Starting with the biggest question first - what if I am really "crazy"?

This is sort of a train-of-thought, free-form rant! Be warned. Mainly because it helps me organize my thoughts for later today.

My new therapy sessions seem to be rather "free-form" - discuss whatever comes up in my mind. If so, I have a theme for today - it's the "big question" I have grappled with for TWO YEARS. Two years today, as a matter of fact. And, I HATE IT. Because it's a stupid question,

I already know the answer intellectually, and it drives me to the point of absolute despair, because I can't resolve the question emotionally.

What if I really am "crazy"? Does it matter? Does it negate everything good about me? Does it make me "less worthy" than "normal" people? Does it make me underserving of being alive? There are myriad ways I can ask the question.

I have thought about it so many ways over the past two years - in the context of shame and stigma, in the context of society's resources, in the context of civil rights and natural rights. I have overanalyzed the hell out of it, and I never get anywhere emotionally.

I can frame it many ways, too - mental illness, psychiatric injury, trauma. Call it what you want - it's all semantics in the end. Does it "make a difference" if I call it injury vs illness? Does it "make a difference" if I say "I have" versus "I am"? Does it make a difference if it's PTSD or CPTSD or Bipolar II or Bipolar XCVII or Ugly Purple Spotted Creeping Crud Disorder or Martian Aquatic Poultry Dementia Syndrome?

It boils down to the same set of symptoms, behaviors, and feelings.

The question itself has an ugly implication, which I have gone over so many times in my mind. If it WERE true that "being crazy" negated my right to exist, does that apply to just me? Am I somehow "that far gone" or "that different" or "that special"? Or, does it apply to everyone? What does that imply for ... everyone else who is "crazy" or has a mental illness, or a psychiatric injury, or is just a little eccentric or doesn't mow their lawn on time? Does "being different" from "normal" somehow make me "less than". Does being "mentally ill" mean I don't have the "right" to share in the responsibilities and benefits of society? Does it mean that I should die? Does it mean that the Nazis were right, the "defectives" should be purged for the betterment of all mankind?

The further out I take that question, extrapolating it from the very personal to the very general, makes it more and more obvious that the answer is NO. The answer HAS to be NO. Because if we had the kind of world where the answer was YES, none of us would want to live in it. We had a taste of that world in Europe 1933-1945, and it was completely unacceptable, anathema to everything a decent civil society should be. It was, IMHO, the greatest tragedy and travesty in all of human history.

I need to FEEL, to ACCEPT, to BELIEVE in my core, emotionally, spiritually even, what I KNOW intellectually. That I am alright, that I am acceptable, that I am as "deserving" and as "equal" as anyone else in this society even if I have/am/suffer from/have contracted/am afflicted by X, whatever X may be, PTSD or Bipolar Type 1,408,383 or Neptunian Dolphin Pox.

Because X should not be my identity. I have other medical conditions. I don't go around saying "I am asthma" and feeling that diminished lung intake capacity due to brochial constriction and swelling somehow "negates my right to breathe" or "negates my right to run" or "negates my right to use up society's oxygen".

But I do that to myself because I was told I was "mentally ill." And our "enlightened society" may not be the Third Reich, but we still have a long way to go in terms of tolerance for mental illness. So, when I was told I was bipolar II, it stuck a knife in my chest that I have yet to pull out, a veritable dagger of fear right into my being. It made me question if I was somehow deserving of the "special kind of Hell" that is reserved for "those poor bastards" unlucky enough to draw the really short straw and "go crazy". It made me feel condemned to lose everything important in life. It made me feel hopeless and far less than human or equal.

A powerful, toxic brew of poor medical care, my own hyperaroused imagination, a giant helping of the worst anxiety and insomnia in my life, and I fell apart.

Since then, I have been lost, bitter, unhappy, confused, scared, ashamed, well ... pretty much every negative emotion. I have NOT felt peace in any sense, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, for TWO YEARS now.

AND I HATE IT. HATE IT. HATE IT.

It has GOT to stop.

So, today, if it goes that way, I intend to ask the big question and get an answer. Live or Die? And, if the answer is "I am to live", then I need to heal.

Because I won't live like THIS the rest of my life, be it one day, one week, or decades. Misery is no way to live.

(((Mowtown))),

When someone has PTSD, they do wonder if they are crazy, that would be "normal". Here is what I believe. I believe that when someone is traumatized and was even traumatized when they were growing up because of a family dysfunction, their amygdala takes over to where their brain is in a more primitive state of "hyper arousal" pretty much as a way of "self protection". However, a child doesn't really know that and adapts and continues to learn and grow in spite of whatever threatening dysfunction is in their environment.

I have read that what gets the brain out of "how the amygdala hijacks the brain" is continuing to learn and gain in knowledge everyday. So many people develop a way of disassociating from "dysfunction" that can be threatening and continue to develop anyway. We are actually designed to be this way so we can survive. What happens with a child that grows up in dysfunction is as they are threatened by certain situations, they begin avoiding things that remind them of how these threats take place. We "are" designed to find ways to thrive anyway and also "avoid" things along the way that harm us in some way. Lots of people develop this way and they talk about "just ignore it" and "just forget it". The problem with PTSD is that "ability to forget" is not taking place even when someone wants it to. We have memories that include "how we were affected emotionally" too Mowtown, and this is what you need to work on and make gains on, and that is a challenge with PTSD.

Mowtown, you have actually been doing a lot of things to help yourself that are "right", infact you have done these things all along. You keep making progress and you "do" know things intellectually, you just need to figure out how to make gains on that emotionally. This brain spotting is to help you discover these areas where you developed "emotional phobias" around them. It is not meant to traumatize you or further hurt you emotionally either, however, as you learn more about them and identify them, it can definitely become an "emotional challenge". However, you will also increase "the fear factors" that you also have surrounding these spots of challenges too. The thing about the area of the brain that stores our emotional memories is that that area of the brain doesn't have "language" to it. That is why human beings are always finding ways to verbalize "emotions". Often when we are "really" using our intellectual part of our brain, which is what you use when you do the math you do at work, our emotional part of our brain is not activated. So, when we have an emotional challenge coming forward, that is why it is harder to work and concentrate and accomplish things.

When you experienced a major trauma, you did not get the kind of "immediate" response that you needed. That can be even worse than a trauma itself. You have a history of this too. I have experienced this "bad response" too and others that have come here to the forum have talked about that too.

When I finally got out of the psych ward and began to get some therapy outside, every single therapist and even a psychiatrist said, "you went to the wrong place" for help. I did not know that, how was I supposed to know that, you did not know that either, you were just experiencing "trauma crisis".

So far you have talked about many things that have made you feel threatened. Well, that is not good for a PTSD/trauma patient. You are "not" crazy Mowtown, you have been traumatized and are reacting in the typical way a "trauma" patient reacts. Trauma is "fearing of losing everything we feel safe and comfortable with in our environment". Our brains are designed to go into survival mode when that happens so we can respond as needed with "fight/flight/freeze".

You have "normal" fears, however, they are just heightened and you are also more aware of any other life experiences that made you feel "threatened" in some way. That is not something "anyone" expects experiencing. But, that doesn't mean you are crazy. Most human beings also experience the urge to move away from what they feel is an unsafe environment, we are designed that way so we learn how to "thrive".

It is important that you continue to use your intellectual part of your brain in a way that keeps you in a "forward and healing direction". Different people gain on this in different amounts of time depending on whatever that person has experienced that somehow "threatened" them in their personal history. Triggers are not taking place to tell you that you are bad or failing either. All they mean is something is reminding you of something that has "hurt or frightened or threatened you" in someway and that you need to stop and learn how to understand it better to where you get so it doesn't frighten you anymore.

What you are also learning is that it is important to have the "right support" while you take the time to work this out too. When you are not getting the right support, you are actually also designed to "talk about it" and the reason for that is "again" to compell you to find something you can do to sound an alarm so that others can benefit and thrive better because of it. Here again, having others that can be supportive with that helps in gaining the ability to find a "calm". Actually, that is the driving force behind the entire field of psychiatry and psychology.

Something to ponder.

((Supportive Hugs))
OE

Diagnoses are models. Man made constructs like race or gender. They aren't real. They are like species categories. Any five year old can tell you which Lets on the street are cats and which are dogs. He will accept the model as a sort of platonic form because cats are so obviously not dogs. Until you show him a fox.

My hospital liason is organising a meeting for a bunch of people to discuss whether I have PSTD or borderline.

It reminds me of wondering whether my father is black. I could care less. Theres no such thing as being black or White. But in Birmingham Alabama when he was a teen ot was a whole lot better to be White.

Deciding whether I am ptsd or borderline is like deciding whether a Fox os a feline or canine. *BUT...Ive seen how I get treated differently when my chart says ptsd, rule out bipolar, borderline traits, generalised anxiety disorder.

My dad got the hell out of Birmingham.

Im getting the hell out of the mental health system. Im leaving for pretty much the same reason daddy left Alabama. ****ery and retardation.

You have a right to be in the world, Johnny, as much as anything else. You dont earn that right. It comes with birth.

I felt only gladness when RW got out, but Ive made my peace about going home to Indiana to live on my grandparents farm, perhaps because I realised I was on my way out too. Not able to support myself in Boulder. Unwilling, hellbent against, living on welfare
n government housing. Scared of living without dignity and being misteated and abused. Om pretty sure the evil nurse would feel better about my suicide then the thought of me playing gentlewoman farmer on my own land somewhere. So im going to plant some late green beans.

I hate to think of you punishing yourself. You are everything you need to be. You are filling all the requirements. I dont know how to say it. I think the devil chasing you is just you.

Im still low dopamine. A Vietnam vet told me he was gassing up jeeps out in the open when a sniper shot at him. There was nowhere to run and he was tired, so he yelled at the sniper to knock it off. The sniper knocked it off. I pretty sure the sniper ducked his head and blushed for shame. And im pretty sure you dont have to run from the devil. I dont how else to say it now.

I hope you understand.

You have a right to be in the world, Johnny, as much as anything else. You dont earn that right. It comes with birth.

I felt only gladness when RW got out, but Ive made my peace about going home to Indiana to live on my grandparents farm, perhaps because I realised I was on my way out too. Not able to support myself in Boulder. Unwilling, hellbent against, living on welfare
n government housing. Scared of living without dignity and being misteated and abused. Om pretty sure the evil nurse would feel better about my suicide then the thought of me playing gentlewoman farmer on my own land somewhere. So im going to plant some late green beans.

I hate to think of you punishing yourself. You are everything you need to be. You are filling all the requirements. I dont know how to say it. I think the devil chasing you is just you.

Im still low dopamine. A Vietnam vet told me he was gassing up jeeps out in the open when a sniper shot at him. There was nowhere to run and he was tired, so he yelled at the sniper to knock it off. The sniper knocked it off. I pretty sure the sniper ducked his head and blushed for shame. And im pretty sure you dont have to run from the devil. I dont how else to say it now.

I hope you understand.

Oh, Teacake, thank you for, that - I know everything I wrote was a rehash, old news, reheated leftovers. Just me organizing my thoughts to get "the new guy" up to speed.

Are you really going to Indiana? I think a change of environs could be good for you. Where you are now you seem so alone - far from your son geographically, I feel, although I don't know really know for sure. It isn't great for you where you are, and I think being around nature is healing.

If it is going to royally piss off Nurse Ratched, I say plant a lot of beans. Kinda late where I am, but it would probably work in S. Indiana if the fall turns mild and late as predicted. I think I see you peacefully working in your garden in my mind - I hope it can come true.

You are right, the Devil is in my mind. He even has a place there, top center above my right ear. That is identifiable to me as a center of emotional pain - whether it is neurological or psychological, I now can "feel" areas in my head that correspond with emotions. I know that sounds crazy per se - maybe I am reading too much into this whole Brainspotting thing, but it feels real to me. It is something that I always did, I just never was aware of it. Now I am. Weird, huh?

I absolutely understand - I just have to accept. Make peace with it, and exorcise the creepy little dude out of my life and out of my brain.

OE, some of what you wrote was particularly interesting today, because it mirrored what he said in session - about trauma response, about reactions which seem wrong or unhealthy serving a purpose to ensure survival. He spoke about depression, asked me what it meant to me - I told him it was a very unhealthy period of imbalance resulting in various physical and emotional symptoms which can be debilitating. He said it can also be a way of slowing down, withdrawing, kind of hiding out for a while, that it can serve a survival purpose. I'm not explaining this well, but I know what he meant.

I have wondered that about myself many times, though for different reasons. One being I am pretty sure I had a dream about the traumatic event that led to my PTSD about a year before it happened....I guess that could indicate other things than being 'crazy' then again what would a psychatrist/psychologist or psych ward staff person think if I told them that?

But aside from that I usually feel like I am somewhere between sanity and insanity, like standing on the edge of a cliff but then of course my over-anaylitical mind can't let me forget sanity, insanity, crazy, sane, insane are vauge terms that don't actually refer to anything concrete. So then where does that leave me?

But regardless if I am crazy or insane, I don't think that makes me unworthy of human existance and If that description fits you or anyone else in any way I don't think it makes one unworthy of existence....but as I said before they are vauge terms anyways.

Hellion, read Peter Levine. In Waking the Tiger he talks about the spookiness of trauma. You had a premonitory dream. My dad did all the time. Me too. I feel sick before mass shootings. Levine mentioned the woman who was the third generation of plane crash survivors. Her dad and his dad too. They weren't a family of stunt pilots. My dada first wife died in surgery in hope of removing a brain tumor. He was 20. He saw how young wife confused and frightened by her early symptoms, from frightening typing errors to being unable to climb stairs. When I was eighteen a new friend began to die from a brain aneurism. I saw the same things my dad saw. How often do young women up and die with brain tumours/aneurysms?

pTsd itself has a way of making us feel "its all fated". But the premonitions are real, so Its not.crazy to know about them, and the coincidences are also real and noted.

I even have feelings of guilt about having that dream, but not being able to some how have prevented it from happening...I mean what was the point of my mind showing that without providing any option to potentially stop it.

I know. I had a dream that in a Woods near compete campus I saw a little White plane had crashed. I saw the pilot. who I knew was Matt, age 27, in detail. I saw his jeans and belt over there, twitching, and the rest of him over here, beaded with perspiration and trembling. I thought "omg he broke in the middle, he cant possibly live that Way".

Matt made eye contact with me. He looked so frightened. I felt such horror.

I write the dream in my journal.

Several days later I was driving to school and heard on the radio that a Mathew so and so, age 27 had crashed in the Woods near the airport which was near campus. He had radioed that his back engine had failed (i think). The announcer sounded really shaken and said the plane had basically broken up in the air. Authorities were looking for amarga body but there was no way he could have survived.

I felt guilty too. And angry. And wished to believe I had possibly heard a news story that morning on the radio and dreamed the visuals as I heard the story. But when I checked the journal, not onlu was it dates but Id recorded dreams after

Many years later I allowed into conciousness that of made eye contact with me perhaps he had dreamed of me the night I dreamed of him.

The only purpose or use it could possibly have is if in my dream I couod have had the presence of mind to tell him what o saw. "matt, baby, I see you near a crashed little White plane. You broke in the middle. You cant survive. You are broken clean at the belt"

The whole thing is absurd.
O
Last year I had a worse dream. I was someone else who thought in Spanish and I had to shoot children to save or protect them. It was happening in a house much líke my new dental n North Denver. I had a good talk with my "dreamer" about how i NEVER wanted to dream about anything like that again.
O
Since childhood Ive known we are all one consciousness sharing one experience. The individual identity thing has always been elusive and mysterious to me. Im sure that makes me borderline or insane or something. So does my belief that these stories about dreams are true and accurate.

I dont know what it means. Ive heard that trauma can open us up or initiate is into shamanic blah blah blah. I know my beginning esl students who were traumatised could show me things about the refugee camps. I believe a boyfriend and I dreamed each others memories. His english was very límited and he had been traumatised by war, revolution, prison and totalitarian bs.

Im old. I no longer care who thinks I might be crazy or insane or silly. My son says I am "ridiculous". He just doesnt want to think Mom can psychically spy on him. I know because I was a total skeptic when my dad was living. LOL! And o absolutely do NOT are kiddos secret life.

John, I think you dont exorcise the devil so much as digest him. Absorb him. Like kali who Dispatched the demon by drinking his blood. I think the devil chasing behind you is your shadow. Jung write about and the Jungian Robert Johnson has some nice little books about it.

You seem to be a very cultured or enculturated and disciplined person. The brighter the light the bigger the shadow. Jung said there's gold in the shadow. I know I used to dream my ballet teacher alll in black came up behind me to.tell me, "i will help you". That's a shadow figure. Your devil is the devil, yes? I don't want to tell you the DEVIL is really your best friend, who only wants to teach you dance, but he is YOU. Maybe the desire to kill him before you meet him has something to do with the suicidal stuff?

I know once I decided to go home to indiana, I faced some unacceptable aspects of me, things my ego doesn't like or want to be part of me, but when o accepted them, suicide receded. Not completely. I thought about ER tonight. But...ots better.