For most of my life I've lived with what I have believed to be a mental condition.. I've researched it to the end of the internet and back again, only to find that my "mental condition" is medical..not mental. I didn't have a traumatic event that caused my flawed thinking process the way most mental conditions play out. I don't need a traumatic event to have a massive panic attack or nose dive into depression. I had a good childhood, I love my parents dearly.. Everything was normal.
Before you think I'm justifying being crazy, I assure you that if I had a choice in the matter, I would rather be mental. "Mental" you can work with, mental is something that you can somewhat change your mind and change a bit,.if not entirely. You can be talked out of mental (most times with a therapist or someone who is willing to listen)
Medical crazy is what it is... no matter what your mindset is.
To have a medical condition masked, in what appears to be... mental.. opens you to abuse from those who claim to be your friends and/or caring family members.
The times that I've been told to" snap out of it"..or get the dirty looks or threats when I cry and panic over something that I KNOW already is irrational thinking ... The times that I'm told to change my thought process or that I'm bothering those that I love, or being told to stop it.. I couldn't just change my mind and suddenly stop worrying or panicing.. I tried and every time I failed miserably.
The saddest thing about the imbalance of brain chemicals that cause this massive mis-firing is that it is rarely "fixable" and if you are lucky enough to find a medication that DOES work for you, it eventually stops working and you are put on another drug with bad side effects and rainbow/butterfly filled promises.. One medication is not a fix for everyone. Just when life isnt complicated enough.. People think I enjoy hurting so much that I don't want to change it!
I have the "want" and well past the "need" ...I just lack the chemicals..and so I've endured the abusive words and comments along with my own personal hell.
You think life is hard? Try being mentally punished for what you cannot control or fix. I am punished daily.. one way or another, by someone "trying to teach me" how to think. This adds injury to injury.
Having something so painful and knowing there isn't a cure for you..makes you have to look to yourself for an end to the madness. People wonder why people kill themselves.. it's not always because they are sad.. it's because they are told to do the impossible and finding that they can't.. they decide to give up and fix it forever. A mercy killing of sorts. Mercy for those that it bothers and for yourself.. your un-fixable.. self.
There is no other way to fix this for me, I've looked..there is nothing. I've tried the drugs and lived through terrible side effects that I will not allow myself to go through any more. I've spent the last twenty years apologizing for something that I had/have no control over.
If you had cancer, would you apologize for it? If you had a broken bone and were unable to just change your mind and believe it wasn't there..would you say you are sorry? I've been expected to apologize for what I cannot change by merely thinking it away. And when I couldn't think it away.. I became a problem.
The people who thought they knew the answers have hurt me even more than my condition. I believed that I was crazy, stupid, and because I could not make my mind do what I wanted it to do.. I was pathetic. What self esteem that I did have.. left.
I've spent more nights yelling at myself and attacking myself than anyone could imagine. I'm tired of apologizing and feeling even more messed up than I am already. God bless anyone out there that has to live with this too.. even more so if you are having to deal with self proclaimed experts who believe it can be changed as easy as changing your mind.
Why am I sharing this with you guys? Because I know I'm not the only one.. I know that there are other's being led to believe that they have control of this thing and when you fail to "fix it" you are belittled and made to feel that you are stupid... too stupid to do anything as simple as changing your mind. It can't be done.
We have to find our own hope, I suppose.. for some that comes in the form of medication and for the ones like me.. I'm still not real sure... I only know that I'm really tired of getting my hopes up because this medication worked for so and so.. only to be disappointed.
Living a nightmare every stinking day does take it's toll.. Yeah, I would choose having a mental problem over a medical problem with no cure, any day. This sucks beyond mere words.
