Mental Health News

Exercise Keeps Your Mind Sharp

A new study from the National Institutes of Health found that the most sedentary individuals (i.e. couch potatoes) are 2.5 times more likely to develop dementia than regular exercisers. Dementia is a condition of declining mental abilities (especially memory) that affects your personality, skills (like driving a car), and verbal abilities.

Playing Games

I enjoy playing online games, whether there are full 3d games or browser games. But if there is a chat feature there is always a few narcissistic, blowhards ready to jump on everything you say. I am honesty with the chat community on these games about my bipolar and I do my best to explain how some of the core symptoms in my case include excessive talking, my own narcissistic tendencies and the biggest problem that I have is over reacting and taking things personally.

I dont think that some of these ppl understand that like any other mental illness only so much can be controlled even with meds and therapy. I am not trying whine or get pity for my condition. I have already been threw that stage and i can have my own very good pity party without any help from another living soul.

What does happen is that like any group be it family or community you become attached to the ppl whether its because you like them or you hate them an attachment and expected behaviors form. I got a line of you only get respect if you earn it. fine and dandy dont respect "me" but basic human respect is expected. I have sessions where some of these ppl continually harass me, swear at me and call me names. Now if this was done offline it would be considered abusing the mentally ill and that comes with consequences. But online there are no consequences. if its a game maybe someone gets muted for a a few mins or a few days. their friends still post the abusive statements from their now muted friends so i am still being inundated with this harassment.

Now I have a choice I could simple just stop playing the game. Which is what would be most ppls first advice. BUT why should I have to be the one to lose out on the friends I have made and the fun and enjoyment of the game because of someone elses bigoted outlook and inability to understand that mental illness isn't something you can turn off and on at will. Isn't my illness punishment enough? why do i have to lose out by giving up my enjoyment so that other ppl cant harass me?

Where are my rights to enjoy the freedom of Internet and chat communities and its not like this is a new game i have been playing since January 08. Now if this was going to be such a problem for some of these ppl why didn't they go to the owner of the game and let him know that they were having issues with me and have him or some uninterested 3rd party come to me and say look. the ppl here are having problems with you. fix this this and that or you will need to leave the game so as not to ruin the game for others. That would have been reasonable. I would have understand but I have been playing for almost a year and all i am getting lately is being sworn at ether in messages where they cant get caught at it or in open chat where they can. why wait till i have put time and money into this game to start having issues. I am not even the same as i was when i started playing I am actually better then i was as i have more control and better meds.

if someone can tell me that there is some protection I can receive from this harassment which doesn't require me to forfeit the game i would be most appreciative. but I dont expect anyone to have anything to say about this. I guess when we go online we give up the right to be treated with respect and not harassed. We have to give up things we like to do and things that make us feel good because there is always some idiot out there just waiting to jump on you so they can feel better about themselves.

And we are the ones that get called disabled and mentally ill. I am being to wonder who is really the ill ppl in this world

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The Perception of Age

When do you start feeling old? Is it when you hear your high school dance music playing over the supermarket speakers or in an elevator? Is it the first time your called Mame or Sir by the pimple faced kid at the register? Is it the first time you notice that your Grey is noticeable? Is it when you realize your still young but you no longer have the glow and energy of youth? Is it when your joints are more accurate then the local weatherman? Is it when you look at your 40th birthday and realize that you have another 40 or more years to try and live a productive life?

I look back at my journals and the entries in my blog and I wonder to myself. In a little over a year I will be 40. what happened to the last 40? How did I last this long wading threw what was sewer pit? I have to believe that this signifies that my life has a reason. I have no clue what it is but I am satisfied that in some way I have touched someones life or I will in the future that will lead to something good for that person. I guess you could say I have faith in fate. 

I have lived in cars. I have slept in empty house and garages that were up for sale. I have found my food in some very unsavory places. I was a drunk. Until 05 I had always lived in an abusive home or was in an abusive relationship. That was the same year I was hit by a minivan and my life really changed. So what is the next half of my life going to hold? I can't have children anymore. I doubt very much I am going to win the lottery as I don't play it. I am not going to win a casino jackpot. I have lived near 3 of them for over 2 years and I have never even seen the buildings.

I would like to go back to school and get my teaching degree and work with adults who have cognitive disorders, but I don't even know if with my own cognitive issues if i can get threw school or hold a job. Am I too old to start school and to start teaching? Though I enjoy where I live and I can't afford to buy a home I would like to be able to someday. I don't want to grow old alone then again no one really does. While I am not afraid of actually getting old it does leave me with a lot of questions who's answers wont be found till I have lived them.

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Fall to Winter

Well things have been up and down as usual. I have a new doctor and he seems like he might actually want to help me. though do to mess ups with transferring medical I ended up over a month without my meds. First time in 5 years  that i haven't had my meds. Its not something I want to repeat but I was alot better now then i was before i ever took the meds and before i learned what little control i have now.

I am playing games again and back to clicking my ads for money. this time of year is pretty hard for me as much as i love it. Halloween is my favorite holiday. even more so now that I am an adult and it is a religious holiday for me. but October and November are full of birthdays of family both alive and dead. Right now it feels pretty much the same after not seeing anyone for 2 years plus now. we are suppose to go this spring but i have been talking about getting the van fixed for over a year but things are complicated money wise.

I am hoping that with Scribe added on to FireFox I will be more likely to keep a more accurate record of things and not go months between righting. We shall see what happens. but this is a short one as i am not doing bad at all and feeling quite good considering this last month.

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Bubble Bubble Boil and Trouble

Have you ever had your head feel so full that it gave you the feeling of watching a bubbling pot on the stove??? Have you ever felt like you need to drill a hole in your head to release the pressure? Have you ever wanted to bang your head against the wall to make that feeling stop?

Have I given a good enough description? Can you imagine what all that feels like? Even just a tiny bit. That is a symptom of bipolar as well as many other mental illnesses. Its official title is Racing thoughts. Sometimes if its not to bad it just causes you to jump from one topic to another while having a conversation. Or stray thoughts out of nowhere just jump into your head and your not quite sure which path it followed to get to you. But the bad times those are the ones I described first.

If you can't get a grip, ether on your own or help from friends, those racing thoughts can cause some really bad things to happen. Racing thoughts leads to carelessness also known as inability to make correct decisions. This is what leads to doing things without thought or care. Your trying to get rid of the buzzing and bubbling inside your head and its so overwhelming most of the time its all you can think about.

Racing thoughts can lead to suicide. You don't want to die you just want to make it stop or just so damn tired all you want to do is rest. You really don't comprehend that what your doing is not only wrong but is a permanent solution to breathing. There is just no connection between the act and thoughts of suicide and the end of your life. Your out of sync with the rest of the world and everything is fuzzy and nothing has any consequences.

Racing thoughts can lead to unpredictable and though not quiet as dangerous as suicide can in its own way kill you from the inside out. Things like promiscuous sex with whoever happens to catch your attention. Walking out of a store with unpaid merchandise just for the rush of seeing if you get caught. Or spending sprees that lead to not enough for food and medicine when the time comes. Yet your home is full of stuff that you thought you couldn't live without and you have barely even used it.

Racing thoughts can make you aggressive, very very aggressive. It can in some very extreme cases bring you to a state of rage that is actually murderous and I am talking real violence against another person not just ohh you stole my pencil i am angry with you. But a driving need to bring to another person all the pent up anger and pain that you go threw 24/7. A need to make someone else feel what you feel so that you don't feel alone.

It may not make sense to those of you who don't have a mental illness or an illness that doesn't include this particular symptom. But this is something that a number of the population of the world go threw almost everyday. Fighting and struggling to keep themselves within the "normal" range of thoughts. Every once in awhile think of this and say a prayer to whatever "Power that Be" that is in your life. And thank them every time that you have a healthy mind and say a small one for the rest of us that we can someday find what it is that will bring us a peace of mind. And if you have a friend or family member that suffers from a mental illness remember its the bond of friendship and family that has done the greatest good for those of us in this position.

The Secret Years

It all started in 1979 as far as I can remember. My whole life turned into a soap opera ride and I was stuck on it for the duration. Summer 1979 my grandmother allowed a friends daughter to live with us. She was 16. I was 9. We shared a room. She was my first sexual encounter. I didn't know it was sexual, I didn't even know what sex was. I didn't know it was wrong and she didn't cause me physical pain so I never said anything. Why would I? I hadn't been taught anything about being touched.

This was also the summer I learned why you don't play with matches when I accidentally caught the upstairs on fire. We lost alot but most of it was from smoke and water then from the fire itself. I felt so guilty especially when the fireman said it was started by faulty wiring and I knew it hadn't but i was afraid to say anything. I told my mom a couple of years later and she said she knew already. that's moms for you.

Also that fall my uncle was arrested and put in jail for murder. There was always a question as to whether he had done it or my other uncle had done it. I was 9 I didn't understand much of it. but I can remember him coming to the house with a garbage bag of bloody clothes and hiding them in the woods. And I remember the fight that I saw out my mothers bedroom window when my uncle cold cocked her and knocked her out and she hit the ground. I remember screaming. I remember crying. I was so upset that I couldn't breath and I had chest pains so bad I almost passed out. I think that is when the first signs of my bipolar began to surface. It was just all too much for someone that age to begin to understand. He spent 10 years in jail. During that time I was dragged every weekend to see him. When I reached 13 I asked if I could stop going because I didn't like how the other inmates looked at me. I was young but I wasn't totally ignorant by the time I hit 13. Men had been trying to pick me up from the age of 10 though the funny thing is I had no real idea what they wanted except it had to do with my breasts.

Winter 1979 Dec 10th to be exact puberty hit and hard. by Jan 15th of 1980 my grandmother was so worried they took me to an OBGYN. He was an old man. His hair pure white and he wore glasses and to a 10 year old He was awful tall and awful big. He made my parents leave the room. He then proceeded to do a gynecological exam with a speculum that was meant for an adult. It was cold. His hands were cold. the table was cold. I was more terrified then I had ever been in my entire life. The pain was excruciating as he inserted the speculum. I remember laying on that table and crying so hard and yelling for my parents and promising with all my heart that I would be good from now on and that I was sorry for what ever it was that I did to be taken here. So on top of everything else I had lost my virginity to an old man with a cold piece of metal. I had no clue that I had lost my virginity as I didn't even know what it was. It would 6 years or so before I would figure that out. And that was 1979 and one month of 1980

Between 10 and 13(1980-1983) I muddled my way threw school. Trying very hard to hide the fact that I had my period. But puberty was hard to hide when you go from a flat chest to a 36C in just a few months. Well I can't say I was totally flat. I was called Dancing Dolly when I in second grade so by the time I got to 4th and I was a C it really wasn't a surprise. I was 5'3 then as well so I didn't really look much like 10 -13 year old. After the Dr's appointment I finally got "the talk" but it was mostly old wives tales. Things like tampons were for married women or bad women as mom put it. Bad women being defined as those who had sex out of wedlock. She was trying to make sure I didn't start running around. There were a lot of other things but I am not going to bore you anymore then I already am.

At 13 the brother to the girl that had molested me when I was 9 was 17 and mom let him live at the house. He held me down on the living couch with my father in his chair(he couldn't see the couch from there) and my mother in the kitchen with some friends (again she couldn't see ether) and he proceeded to have sex with me. Only problem...I didn't know it was sex. I still hadn't learned what intercourse was by that time. Despite the molestation and abuse I lived a fairly sheltered life. I thought what I was living was normal. But the main reason I didn't think it was sex was because it didn't really hurt and i didn't bleed. The two signs of lost virginity. of course I had no clue it had already been lost. A while later I told my mom and all she did was make him call me and apologize. and told me not to tell anyone because it would make me look bad. and what did I expect if I went around in a bathing suit when I looked the way I did ( again i hadn't a damn clue what she was talking about)

Things calmed down and from then till I was 15(1985) things were "normal". I would scavenge for food. Hide food in my purse and bring it home from school so i would have something for supper. Sometimes I didn't eat lunch at all and brought it all home. I had this big black purse i carried my books in around school. Kids picked on me alot but it would hold the food and that's all that mattered. I also hid my bottle of wine in that bag. At 13 I had started to drink Wild Irish Rose. For those that don't know that is one of the worst rot gut wines and is mainly drank by winos and drunks, and I was a drunk. I kept a bottle in my bag, a bottle in my room and a bottle under the couch and one more "emergency" bottle hidden in the tank of the toilet at home. No one really noticed it seemed because when I drank I was calm and ppl were just grateful to have me calm and never really tried to figure out why. I was an active drunk till I was 24. then when i lost my cousin who was also one of my best friends to a drunk driver i stopped being a drunk a became a recovering alcoholic. Besides going hungry and scavenging food where I could find it there was alot of neglect during that time as well. I was hit alot but then I wasn't a good girl so i deserved it. God what we will believe when we are kids. I had hit junior high which was in the high school by 1982 i was 12 almost 13 then. And that started a whole new bubble of problems.

Any way this post is way to long and I will pick up with age 15 (1985) when the mood to write strikes me again.

The popular vote (2nd Try)

bah I was half way threw this post and the stupid computer rebooted of its own free will. I really have retyping. Anyway I wrote this poem on the 4th and thought it would be kewl to do a whole squidoo lens around the poem. but the poem had to do with those left at home when the Armed Forces go to war. I also had stats listed of casualties from the war of Independence to whats happened so far up to today. Well when I hit publish it got a little grey - mark basically meaning it wasn't going to be showcased like the other lens because it wasn't popular at this moment. Though i tried many ways to redo the page to get it to come up green it just wouldn't happen so I deleted the whole lens and put the poem with the rest of them that I have put on my poetry blog. if you want to read it.

It was like a tribute. It seems I am making it a habit to create things that the "establishment" doesn't like and I am getting a lot of no we can't allow that. I don't even swear its just my opinion of how things are going. I set up a word press. Had it all nice and done up to show off the click programs that i am part of and they called it advertising and pulled my blog. So i deleted everything and left a message in the middle of the page saying this has moved to blah blah.com as word press my support freedom of speech but they dont support free enterprise. I haven't been back so i dont know if its still there like that. Most likely not I doubt word press would be thrilled with my comment.

I am working on crafting another poem that started to birth itself earlier this morning but i dont have it all set in my head yet so when it looks right I'll add it. It feels good to not be over reacting to everything anymore. now i just over react to things like a normal person lol well as normal as i will ever get anyway. I still want to put my old stuff in but its so damn depressing to reread and trying to figure out what the hell i wrote in the first place takes up a lot of time. i make Dr's handwriting look like a finely crafted work of calligraphy.

It feels a little odd actually having more the one entry a month but i guess i am getting to a point where i really need to express myself and all my friends and family have heard my stories, my crankiness and my episodes. they have held my hand and my head a few times and right now i just need to communicate to give my thoughts somewhere else to rest rather then keeping them all tied up in my head where i have enough things to deal with. if my stories and my history helps even one person to be able to help themselves or informs them so they can move on to the next step of healing then i have accomplished my goal. I have been up all night due to another freaky schedule mess up and the fact i have been drinking coffee since 4pm and i haven't had any in like 2 months so i got a bit of a coffee buzz going and its been fighting with my help me to sleep meds. So since i have stayed up this long i can take my morning pills and get some rest without worrying about taking them on time :)

The popular vote

Ok I am just a tad cranky. I set up this really awesome lens on squidoo and I worked the whole page around the latest poem that I wrote on the 4th. This included a poll, a debate section and I also added the causality stats from the revolution through today. if you read the poem you'll get the whole thing. Well when i published it; it got a grey mark instead of a green. This means that it wasn't good enough to be supported by squidoo but you could still find it if you searched for it exactly and i couldn't put it in any groups. The information was considered not relevant for the current popular lens.

So war isn't popular..I am glad it isn't I would be very scared if war was popular.

So far this year

Well the van still isn't fixed. Money kinda goes faster then intended and to other projects and the van seems to keep drawing the short stick in this particular Merry-go-Round. I am just coming out of a 6 month depression. That is the longest time I can remember being that depressed. I really can't remember much but I know I wasn't much fun and I didn't have much fun.

I am on another new anti-depressant. This one appears to be working. I have been on it about a month and I take it at night because it puts me to sleep. Since taking it I have been actually sleeping and sleeping well as it has also helped in a big way to reduce my chronic pain. I can't begin to describe what it is like to not be in constant pain. It use to be even just laying down hurt now I can actually spend time with (what in my case is) a bearable amount of pain.

You would be surprised just how much pain can effect your mental attitude to life. I am way less cranky and its been notice by those around me. I also have a much more positive outlook, though I doubt I will ever be one of those "cheery people" I am at least finding a middle ground.

This wonder drug is called Cymbalta I am sure many have seen the commercial. I can tell you that the commercial does not exaggerate like most do this medication actually works and I would recommend it to anyone with depression or bipolar type conditions. I also would recommend it to people in chronic pain.

As a side point, I found out that I am in love. Its the first time I have ever really been "in" love and not just codependent. I am not going to say much as I am afraid to jinx it but it is a really wonderful feeling and I could get addicted to being happy.

Well that's really all that's been going on Oh except that I am going to miss my 20 year high school reunion due to the van not being fixed but oh well. Its mainly just a reason for everyone to get together and see how many of their former class mates look older then they do and feel better about themselves. LOL Going to be adding some old stuff some point soon as soon as I can dig out the old journals. talk to you all soon. Happy 4th of July

Yet Another Year 04/08

Well the van is still broken. but its got insurance and AAA now next month ill register it then we get it fixed and we are back on the road. which really is just rides to doctor appts and such as i dont drive in this area i get to confused.

They are trying yet another anti depressant on my this time its cymbalta. So far i have noticed that there is a decrease in some areas of pain but just like the other anti depressants its slowly working its way to keeping me awake all the time and thus causing manic episodes. though they are small right now they always grow.and grow and grow.

We made it threw Kelli's anniversary and her bday without too much of a issue for any of us. maybe that's what it really means when you say your prepared for someones death. you heal a little faster because of your feelings of thank god they are out of pain. so even though you get sad and lonely for that person. keeping then on this world would have meant more pain and problems then anyone should have to suffer

I should probably write more but sometimes things stay on a pretty even keel for extend periods of time and there's nothing to write about. This is one is like an update and a bit of manic and anxiety. i cant sleep and when everyone is getting up i finally am sleepy and if i stay up to go to bed that night like i should i am over tired and i cant sleep that night ether and then it just explodes to the point of not remembering what day you last slept or ate.

i dont really have alot to say except i am lonely. i talked to an old friend last night for almost 2 hrs and just talking about the fun we use to have and the trouble we use to get into actually made me feel better then i had in days. there are just so few ppl that have spent any length of time in my life to share that kind of stuff with. With GM and GF passed on and BM with a new bf. and things going on with everyone else. there isn't much time left for a screwed up mental case like me in their lives.

but all in all we have had it great every since we moved here to Michigan. i wouldn't trade this experience though i really miss Vermont. what i miss the most is opening the front door after a rain storm and smelling the pine trees. kinda daft but then so am i .

Well i am actually feeling a little tired so i am going to try to sleep if not i ll be back lol have fun