. It wasn’t just about ‘fitting in’. My mom wasn’t well and I wanted to be able to help her. I wanted to take her pain away and make her better. When I was in high school, I was raped. This was the first time I had sex. One of my childhood friends was murdered. I lost a child when I was 19. His heart stopped beating early in the pregnancy. My brother passed away in a car accident in 2005. Among many many other things. ED was how I coped with those things. It’s not like I said ‘well, all of these things happened…I guess I will starve myself.’ I blamed myself for these things. ED just happened.

When someone with ED looks in a mirror, they see fat. They see unworthy. They see unaccepted. Their vision is distorted. What you see is not what they see.

I battled ED off and on for 18 years. My last relapse was in 2011. Many didn’t even know there was an issue. At events I received so many compliments on how much weight I had lost after having a baby in 2009. Very few knew of the struggle in my head and the physical toll it was taking on me. In an email to a friend I wrote “carrying my daughter up the stairs makes me tired. I give her a bath….I’m feeling dizzy and the pain in my stomach from attempting to eat is still there. My legs hurt. My ribs hurt so bad I could cry. My hair comes out every time I run my hands through it…like a shedding dog. I’m really exhausted mentally and physically.” Yet, when I’d see people out I heard over and over how beautiful I looked. I can count on one hand the amount of people who saw a problem.

Over the years I’ve heard many times the same sentence. “Why can’t you just eat? It’s not that difficult.” That’s easier to say than to do for someone with ED. Not only is there this deep fear of food and gaining weight but for some…like myself…during this time I could hear those words I heard as a child. I could hear “if you eat the plate full of food…you WILL gain weight.” I could hear “see those people across the room. They are staring and judging.” I could hear “no one will want you because you are gross”. I could hear “You aren’t worthy anyway. No one is going to love you especially if you are a fat”. Food gave me pure anxiety. Heart palpitations even. I literally stopped eating. I would go days with just a meal or two.

It was only when I met my husband that ED seemed to leave me. I’ve read it’s like a divorce. ED had been with me for 18 years. It was time to move on to true love. I credit my husband for teaching me about self acceptance and love. I now have two daughters that rely on me. I want to be a good influence. I don’t want them to turn out like me.

Now, this does not mean some of the ED traits don’t linger. There are a few that I don’t know will ever go away. For example, it’s rare you will see me eat a great deal at a party/event. I’m bad about not cleaning my plate. I still can get that anxiety at times. However, the coolest thing I’ve learned with all of this is that my recovery actually comes from not only having a family but being able to help others. I’ve learned by sharing my story, I can help others.

Last year, not only was I able to speak to many individuals about ED but I also had local media cover my story. In addition to that, I started working with a local eating disorder treatment facility and this year I became their Public Relations Director. At TranscendED, we work with girls 13 and above and treat them thru intensive outpatient (IOP) and partial hospitalization. This year we opened Charlotte’s FIRST residential home for girls 17 and above with ED. Knowing I am apart of a group who is saving girls/women from ED helps me stay focused.I’d also like to say this to the younger generation as I think it’s so important not only when dealing with ED but just with life in general.

When you step into a potential employer’s office, they will not ask what clique you were involved with. Your future colleagues are not going to base your relationship on what type of designer clothes you wore when you were younger. No one is going to care what kind of car you drove when you were sixteen. It’s so important to realize what truly matters and that is the way you see yourself. If you think highly of yourself then everything else will fall into place. No one else can love you, respect you, or admire you until you feel that way about yourself.

Keep in mind that we all came from a different mom and dad. None of us were meant to be the same. We aren’t meant to have the same body type, the same hairstyle or the same talents. We are all here for a purpose. Don’t overlook that and spend your life trying to live out the life of someone else. You only get one chance. We are accountable for our own decisions and you never want to go through life wondering “what if?”

Lastly, please learn the signs of ED. So many are suffering without anyone ever noticing. Don’t be afraid to speak up if you see a problem. You may be saving someone’s life.

Amelia Old, editor of Pretty in the Queen City, is a former international talent agent. She was named Best Creative Professional in the 2008 American Business Awards, hailed as the “business world’s own Oscars” by the New York Post. In 2010, Amelia closed her agency to focus on the development of Pretty in the Queen City, a national lifestyle blog. She’s an avid product researcher and writer, sharing her reviews and experiences through a variety of outlets including Shespeaks.com, typeF.com, BeautyStat.com, ehow.com and WCNC-Charlotte Today. She enjoys testing new products and sharing her opinions with the brands she works with and with her followers.

In addition to reviewing and writing about the latest products on the market, Amelia also assists non profit organizations with public relations, communication and ideation.She has experience with digital media, brand marketing, product development and product launches both in the U.S. and Internationally.

In 2013, she was named Most Impactful Woman by Women with Know How Magazine.

Amelia is the current President of Social Media Charlotte, who focuses on organizing, providing resources, fostering dialogue for social media marketing and events in Charlotte, NC.

She also serves on the Board of Directors for All We Want is LOVE and Public Relations Director for Transcend ED .

Amelia and her husband Tim are often referred to as TEAM OLD due to their ability to work well together as a team on a variety of projects. They have three children-Sophia, Joshua and Harlow who keep them unbelievably busy with soccer, horse riding and dance lessons.

The Contract of Your Birth

“It was just before sunrise at the electric blue hour I had come to appreciate in the week since I had given up sleeping,” writes Max in the opening chapter of Walks on the Margins: A Story of Bipolar Illness.

Max was twenty and a junior in college when he began his manic journey through the small college town of Grinnell, Iowa. Before then, manic depression was not part of my vocabulary. I never imaged that it would strike my son.

Max was picked up by the police that day, transported to the hospital, and diagnosed with Bipolar I. We took him home. I roasted chicken and mashed potatoes, dished up strawberry ice cream, warmed milk, hoping to bring my son back to himself. But just a few months later the other half of manic depression hit him hard.

Writes Max, “Quick was the rant and rattle of suicidal ideation to snuff out completely any lingering hope for a normal life. The question of how and where I could end the agony soon turned into a habit of minute-by-minute thinking, like the compulsion to open and close a door.”

Something had to be done. More mood stabilizers, fewer antipsychotics, a different family of anti-depressants, a new one, a proven one, an experimental one, a conservative one. Slowly Max began to stabilize and returned to college the next semester.

A year and a half later while on spring break, Max disappeared in Chicago.

I feared the worst, pictured him sleeping under a bridge, bleeding in a back alley, or laying unidentified in a Chicago morgue. I kept my phone in my pocket and when it rattled against my hip, I prayed someone would tell me Max was okay. The call finally came. Max had been admitted to a Chicago hospital. I told myself he would get through this episode just as he had the last, that his dreams would not be buried under the rubble of manic-depression, that every page studied, paper written, canvas painted wouldn’t seem like a lie.”

Max had an episode every year after that. He disappeared among the big city homeless, ended up handcuffed in the back of police cruisers, and came within inches of jumping from a shattered eighth floor window in Philadelphia. By the time he was twenty-six, he’d earned a dozen commitments to psychiatric institutions.

For me the homeless pushing grocery carts scrawled with intimations of the second coming became encounters too close to home. I struggled to come to terms with my changing role as parent and confidant. Stymied, bullied, blindsided by doctors, hospitals, and the law, I chased Max’s collapsing dreams and feared he wouldn’t live through the next crisis.

“I’m so sorry,” a doctor once said to me. “Max is never going to get well. He can never live on his own. You’d better start planning for his future.”

I could not, would not, accept that hopelessness. I was clear-eyed about the illness and its implications, but determined not to fall into the trap of assuming incurable means hopeless. I became deeply involved in NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and have become a vocal advocate for those with mental illness and their families, imparting the message that, with adequate support, “people with mental illness can and do succeed. They live fulfilled lives, working and developing significant relationships. They engage in the process of recovery, knowing that recovery doesn’t mean cure.”

Max, too, is realistic about his struggle and knows the invaluable gift of family support. When I sat beside him in his apartment during a bout of suicidal depression, he writes:

“And yet, my mom was there with me still, sitting on the bed next to me in my basement cave, when I opened my acceptance letter to graduate school, the application for which she did a wonderful job.

‘Thank God,’ she and I said in the same breath. She had ushered me back into life once again. What can I say without resorting to cliché? I can’t. Really though, you don’t have to bring everyone down with you. But, of course, this means not going down at all. And so there is the contract of your birth.”

After years of struggle, Max and I wrote our memoir “Walks on the Margins: A Story of Bipolar Illness.” We’ve found healing in the writing. Now we are speaking out about mental illness to whomever wants to hear, and to many who don’t understand what it means to struggle with these illness. We want to break through the barriers of stigma, put a face on illness because that’s when things will begin to change. That’s when our communities will develop good and accessible mental health treatment for all those who suffer.

-Kathy Brandt has published four novels with Penguin and taught writing at the University of Colorado for ten years. She recently completed her term as President of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Colorado Springs (NAMI-CS) and received the 2012 NAMI National Award for outstanding service to the organization. She has a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Rhetoric. She lives in the mountains of Colorado.

-Max Maddox has a BA in philosophy from Grinnell College and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, where he was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Award and received the Fellowship Trust Award. He has exhibited his work around the country. He lives in Colorado where he teaches and continues to pursue his career in art.