I'm going to be removing my journals as I am unsure if someone who knows me has been reading them but I feel a little uncomfortable right now. I'm not checking out but I will probably wait to start a new journal for a little bit and then try to be a little more anonymous with what I write. But I'll still be supporting others here in the meantime.
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#2
Letters of Recovery / Advocacy Letter
April 27, 2023, 07:35:58 PM
Now that I'm recovering some energy I'm feeling ready to start doing a tiny bit of volunteering or advocacy and took one small step today in personalizing a letter to my US representatives to support a bill to provide mental health and substance abuse care to prisoners upon leaving jail. I wrote about my father to personalize the suggested form letter. This may be the first time I am using my voice and experience in this way.
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Dear Senator _____,
As your constituent and a mental health advocate, I'm writing to ask you to support the Reentry Act (H.R. 2400 / S. 1165) to help people with mental illness and substance use disorders receive needed care upon their reentry into the community after incarceration.
My father was booked into jail the day I was born, for breaking into a convenience store and stealing a bottle of red wine. I never met him before he died of suicide at the age of 53. He had run away from home at the age of 14 and did not finish high school. I do not know the circumstances that led him to run away from home, but I do know children generally don't run away from home unless the alternative is worse than living alone on the streets, unfed and uncared for. Before landing in jail he was an alcoholic and drug addict. I do not know what mental illnesses he suffered from, but I know they were severe, and like so many of the prison population, likely due to experiencing severe childhood trauma.
According to the Compassion Prison Project, 78% of prisoners have experienced 4 or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), such as caregiver addiction and mental illness, sexual abuse, and physical abuse. Just under 16% of the general population has experienced 4 or more ACEs out of a total of 10 (I have an "ACE score" of 10). Having multiple ACEs sets people up for a lifetime of expensive and deadly health and mental health issues. For example, someone who has 4 or more ACEs is 15x more likely to attempt suicide, 7x more likely to go to prison, and 1,350% more likely to face opiate abuse.
I don't know all of what happened to my father between being released from prison and his suicide. I do wonder though: if a program such as the Reentry Act had existed in 1978 and he had been provided the mental health care he desperately needed, would he have been able to heal enough to be part of his children's lives? Instead he ended up variably homeless and in subsidized housing, in and out of jail, on food stamps, and with a litany of health issues from kidney failure to cancer to COPD and heart disease (treatment provided by the government). In the end, he had nothing and nobody. I learned from his autopsy report that I obtained several years after his death that the government even paid to have his body disposed of using indigent cremation funds. That detail honestly broke my heart. Perhaps mental health treatment would have been cheaper.
Research shows that when people are enrolled in health care upon release, they are more likely to engage in community-based services and less likely to be re-arrested, and this is especially true for people with mental health conditions. Providing Medicaid coverage 30 days prior to release for eligible individuals through the Reentry Act will help connect people with the mental health care they need. In addition, perhaps it will also provide the opportunity for a child to have a parent. The impacts don't end with that one prisoner. It also affects their families and children and grandchildren. Supporting the Reentry Act can help not just that one prisoner, but generations.
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Dear Senator _____,
As your constituent and a mental health advocate, I'm writing to ask you to support the Reentry Act (H.R. 2400 / S. 1165) to help people with mental illness and substance use disorders receive needed care upon their reentry into the community after incarceration.
My father was booked into jail the day I was born, for breaking into a convenience store and stealing a bottle of red wine. I never met him before he died of suicide at the age of 53. He had run away from home at the age of 14 and did not finish high school. I do not know the circumstances that led him to run away from home, but I do know children generally don't run away from home unless the alternative is worse than living alone on the streets, unfed and uncared for. Before landing in jail he was an alcoholic and drug addict. I do not know what mental illnesses he suffered from, but I know they were severe, and like so many of the prison population, likely due to experiencing severe childhood trauma.
According to the Compassion Prison Project, 78% of prisoners have experienced 4 or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), such as caregiver addiction and mental illness, sexual abuse, and physical abuse. Just under 16% of the general population has experienced 4 or more ACEs out of a total of 10 (I have an "ACE score" of 10). Having multiple ACEs sets people up for a lifetime of expensive and deadly health and mental health issues. For example, someone who has 4 or more ACEs is 15x more likely to attempt suicide, 7x more likely to go to prison, and 1,350% more likely to face opiate abuse.
I don't know all of what happened to my father between being released from prison and his suicide. I do wonder though: if a program such as the Reentry Act had existed in 1978 and he had been provided the mental health care he desperately needed, would he have been able to heal enough to be part of his children's lives? Instead he ended up variably homeless and in subsidized housing, in and out of jail, on food stamps, and with a litany of health issues from kidney failure to cancer to COPD and heart disease (treatment provided by the government). In the end, he had nothing and nobody. I learned from his autopsy report that I obtained several years after his death that the government even paid to have his body disposed of using indigent cremation funds. That detail honestly broke my heart. Perhaps mental health treatment would have been cheaper.
Research shows that when people are enrolled in health care upon release, they are more likely to engage in community-based services and less likely to be re-arrested, and this is especially true for people with mental health conditions. Providing Medicaid coverage 30 days prior to release for eligible individuals through the Reentry Act will help connect people with the mental health care they need. In addition, perhaps it will also provide the opportunity for a child to have a parent. The impacts don't end with that one prisoner. It also affects their families and children and grandchildren. Supporting the Reentry Act can help not just that one prisoner, but generations.
#3
Poetry & Creative Writing / Truth to lies
June 03, 2022, 06:46:46 AM
Truth to lies
It snows in Las Vegas
And the heat-bound children make it so
by flinging the inhabitants of their sock drawers into the whirring fan blades
As underclothes and overclothes blanket the floor around them
And the blades whip through the hot furnace air threatening to give truth to their lies
And to prove their point further
The children stand atop their dresser and reach up to the ceiling
Wildly clawing the popcorn white asbestos into snowflakes that settle around them.
Their lungs burn out the searing truth. It is stifling here and they are evaporating.
It snows in Las Vegas
And the heat-bound children make it so
by flinging the inhabitants of their sock drawers into the whirring fan blades
As underclothes and overclothes blanket the floor around them
And the blades whip through the hot furnace air threatening to give truth to their lies
And to prove their point further
The children stand atop their dresser and reach up to the ceiling
Wildly clawing the popcorn white asbestos into snowflakes that settle around them.
Their lungs burn out the searing truth. It is stifling here and they are evaporating.
#4
Poetry & Creative Writing / Death Valley Lullaby
June 03, 2022, 04:54:11 AM
After driving through my childhood hometown, staring down the ledge of my son's suicide plan, and then driving through Death Valley I was inspired to throw some words down.
Death Valley Lullaby
In the Valley of Death
There's life abound
In the scrappy scrub brushes
Clinging tight to the ground
Until they lift up and grow legs
to tumble around
The tumble weeds I watched
Walking to and from school
A child of the desert
where the tumble weeds rolled.
Mesmerized I cheered on their free-er expanse
While nature and experience knowingly forbode
Claws dug in to the holes of a chain link fence
Bounding a desolate road
That land is houses now, stucco and bland
and I didn't see any tumble weeds
When I rolled briefly through town
To see where I lived
before I lifted my shallow (so very shallow) roots
and learned to tuck my head shamefully down
I rolled, back then, with my family
My mom stepdad my sis and me
We climbed through the desert
peaked and descended
Descended. Descendant. Dis-ended.
For a decade more I clung dead to life
dormant like a seed waiting. Waiting.
Waiting for things to be right.
I startle awake, choking and drinking
In life dismantling this rusted chain link fence
of my own
damned
making
Tentative strands of green
Cracked through the burnt ground
Grasping, intuitive, busting the seam
Reached out went to college
Unfurled found a career
Vines latching onto a husband steady stable dear
Two flowers bear two children and I awaken to find
Through the slit dirty grit of half-closed eyes
Children half-grown and a mother dies
Here I open my eyes to finally see
This deadening fear of death until one death sets me free
I tumbled away then slowly set root
Reached up and out, fighting to sprout
So roll on, tumbleweed, I'm watching you go
as I look out my window down at the woods below
I look down to MY children's garden wild and oak-y and slowly, cautiously I let myself know
I see two tall redwoods, their babies gathered round
All stand steady kind and firm in the ground
Their roots stretch far, nourished and bound
For them, there will be no tumbling
No rolling around
They know they belong and they know who they are
These are my babies and I hold them in prayer
Praying to know
Tentatively knowing the cycle ends here
Death Valley Lullaby
In the Valley of Death
There's life abound
In the scrappy scrub brushes
Clinging tight to the ground
Until they lift up and grow legs
to tumble around
The tumble weeds I watched
Walking to and from school
A child of the desert
where the tumble weeds rolled.
Mesmerized I cheered on their free-er expanse
While nature and experience knowingly forbode
Claws dug in to the holes of a chain link fence
Bounding a desolate road
That land is houses now, stucco and bland
and I didn't see any tumble weeds
When I rolled briefly through town
To see where I lived
before I lifted my shallow (so very shallow) roots
and learned to tuck my head shamefully down
I rolled, back then, with my family
My mom stepdad my sis and me
We climbed through the desert
peaked and descended
Descended. Descendant. Dis-ended.
For a decade more I clung dead to life
dormant like a seed waiting. Waiting.
Waiting for things to be right.
I startle awake, choking and drinking
In life dismantling this rusted chain link fence
of my own
damned
making
Tentative strands of green
Cracked through the burnt ground
Grasping, intuitive, busting the seam
Reached out went to college
Unfurled found a career
Vines latching onto a husband steady stable dear
Two flowers bear two children and I awaken to find
Through the slit dirty grit of half-closed eyes
Children half-grown and a mother dies
Here I open my eyes to finally see
This deadening fear of death until one death sets me free
I tumbled away then slowly set root
Reached up and out, fighting to sprout
So roll on, tumbleweed, I'm watching you go
as I look out my window down at the woods below
I look down to MY children's garden wild and oak-y and slowly, cautiously I let myself know
I see two tall redwoods, their babies gathered round
All stand steady kind and firm in the ground
Their roots stretch far, nourished and bound
For them, there will be no tumbling
No rolling around
They know they belong and they know who they are
These are my babies and I hold them in prayer
Praying to know
Tentatively knowing the cycle ends here
#5
General Discussion / Experiences using the DBT "nightmare protocol"?
February 24, 2022, 05:40:29 AM
Hi...
My therapist has often referred me to the DBT nightmare protocol saying it had helped other clients. Has anyone here used it? Could you describe how and if it worked for you?
I am having a hard time actually using it for a few reasons and I'm not sure if i am just making up excuses or they are legitimate challenges to using it.
1. I don't want to write down the content of the nightmares because they would be awful for my family to discover and read on accident. But technically the protocol includes writing it down in detail.
2. It centers around visualizing a new ending for the dream that is positive, but I cannot visualize. I can think about it but not visualize it.
3. I seem to lack imagination to come up with new endings and don't like what I come up with for various reasons. I just can't quite come up with anything to replace the bad dreams with.
4. I haven't ever had the experience of being able to control or even be aware when I am dreaming. How do you change a dream if you aren't at least aware you are dreaming? Things just happen and blindside me.
I am actually open to truly trying it this time so am curious others'experiences with it.
My therapist has often referred me to the DBT nightmare protocol saying it had helped other clients. Has anyone here used it? Could you describe how and if it worked for you?
I am having a hard time actually using it for a few reasons and I'm not sure if i am just making up excuses or they are legitimate challenges to using it.
1. I don't want to write down the content of the nightmares because they would be awful for my family to discover and read on accident. But technically the protocol includes writing it down in detail.
2. It centers around visualizing a new ending for the dream that is positive, but I cannot visualize. I can think about it but not visualize it.
3. I seem to lack imagination to come up with new endings and don't like what I come up with for various reasons. I just can't quite come up with anything to replace the bad dreams with.
4. I haven't ever had the experience of being able to control or even be aware when I am dreaming. How do you change a dream if you aren't at least aware you are dreaming? Things just happen and blindside me.
I am actually open to truly trying it this time so am curious others'experiences with it.
#6
Podcasts, Videos & Documentaries / Podcast on Narcissistic and Borderline PDAbuse
January 29, 2022, 04:16:58 PM
I recently listened to this podcast on narcissistic abuse and really liked it. It talked about it as trauma. It is geared for therapists and talked about the importance of recognizing the underlying significance and pattern in examples of the abuse that may come up in therapy. I found it to be validating.
I'll also note that I get irritated that people never seem to address Borderline PD abuse alongside narcissistic abuse. The damage is the same and the abuse tactics are the same. It's just that the motivation is different which in some ways makes it harder to escape. So I tagged this as being a podcast on Narcissistic Abuse and Borderline PD abuse even though Borderline PD is not discussed in the podcast, but I think it applies as well to people suffering from Borderline abuse.
https://baltimoreannapolispsychotherapypodcast.libsyn.com/313-narcissistic-abuse-with-brenda-stephens
I'll also note that I get irritated that people never seem to address Borderline PD abuse alongside narcissistic abuse. The damage is the same and the abuse tactics are the same. It's just that the motivation is different which in some ways makes it harder to escape. So I tagged this as being a podcast on Narcissistic Abuse and Borderline PD abuse even though Borderline PD is not discussed in the podcast, but I think it applies as well to people suffering from Borderline abuse.
https://baltimoreannapolispsychotherapypodcast.libsyn.com/313-narcissistic-abuse-with-brenda-stephens
#7
AV - Avoidance / My brain barks at me?
October 16, 2021, 04:46:03 PM
Ok.
So sometimes in the early morning hours my brain seems to let me into a part of it that is normally closed off. When I am there I hear things like dishes shattering, children crying, women screaming, or weird little scared thoughts that come out of the blue like "choked! Choking!!!" And "r___!"
But then sometimes when I'm there in that part of my brain another part of my brain barks at me (like I hear a dog barking but the sound is in my brain, not outside of it) and it startles me out of the other part. It's like my brain is calling me out of that other spot and distracting me with an alarming but safe sound.
I feel like this sounds super crazy but I also don't think I'm crazy.
Do other people's brains here have weird ways of keeping you out once you wander in? I mean normally it's dissociation for me. It's like once I sneak past the guards at the gates there's another layer to keep me out.
Ugh. It feels so weird. It's not hallucinations it is clearly inside my brain not outside.
So sometimes in the early morning hours my brain seems to let me into a part of it that is normally closed off. When I am there I hear things like dishes shattering, children crying, women screaming, or weird little scared thoughts that come out of the blue like "choked! Choking!!!" And "r___!"
But then sometimes when I'm there in that part of my brain another part of my brain barks at me (like I hear a dog barking but the sound is in my brain, not outside of it) and it startles me out of the other part. It's like my brain is calling me out of that other spot and distracting me with an alarming but safe sound.
I feel like this sounds super crazy but I also don't think I'm crazy.
Do other people's brains here have weird ways of keeping you out once you wander in? I mean normally it's dissociation for me. It's like once I sneak past the guards at the gates there's another layer to keep me out.
Ugh. It feels so weird. It's not hallucinations it is clearly inside my brain not outside.
#8
Checking Out / Taking a little time away
September 22, 2021, 05:23:09 PM
Hi,
I'm a little worried that as I'm trying to process things at the moment that I'm oversharing in my own posts in a way that might be triggering to others, and not being aware enough of my responses to others. I'm going to enforce a break for myself until I feel more grounded. I'll be silently sending hugs and encouragement and cheers to everyone. You are all amazing, so so supportive and understanding. I'm glad you are here. I'll be back.
I'm a little worried that as I'm trying to process things at the moment that I'm oversharing in my own posts in a way that might be triggering to others, and not being aware enough of my responses to others. I'm going to enforce a break for myself until I feel more grounded. I'll be silently sending hugs and encouragement and cheers to everyone. You are all amazing, so so supportive and understanding. I'm glad you are here. I'll be back.
#9
Letters of Recovery / Memos to mom
September 16, 2021, 04:43:20 PM
It's too overwhelming to think about writing a letter to my mom but there's so much in here. I haven't grieved yet. I haven't really felt the truth of what happened. And it's complex and my brain gets confused easily. Partially the gaslighting. Partially the lack of my own solid memories. Partially knowing that her behaviors were driven by mental illness and so I'm always looking at the flip side...trying to be honest. So I'm just going to start with a series of short memos and see what happens. I don't know what i need to say.
#10
AV - Avoidance / Treating dissociative amnesia
September 11, 2021, 03:47:29 AM
I'm not sure if I have dissociative amnesia or if I just dissociated so much as a kid to tune things out that memories did not get laid down, or if it's simply because I have aphantasia (lack of visualization and other imagined senses like sounds and smells) which can be associated with sparse autobiographical memories.
But I'm wondering if anyone on here has experience with treating amnesia and recovering memories. I'm starting EMDR therapy with the hope it will help with memory and visualization but I also read a few things that made me fear EMDR might actually be too effective and will lessen the vividness of my already lacking memories and make the amnesia worse.
I find it helpful to know what happened and to be able to connect reactions to an event. Has anyone had success treating amnesia? Has anyone tried hypnosis? What were your experiences with EMDR? Anyone have thoughts on the benefit or forgetting vs remembering and processing?
But I'm wondering if anyone on here has experience with treating amnesia and recovering memories. I'm starting EMDR therapy with the hope it will help with memory and visualization but I also read a few things that made me fear EMDR might actually be too effective and will lessen the vividness of my already lacking memories and make the amnesia worse.
I find it helpful to know what happened and to be able to connect reactions to an event. Has anyone had success treating amnesia? Has anyone tried hypnosis? What were your experiences with EMDR? Anyone have thoughts on the benefit or forgetting vs remembering and processing?
#11
Successes, Progress? / Accountability Thread?
July 21, 2021, 02:18:06 AM
Is it OK to start a thread for when we could use a place to keep us accountable/have a place to check in when we accomplish something we are trying to do for our recovery? I thought about using my own journal but thought it might be helpful for others too, to have a place? But I'm not sure if this is helpful or harmful?
I'll start and please chime in if this has the potential to be unhealthy or triggering and I'll delete it.
I'll start and please chime in if this has the potential to be unhealthy or triggering and I'll delete it.
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