Queen for a Day

Doesn't everyone want to be treated like a Queen (or a King)? At least for one day.

There used to be a extremely sadistic TV show on that premise: women would come on the show and compete in telling a sob story - from Wikipedia:

Often the request was for medical care or therapeutic equipment to help a chronically ill child, but sometimes it was as simple as the need for a hearing aid, a new washing machine, or a refrigerator. Many women broke down sobbing as they described their plights, and Bailey was always quick to comfort them and offer a clean white handkerchief to dry their eyes.

The harsher the circumstances under which the contestant labored, the likelier the studio audience was to ring the applause meter's highest level. The winner, to the musical accompaniment of "Pomp and Circumstance", would be draped in a sable-trimmed red velvet robe, given a glittering jeweled crown to wear, placed on a velvet-upholstered throne, and handed a dozen long-stemmed roses to hold as she wept, often uncontrollably, while her list of prizes was announced.

Not only were they milking the misery of the "winner" for all it was worth, imagine being one of the losing contestants who'd put it all out there, but not "enough" to garner the highest on the "applause-o-meter."

An easier way to score a crown was eating a particular brand of margarine.

I begged my mom to buy that brand, because I coveted one of those beautiful crowns so much, and though my mother told me it was a trick on TV, she caved in and bought it once, so I could find out for myself.

The disappointment was almost as bitter as the margarine.

Anyway, if anyone deserved to be treated like a Queen, it was my mother, but she would never go on a radio or television show to whine about her life.

Mom and her younger brother

She was the oldest of four, and the target of much nit-picking by my (suspected OCPD) grandmother. She signed up for the Coast Guard and served with honor during WWII.

Afterward, on the rebound from a prior relationship, she met and married my father. Also a WWII veteran, smart, and charming as all get out when he wanted to be.

Probably NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder).  They had three daughters, me being the "bonus baby." Not long after that, breast cancer came along.  In those days, the way it worked was, you found a lump, they put you under and sliced you up. You found out if it was serious when you woke up, depending on how much of your body they'd carved away.

In Mom's case, pretty serious. They took her breast, the underlying chest muscles, the lymph nodes, and some of the muscles from under her arm.

Yet she would still smile at everyone.

I believe in the picture, below, she was still recovering from the surgery, because she had to wear those loose-fitting muumuus for some weeks (months?) afterward.

It was Mother's Day

I thought she should be treated like Queen for a Day. It was my idea, but my sisters joined in helping me make a "crown" out of, I think, a brown grocery bag, which I decorated with crayon and tinsel from our Christmas decorations stash. We put her on the "throne" with a fancy goblet of possibly wine, possibly fruit juice. Am not sure if the cushion under her arm was to add the royal touch or because she physically needed it in her recovery.

Prematurely silver hair ran in the family.
The glasses and the silver hair make her look old, at first glance,
but she was only mid-forties here.

I thought - I still think - she was absolutely beautiful, and I was so proud of her, so happy to have her as my mom. She was, in fact, the Best Mom in the World, though some silly people didn't realize that.  And I am still proud of her, and a little of myself, that I did make the effort to let her know how special she was to me.

And yet.

I cannot but think, now, that if only she had made a few different choices... Mom was my model for self-sacrificing relationships, for being sweet and kind and loving to everyone. No one had a bad word to say about her - not at her memorial service, five years later, after the cancer recurred, nor in the years that followed.  My sisters' husbands, who knew her in the years before she died, loved her to pieces. Who adores their mother-in-law?

I have come to believe that putting everyone else first, all the time, and allowing others to treat us badly, can, in fact, make us sick. Sick to death, even.

Doormats wear out.

My mother was a product of her time and her culture, and possibly even the influence of an OCPD mother. She followed all the rules of being nice, being polite, taking care of everyone but herself.  She was loved, yes, but only on rare occasion was she the one being pampered and taken care of.

Today is her birthday, and I'm missing her, of course. But I am also thinking that it would please her tremendously to know that I have learned from my own mistakes, and from her life.

There's a formula now, that we should put  51% of our efforts to ourselves, and no more than 49% to everyone else in our lives, added together. I can't help but think, if my mom had done that, she might have lived past my 10th birthday, and my life  - many lives - would have benefited tremendously for her continued presence in it.

Loving someone is never a mistake. But neglecting our own hearts, souls, dreams, and bodies, in the name of love, can kill us. Figuratively, or literally.

Do you believe in giving up everything for love?

Have you learned to save nurturing for yourself?

Do you have any life lessons from a loved one who's passed on?

What Now, Brown Cow?

Now that we've finished Too Perfect, what's up next?

For me, perhaps, a bit of a break for a few weeks. Since the death of my beautiful friend Sidney in October, I have not only been struggling with grief and emotional pain, but also with severe physical pain.  Recently, after various exams, x-rays, MRI's,and other tests, I've been diagnosed with "frozen shoulder."

Fire shoulder might be a better description, of the way it feels. The treatment includes a cortisone shot (got it) and physical therapy. I'm also getting aquatic therapy, and it is improving, if more slowly than I might wish.

Note to self - there is a reason they tell you to pull the belt on the flotation belt tightly. Because it bugs when the thing rides up to just under your armpits.

It is also recommended that I stay away from the keyboard, as much as possible. So, while I'm not abandoning this blog, I may take some time off (or, depending on whether the Muse is jabbing me in the back, I may not).

As far as upcoming book reviews and discussion, the book that got the most votes in our survey was Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry & Controlling Men.

From the Book Description:

"He doesn't mean to hurt me-he just loses control."
"He can be sweet and gentle."
"He's scared me a few times, but he never hurts the children-he's a great father."
"He's had a really hard life..."

Women in abusive relationships tell themselves these things every day. Now they can see inside the minds of angry and controlling men-and change their own lives. In this groundbreaking book, a counselor shows how to improve, survive, or leave an abusive relationship, with:

€ The early warning signs
€ Nine abusive personality types
€ How to tell if an abuser can change, is changing, or ever will
€ The role of drugs and alcohol
€ What can be fixed, and what can't
€ How to leave a relationship safely

Please, buy your own copy of the book  - put a book cover on it, if you must for your own safety, and tell your husband you're reading 50 Shades of Grey.  Get it on an e-reader.  If reading is difficult for you, get the audio version. Check it out from your library.  (Did you know you can also get e-books from the library?)

Let's read and discuss it together. I would also add - even if your angry and controlling person is female, there are many, many insights in this book that will be valuable to you.

Now off to make sure I have my towel and swimsuit. Hoo-boy, I am very grateful the water therapy ain't being videotaped, because I look like a dying whale thrashing around in the pool.

Too Perfect Tuesdays - Chap 9 - Shortchanged Children

Child 1 (Photo credit: Tony Trần)

This post continues with The Costs of Workaholism: The Poisoning of Personal Relationships from Chapter Nine.

This series looks at a small snippet of The book on the Perfectionist Personality, aka The Obsessive Compulsive disordered Personality, aka OCPD, each week. Please follow along, leave your comments, engage more on the FaceBook website... whatever your heart calls you to do.

When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Allan E. Mallinger, M.D. and Jeanette DeWyze was published by Random House in 1992.  If   you believe you are dealing with OCPD or someone who is "Too Perfect," whether that's you or a loved one, please buy a copy of the book and read it for additional insights that will not all be covered in these excerpts.

The Costs of Workaholism

All these [the previous posts] are very real benefits - but they're benefits of work rather than of workaholism, and they all can be enjoyed even if work plays a more balanced role in your life. <snip>

THE POISONING OF PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Shortchanged Children

If you do have children, you're likely to tell yourself that you're working as hard as you are for their sake - a sacrifice they may find of questionable value. In their book The Addictive Organization, Anne Wilson Schaef and Diane Fassel recount the words of one grown daughter of a workaholic:

Everything revolved arond my father's work. If we got too playful and made noise we would be quieted because Daddy was wither working or sleeping. When work went poorly, he was moody, angry, and destructive. When it went well, he was jolly... We rarely saw him. Sometimes he stayed in the city overnight or on big projects, he would be gone for weeks at a time... I don't think my mother or our family were ever second place in my father's life, I believe for him we didn't exist at all. I grew up spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about my father, yet never really knowing him. I hate him for this and I miss him deeply.

A child jumping (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

<snip>Other workaholic parents may transform time spent together into time working together. Say it's a Sunday afternoon, and the parent has no pressing obligations; he really could afford to spend a few hours doing what his child most wants to do, say, playing ball. But because of the parent's chronic inner need to be accomplishing something, he hankers to be gardening, or repairing the back fence. So he tries to accomplish two things simultaneously - to spend time with his child and to work on the project - by cajoling the child into working with him.

If the project truly engages the child's interest, it may turn out to be a pleasant shared experience. But if the child senses that the parent is more involved in the fence than in him, the child will resent it. <snip>

Some workaholic parents go one step further, getting annoyed whenever they find their children "wasting time." They want their children to share their own abhorrence for any hint of laziness, and they find tasks to fill the children's time - until the children get used to fleeing whenever they see the meddlesome parent approaching.

English: child (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

<snip> your children's childhoods are composed of hundreds of fleeting experiences: the first laughs of babyhood, the first steps, trick-or-treating at Halloween, high school courtships. Each stage of development lasts only for a very brief time, and once completed, will never be repeated. <snip>

Some people, realizing that this has happened, try to correct it too late. I've had several adult patients who received very little attention from their parents when they were children or adolescents. When the elderly parents (often newly widowed) finally sought companionship, their sons and daughters reacted with dread, shying away from contact and expressing such feelings as, "We have absolutely nothing in common," or "I don't feel any connection to him." Sometimes these adult children have expressed resentment at being approached after so many years of neglect. "Where was he when I needed him?" they ask.

Image via CrunchBase

***

This is part of why I have a problem with Apple computer products: Steve Jobs. I feel like if I were to buy them, I would be implicitly endorsing his publicly admitted neglect of his children and family (though I admit, years ago when I knew less about his personal life, I did buy an iPod).

Much like the workaholics described here, my father rarely had time for me - and usually it was for his own purpose.  If he wanted to talk at someone, he would make me come into the living room to listen to him - during the commercials. I wasn't even important enough to him to turn off the TV and actually interact with.

So when he too became elderly and bored and lonely and decided, then, he wanted to connect with me - too little, too late. I had learned to live without him a long time before that - and in fact, it wasn't truly an attempt to "connect." He just wanted more of an audience.  My oldest sister, who did give him the time of day, had very little of his attention about her concerns and problems, even when she was facing a serious eye problem and almost lost her sight.

I have heard so many stories of OCPD parents who cannot let their kids BE kids, who are like mini-sweatshop owners, instilling a sense of work, work, work, all the time. (I'm talking to you, Tiger Mom!) I love this commercial, because it's about the dad (and the big brother) letting the little girl call the shots.

Let go and have fun with your kids. Be silly. No, you don't have to be a "Disneyland Dad," with fun activities only. Kids do need to learn about mending fences and doing laundry, but neither should you always be looking for Something Productive to Do.

There's an incredible amount of joy and freedom in just being with children, if you let it.

Do you value work over children, or know someone who does?
If you had a parent who always put work first, 
how did that make you feel?

Your thoughts?

A-Z: Xcess - That Invisible Dividing Line from Quirky to Crazy

How do we tell when somebody has crossed the line from quirky to crazy? That's part of the problem, because many symptoms of mental illness actually look quite admirable - in smaller doses.

The key is Xcess and Xtreme. (Getting a bit creative with the spelling here, so what.) Take someone who is bipolar. During a more low key manic cycle, she may be animated, creative, fun to be around. Then perhaps a little down and sad. During an extreme cycle, she may want the entire family to join her in painting the kitchen - at 2:00 a.m. Or be unable to drag herself out of bed for days at a time.

Cleanliness, admirable. Sterilizing kitchens and bathrooms like a hazmat team, not so much.

Being an ardent recycler and repurposer, great. Having an endless collection of boxes, pen lids, and food containers... hoarder.

From  My Mother In law is Still Siting Between Us... Randomness (7/29/10). All pictures used by permission.

Pen lids

Hundreds and hundreds of crosswords, cut out, dated (aren't they already?), and meticulously labeled. She had a note on each, about whether or not she had checked the answers, and a list of the numbers (6 across, 17 down) which she hadn't yet checked. Some of these date back to '89.

Crossword puzzles

 

Empty See's candy boxes - apparently, one can never have too many.

Burned out light bulbs, with notes as to the date each burned out, and the fixture.

What's so bad about keeping some useless junk? Nothing, if it stops at a small stash of empty boxes or burned out light bulbs.  But too often, it crosses the line to this:

The Kitchen

Inside the fridge

Yeah. Horrifying, isn't it? The tragic thing, for adult children of hoarders, is that even when their parents "maintain" a home in conditions like this (or worse), there are legally no options to force them to get the help they so clearly need. It's a matter of having to wait until they die, and then...cleaning the Augean Stables. Only there's usually not a handy river nearby.

Other areas where a line gets crossed:

Having a close personal relationship with God/Jesus/Allah, perhaps even believing that He speaks to you... harmless, perhaps even helpful. Hearing the Voice of God/Jesus/Allah telling you to kill your children/congresspeople... dangerous.

With OCPD, in moderation, there are many wonderful qualities. They're usually very tidy and timely, give great attention to detail, and truly care very deeply about people they love.  There's a great blog written by an OCPD'r I know on the subject, The Gift of OCPD.

We would have many fewer inventions and modern conveniences that we take for granted, were it not for people with Aspergers, OCPD, and many other mental illnesses. Peter Roget (Roget's Thesaurus) probably had OCPD. Steve Jobs may have had it. When OCPD symptoms become extreme, however, they are devastating to both those who have the condition, and those who live with and love them.

The line is where the "quirks" become either harmful or dangerous, to oneself or others. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible for the person with the mental illness, or someone who has lived with him/her for a long time and perhaps become desensitized to odd behavior, to determine when the line has been crossed. Or what to do if it has.

My A-Z theme is Issues related to Mental Health or Mental Illness.

Have you ever had quirks that went to extremes?

If so, how did you recognize it, and what did you do?

Have you ever lived with someone who seemed to go "too far"?

A-Z: Finding A Scapegoat Doesn't Make Anyone All Better

The Scapegoat by William Homan Hunt via Wikimedia Commons

Got goats?

Most people understand what a scapegoat in modern terms is. It's the wide receiver who dropped the ball on the last play of the game (though the whole team played poorly up to that point); the department head who gets very publicly fired for carrying out the unfair policies set by her superiors; the husband who fails to properly read his wife's mind.

In ancient Syria, Greece, and Biblical times, an actual goat (or beggar, or cripple) was designated as the bearer of sins for the entire community. The scapegoat might be driven out of the community into an inhospitable region (theoretically taking all the evil/sin with it), where presumably it would in fact, die. Or it might be killed outright.

A similar concept was practiced in the Middle Ages, depicted in an old Night Gallery episode called Sins of the Fathers. The Sin-eater would consume food spread around the body of a dying or recently deceased person, so that the soul of the dead person would then be able to rest in peace or float to heaven, free of sin. Of course, if something happened to the village Sin Eater...

Except in certain religious connotations, nobody believes (on paper) in the concept of scapegoating anymore. As a parent with two children, say, we certainly wouldn't punish Child A because Child B misbehaved, right?

In practice... people do it all the time. (See butterfingered wide receiver, above.) Child B may be wearing down his mother's nerves all day long, but when Child A also does something annoying, that's when Mom snaps and takes it out on Child A. Fair? No. Human? Yes.

In real life, scapegoating and 'projection' go hand in hoof. Just as it felt too uncomfortable to drag around the guilt and sin in the village, for many people, acknowledging our own faults, shortcomings, and bad feelings is too heavy to carry. So it's got to be put over there, onto a target. Away from us.

See, we are good people. If there is something wrong, bad, or nasty in the room, it's because somebody else - not us - brought it in here.

From Wikipedia:

According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else. 'Emotions or excitations which the ego tries to ward off are "split out" and then felt as being outside the ego...perceived in another person'.^[4] It is a common process.^[5] The related defense of 'projective identification differs from projection in that the impulse projected onto an external object does not appear as something alien and distant from the ego because the connection of the self with that projected impulse continues'.^[6]

In one example of the process, a person might have thoughts of infidelity with respect to a spouse or other partner. Instead of dealing with these undesirable thoughts consciously, the subject unconsciously projects these feelings onto the other person, and begins to think thatthe other has thoughts of infidelity and that the other may be having an affair. In this way, the subject may obtain 'acquittal by his conscience - if he projects his own impulses to faithlessness on to the partner to whom he owes faith'.^[7] In this sense, projection is related to denial, arguably the only more primitive defense mechanism than projection, which, like all defense mechanisms, provides a function whereby a person can protect the conscious mind from a feeling that is otherwise repulsive.

Let's say someone is what we might call "toxic." He seems frequently angry and bitter, is usually finding fault with other people, uses verbally abusive language, and rarely accepts responsibility for his actions.  If we have an interaction with this guy, he may attempt to project his bad feelings onto us, or use us as his scapegoat.

It's got to be pretty painful to walk around with a heart/body overflowing with anger and bad feelings. An emotionally unhealthy person is not going to be mindful, sit with his feelings, decide why they are occurring, and what action, if any, he wants to take when he feels upset. An unhealthy person is going to look for "the person who made me feel this way" as quickly as possible, and "let 'em have it."

If we tend to be Rescuers (see yesterday's post) we may accept, even encourage this person to "let it all out," even come to believe we deserve to be abused or called names, because, after all, we did forget to replace the batteries in the remote (or whatever the error was). Maybe we made a huge mistake, one that cost our boss an important contract. Anyway, we can suck it up and take it; we can "be the bigger person,"  and this will help the toxic person feel better.

No. If we do, we are only feeding fuel to an already unhealthy dynamic. No matter what has gone on, nobody "deserves" to be abused. (We might deserve to be fired, but even if we do, we do not deserve to be kicked on our way out the door.)

When we accept scapegoating, it's bad for us (obviously), but it is also bad for the abusers. They are experiencing momentary relief, true, but we are denying them the opportunity to deal in a healthy way with their feelings and problems. The underlying reasons why they are building up anger and resentment are not being addressed.

We can, firmly and politely, refuse to accept a truck load of toxic abuse dumped onto the front lawns of our hearts. We can put up a hand, and say, "Stop. If you cannot talk to me without name calling and abusive language, the conversation is over. Let me know when you are ready to speak to me respectfully, and I'll be happy to take up the subject again." (Caveat: if you live with a physically abusive person, this approach may not be safe. Please contact a domestic violence support network, and do whatever you need to do to stay safe. In the US, 1.800.799.SAFE www.thehotline.org.  A partial listing of facilities in other countries is available here.)

Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and everyone should seek to treat others with dignity and respect, as well.

My A-Z theme is Issues related to Mental Health or Mental Illness.

Have you ever been scapegoated?

Ever scapegoated someone else, and realized it later?

How about projecting your bad feelings onto someone else?

Related articles

• The thrill of blaming others (salon.com)
• The Dignity and Respect Campaign (dignityandrespect.org)
• Prejudice (goodmorningctown.wordpress.com)
• Throwing the Scapegoat Under the Bus (forbes.com)

A-Z: Question - What Causes Mental Illness, Anyway?

PET scan of a human brain with Alzheimer's disease (Photo credit: Wikipedia)What causes mental illness? Genetics? Environment? Trauma?

We have many more questions about mental illness than we have answers. But we are beginning to put some of the pieces together.

As we are learning to scan brains in various ways, and see parts of it that are over- or under-active, enlarged or shrunken, it becomes ever more evident that when they say mental illness is "all in your head," that's literally true.

Many mental illnesses look very much like what happens when we know someone has suffered a brain injury; a bad fall, a war injury, or a stroke.

After Brain Injury: The Dark Side of Personality Change (Part 1)

The author here describes building a new relationship with her husband after his massive heart attack and cardiac arrest caused a severe anoxic brain injury.

Most of the time, Alan displayed his engaging pre-injury personality marked by kindness, love, curiosity, and humor. However, post-injury personality changes also meant that we dealt with bouts of intense anger, confusion, and unpredictable behavior. Sometimes his moods shifted so suddenly that I called it "Jekyll and Hyde syndrome." It was as if two versions of Alan resided within him. One was rational and easy-going, but the other was frightening and even dangerous at times.

Why brain injury affects emotions

First, some background. Brain injury sometimes causes subtle or pronounced changes in personality. Damage to specific areas of the brain, including the frontal and temporal lobes, amygdala, and hippocampus might leave the survivor vulnerable to agitation, volatile emotions, memory impairment, verbal attacks, physical aggression, and impaired impulse control.

Psychiatric issues after brain injury

Brain injury can also contribute to psychiatric issues including depression, severe anxiety, substance abuse, or obsessive compulsive disorder. Some survivors experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a consequence of the circumstances and medical events that caused the brain injury. In addition to damage to specific areas of the brain, Alan's brain injury disrupted the production and function of neurotransmitters that influence mood and thought regulation.

We quickly learned that anxiety or depression made Alan more susceptible to angry outbursts or threatening behavior. He often responded well to the judicious use of medications to modulate depression, anxiety, and agitation for years after the injury. We never used medications in place of attention, communication, behavioral strategies and keeping environmental stimulation within his comfort zone. However, I came to appreciate their value.

from Caregiver.org:

Emotional Lability
In some cases, neurological damage after a head injury may cause emotional volatility (intense mood swings or extreme reactions to everyday situations). Such overreactions could be sudden tears, angry outbursts, or laughter. It is important to understand that the person has lost some degree of control over emotional responses. The key to handling lability is recognizing that the behavior is unintentional. Caregivers should model calm behavior and try not to provoke further stress by being overly critical. Help the person recognize when his/her emotional responses are under control and support/reinforce techniques that work.

Self-Centered Attitude
The person who has survived a head injury may lack empathy. That is, some head injury survivors have difficulty seeing things through someone else's eyes. The result can be thoughtless or hurtful remarks or unreasonable, demanding requests. This behavior stems from a lack of abstract thinking.

Help cue the person to recognize thoughtlessness. Remind him/her to practice polite behavior. Realize that awareness of other people's feelings may have to be relearned.

We're finding out that people with a certain genetic component might be more vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease. As our living environments become ever more compromised with pollutants, we know that children growing up in certain areas become more prone to certain types of cancer and other birth defects. But not all children growing up next to the Love Canal developed cancer. Certain physical problems seem to require both a genetic and an environmental component.



from WebMD:

What Biological Factors Are Involved in Mental Illness?
Some mental illnesses have been linked to an abnormal balance of special chemicals in the brain called neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters help nerve cells in the brain communicate with each other. If these chemicals are out of balance or are not working properly, messages may not make it through the brain correctly, leading to symptoms of mental illness. In addition, defects in or injury to certain areas of the brain have also been linked to some mental conditions.

Other biological factors that may be involved in the development of mental illness include:

Genetics (heredity) : Many mental illnesses run in families, suggesting that people who have a family member with a mental illness are more likely to develop one themselves. Susceptibility is passed on in families through genes. Experts believe many mental illnesses are linked to abnormalities in many genes -- not just one. That is why a person inherits a susceptibility to a mental illness and doesn't necessarily develop the illness. Mental illness itself occurs from the interaction of multiple genes and other factors --such as stress, abuse, or a traumatic event -- which can influence, or trigger, an illness in a person who has an inherited susceptibility to it.

Infections: Certain infections have been linked to brain damage and the development of mental illness or the worsening of its symptoms. For example, a condition known as pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder (PANDA) associated with the Streptococcus bacteria has been linked to the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental illnesses in children.

Brain defects or injury: Defects in or injury to certain areas of the brain have also been linked to some mental illnesses.

Prenatal damage: Some evidence suggests that a disruption of early fetal brain development or trauma that occurs at the time of birth -- for example, loss of oxygen to the brain -- may be a factor in the development of certain conditions, such as autism.

Substance abuse: Long-term substance abuse, in particular, has been linked to anxiety, depression, and paranoia.

Other factors: Poor nutrition and exposure to toxins, such as lead, may play a role in the development of mental illnesses.

Personally, I suspect that for many with substance abuse problems, it's more a vicious circle. A person with undiagnosed symptoms of mental illness began self-medicating with alcohol, or cocaine, or crystal meth, and as the addiction grew, any relief continued to shrink. While meanwhile, the person's drug of choice was wreaking havoc on his/her body.

Back to the brain trauma issue; it's entirely possible to have clots, growths, and mini-strokes inside the brain, large enough to affect the personality; but entirely unrecognized. I know a young woman recently diagnosed with epilepsy. She had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but taking a closer look, her doctors said that her brain appeared to be having periodic "lightning storms" inside it, which affected her behavior, even though she did not exhibit what most people think of as epileptic symptoms.

There's probably an emotional component to mental illness as well. Living in a home where emotional, physical, or sexual abuse sends fight-or-flight hormones flooding the body might send a child who already had a tendency towards mental illness, firmly over the edge. Even if the child is not the target, being a regular witness to his mother or her father being abused, must leave lasting damage.

But I think it's time and then some to stop blaming all mental illness on "bad childhoods/bad mothers." Clearly, many people endure them, and somehow, become neither mentally ill, nor abusive, themselves.

In another few decades, I suspect there will be fingertip blood tests for certain neurotransmitter levels linked to mental illness symptoms, as there are now for diabetics and their blood sugar levels. Wouldn't it be wonderful if those with certain mental disorders could take smaller doses of mood-regulating meds only when they needed them?

We all have brains, and we all have bodies, and pretty much every human being has Issues. Nearsighted. Allergic to cats. Digestive problems. A tendency to ingrown toenails.

Perhaps instead of taking pride in the fact that "at least I'm not crazy," we should count our blessings.  Realize, just because we fall in that category today, things could change for us, or someone we love, tomorrow.

My A-Z theme is Issues related to Mental Health or Mental Illness.

Have you ever known anyone who experienced 
 a traumatic brain injury?

Have you ever participated in a study on mental illness?

Why or why not?

Related articles

• After Brain Injury: The Dark Side of Personality Change Part I (psychologytoday.com)
•  After Brain Injury: The Dark Side of Personality Change Part 2 (psychologytoday.com)
• Researchers Use Brain Injury Data to Map Intelligence In The Brain (news.illinois.edu)
•  My Brain is Not Always My Buddy (steponacrack.wordpress.com)
• Children and Mental Illness (moorestorms.wordpress.com)
• I Hate Having Bipolar Disorder (galaxybounce02rabbithole.wordpress.com)

A-Z: Don't Forget About Anosognosia

(Photo credit: Robbie Wroblewski)Anosognosia is a condition we're all familiar with, we just don't know the word.

My A-Z theme is Issues related to Mental Health or Mental Illness.

Self awareness springs from... the brain.  (stay with me here) When you stub your toe, yes, you feel the pain in your toe, but it's because the brain processes the messages from the nerve endings in your toe and sends back the message, "Pain.  Sharp, severe pain.  Cussing will commence now."

Pain is the body's way of saying, "Danger here, pay me some attention!"  Injuries like a stubbed toe can become seriously infected in a paralyzed person, because without pain, there is often no awareness of injury.

The brain also updates us on our general health and mental condition.  Every night, when we sleep, it "reboots," and we wake up in the morning, conscious that we are XX many years old, that we have a cold or a backache, and that we are happy or heartbroken.

In some people, with physical brain damage due to accident or stroke, and in some people with mental illness (who may also have physical damage to or abnormalities of the brain) the brain doesn't seem to "reboot" properly.  It restores an old backup, one that is not updated with the latest patches.  (Think the movie 50 First Dates.)

So the person who, yesterday, fully acknowledged his bi-polar disorder and the need for staying on his medication, may today insist he is just fine.  Not bi-polar, never been bi-polar - are you crazy?  Why would he need to take meds?

What we are coming to realize is that many people are not simply "in denial."  Yes, some people are, but others, genuinely and completely don't realize there is anything wrong with their brain because their brain tells them, "Everything's fine, move along, move along, nothing to see here."

There's an excellent book on the subject by Xavier Amador, who has pioneered a technique called LEAP to assist families and partners in dealing with those who insist, "I AM NOT SICK! I Don't Need Help!"

While anosognosia has not been intensively studied in mental disorders such as OCPD and Alzheimer's, the basic principles of Listen, Empathize, Agree, and Partner can also be applied to relationships where one person has that disorder, or even a boss or co-worker who's "difficult."

via SamirBaradwaj

Remember the parable of the Wind and the Sun, who had a contest to see which one could get a man to take off his cloak?  The harder the Wind blew, the harder the man clung to it.

Browbeating others to agree with us is simply something that doesn't "stick," long-term.  Those with OCPD and other illnesses seem to be most responsive to a person that they trust pointing them in certain directions.  Establishing that trust is the best way to work towards the goal.

The goal can't be to make the disordered person say, "By Jove, you're right.  I am wacko."  The goal is to persuade him/her to take some action: take their meds, throw away some of their hoard, stop nitpicking at one's child...

My A-Z theme is Issues related to Mental Health or Mental Illness.

Have you had any experiences with anosognosia in your life, 
either your own, or a loved one's?

Have you tried to blow somebody's cloak off with an argument?  
How'd that work?  Other thoughts?

Related articles

• When Schizophrenics Don't Recognize Their Illness (everydayhealth.com)
• Bipolar Disorder and Anosognosia (everydayhealth.com)
• Jacques Chirac and anosognosia: what is it? (telegraph.co.uk)