November 2011
10 posts
Disability
I am beginning to get involved with some volunteering, some of which is with people who have disabilities. Sometimes I feel that I am a fraud posing as a person without a disability when I consider how much I have to psych myself up to go there and be confident and capable and ready to take care of the needs of others. Of course, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think - know - that I am...
Ballet
Although I was a bit sick today, I am glad I made it to my ballet class. It’s a beginner’s class but we do reasonably complex stuff. I really wish I could have found some kind of ballet-like occupation to devote my life to. To me that kind of focused dedication sounds like a perfect lifestyle. Unfortunately I have always been fairly uncoordinated so I guess I was destined to live...
Sociable
I’m not a very sociable person. I find I have to treat social interaction like acting and I often don’t have the energy to face the crowd. I am quite pro-people, but I am really no good with them. It takes brain power for me to get it right.
I often wonder if having OCD as a child somehow got in the way of proper social development or if whatever causes OCD is also responsible for...
Hypochondria day
This has been a day that the thought that I might be seriously ill has almost never left me. While walking the dog, going to the supermarket, shopping in town, doing my homework, eating dinner, watching the X Factor, writing this blog entry, that thought has been tagged on to the end of every other one that has passed through my mind. I am in physical pain and I don’t know whether it is...
Reasons for wanting a diagnosis
In my experience, mental health professionals can approach things very differently and here is an example. One psychologist suggested to me that psychologists as opposed to psychiatrists prefer to treat problems as they arise without paying too much attention to the diagnosable disorder that they might be a component of. One reason for this is that diagnoses often end up changing anyway, not...
Today at the canal
I was my dog along the canal today and a man approached me. As he walked past he said something I didn’t understand but I smiled at him like I had and walked on. Then he turned and followed me. I realized he was saying things that really didn’t make sense. Maybe he was trying to show me something about the walking stick that he was putting together. He got closer and and closer and I...
Plan
I want to write about my recent experiences to convey, as I stated, “how a world can fall apart”. I will try to build up a full picture in pieces to capture the how this really feels.
I will intersperse this with my daily experiences now because I think comparing the distorted world of mental illness to a more normal world might be helpful.
I also want to write pieces about the...
A bit about OCD
I really don’t like the idea of OCD! It seems like such an unromantic illness. It comes across as something that is a feature of personality rather than illness and it looks like weakness. I understand anyone who sees me behave as I do and concludes that I need to “pull myself together”. I tell myself that too.
I have had it since I was about six years old. I don’t...
I hope I don't regret making myself identifiable...
I deleted almost all my social networking profiles, including innocuous ones like LinkedIn. This was mostly to do with clearing clutter and jumping off a certain bandwagon. I don’t mind having information about myself available to whomever, not that I expect anyone to be interested. Still I know it could be a terrible idea from the point of view of, say, future employment prospects to reveal...
This is about...
…my experience of mental illness.
In an attempt to understand more about what has happened to me and to learn to cope with it, I have read many many books and websites. I have found that the most helpful ones are the first person accounts. They may not be by someone who is suffering the same profile of diagnoses as me; there is often a good deal of similarity in the issues people face...
