Borderline Families

I have removed my earlier posts which were written when I was a believer in the psychiatric system.

I had kept them because they were a chronicle of my change from believer to skeptic to knowledgeable advocate for change in the psychiatric industry.

But, unfortunately, some people read only my first posts and never got to my current contributions on alternative methods of healing, the wildly unethical pharmaceutical industry and my desire to change the language society uses to define mental and cognitive distress.

Where my earlier posts used my daughter’s search through the psychiatric industry looking for relief as a backdrop, my recent posts are focused on my role as caretaker and the difficulties we face caring for and creating a safe and nurturing environment unsupported by the “professionals” who once were in control of our loved-one’s live.

Many of us, without the support of the online community, are not secure in our belief that the psychiatric industry is a huge contributor to the problems our loved-ones have faced. Without the years of psychotropic drugs clouding my daughter’s perceptions, clogging her motivation and stalling her maturation, I am sure that we would have, as a family, learned other, healthier ways to deal with her emotional and cognitive distress.

I am thankful for the online community which fosters thinking outside the box and has offered support and ideas and every kind of encouragement that I needed to form my own voice.

Looking over the past five years through the lens of  the cynic I have become, I have grown to be vehemently anti psychotropic drugging and skeptical of many therapies my daughter took part in. Now, I want to focus on being a part of the change that can take place when I focus forward.

As my daughter heals, our family looks for ways to rethink our relationship with her. One way to refresh my outlook is to lose the ties with the past and to start fresh.

I am going to publish my last blog post for Borderline Families soon and with that put to rest this part of my process.

My daughter’s progress is like what I read recently by Ken Braiterman. I don’t think he’ll mind if I paraphrase – he said, heading towards healing is two steps forward and one step back and then a couple of sideways slides where, he said, he is learning patience. And, I hope, self-love and acceptance. My daughter is an amazing individual – strong and resilient. She will find her way.

Our lives are never what we think they are going to be when we set out from home. I left home young, but street smart and disciplined. I have never settled for anything, always eyeing an opportunity to learn something I didn’t know. Kids, careers, husbands and friends all wove into a solid core. And then, all at once, I felt that my life had been hijacked by “mental illness”. I devoted myself to slaying that dragon and to finding relief for my daughter and I ended up here, today. Still searching, but at a better place.

My daughter shook off the labels and our family lifted the burden of “illness” off our shoulders. Thank you for your support and friendship.

Kris Uncategorized