Borderline Families

My faith in God was shaken away bit by bit. I do not want to believe in a God who would allow my daughter to suffer the way that she has. I sat across from her last fall and watched her small adult body racked with so much emotional and physical pain that the sobs were just an afterthought. We were sitting across from each other with our knees together and I could see every new tear join the smeared mess on her cheeks. She was alternately agitated and falling into a paralyzed lump. She was totaled. A wreck. Her mind poured out fear and anger and confusion in mind-boggling arguments and accusations. Her body was mangled by self-harm, bruised and bloodied.

I gave up my belief in God that night.

Trusting that God will not give you more than you can handle was just not believable. If there was a God, this benevolent omnipresence guiding and protecting – where was HE/ SHE? Standing by watching?

I don’t know who was being tested. No doubt my daughter was beyond her limits. But, what about me? No one should have to discuss suicide with their daughter. If I can perform this miserable act, then what? What did He/She have planned for me next?

My daughter described a long drawn-out sad descritpion of her life, the endless cycles of dispair and inability to concentrate or enjoy anything. She couldn’t hold a job.

“What does tomorrow bring for me, mom? Nothing. Nothing different. It’s not worth the pain. My soul wants out of my body. I want to let it go.”

I said that I would see her on the other side. I told her that I understood, even though I did not understand and I was shattered inside and knew that it was not right. I nodded in agreement and damned a God who would allow this to happen.

The ultimate surrender. Okay, YOU win. I give up, take her. Free her from all this pain.

But, we didn’t give up. I kept fighting – almost as hard as my daughter.

Is this God?

That spark of light that my daughter cannot put out? My fierce love for her that permitted me to let go?

I am still unsure of my beliefs but I do know that something keeps driving my daughter, even when it seems she is no longer at the controls. Something pulled her out of the depths of hopelessness that night last fall and lead her to today.

She will go to Australia this afternoon. It is not a perfect send-off. She is fretting over this and that – like we all do when we head out on a long trip away from home. I am keenly aware of the tone of her texts. Her voice sounds cheerful and small. Like she is hanging on for dear life. But, she is going on an adventure and my cautious heart wants to sing, but I won’t let it.

I am going to thank God, like I do every day. I was never able to completely divorce myself from the concept of God. I just want some answers.

Why? My daughter could barely breathe, much less put one foot in front of another, and yet the grief and sadness kept piling on. And then it abated, briefly. When the pain and suffering cycles into her life again, I am reminded of my question – Why?  She doesn’t deserve the constant struggle to just get through the day.

I don’t know if I could blindly trust God to take over. I read so many blogs where the writer has found solace in “Let go. Let God”. I am fighting it tooth and nail but I think that it is the only way. Call it what you want, God’s divine force, or self-determination, or just the will to live. I think that I have to step back and let go. I have done this before under much more dire circumstances. My daughter’s life is going to be what she makes of it. It really doesn’t matter what she accuses me of doing or not doing. It doesn’t matter if I believe in God’s love or not, my daughter’s life is difficult and I cannot change much of it. We keep a roof over her head and make sure she has money to feed herself. But, her life, the core of her being, is all hers. Ultimately, every choice she makes, along with the consequences, belong to my daughter.

This ultimate surrender is what too many of us face. Letting go in the face of addiction and mental illness feels impossible. As caretakers we want to be able to do something that will significantly improve the playing field. But, it isn’t our game and we have to stand on the sidelines.

Bipolar/BPD

My therapist made my discovery of the Psychiatric Drug Deceit look like I had just figured out that I could change the channel on the television with a remote OR on the box itself. Obvious and rudimentary. (This kind of pissed me off…)

I searched for years to find help for my daughter and NEVER along the way did anyone insinuate that she might be better off without the endless trial and error drug treatments.

It might be too late for my daughter; it is not too late for millions of new patients being diagnosed and starting on psych meds this year. Robert Whitaker’s research revealed that it is “a fact that  the mentally ill are now dying twenty-five years earlier than their peers, and that it is clear that the atypical antipsychotics, which regularly cause metabolic dysfunction, are contributing to that early death problem.”

From psychiatrist and author Dr. Daniel Carlat – Carlat Psychiatry:

Few laypeople realize how little we actually know about the underpinnings of [psychiatric] disorders….In virtually all of the psychiatric disorders including depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anxiety disorders, the shadow of our ignorance overwhelms the few dim lights of our knowledge.

Doesn’t this frighten you like it does me? For years I blindly followed the medical model that seem driven by smart, trustworthy people.

Our diagnostic process is shallow and is based on an elaborate checklist of symptoms, leading us sometimes to over-diagnose patients with disorders of questionable validity, or, conversely, to miss the underlying problems in our rush to come up with a discrete diagnostic label that will be reimbursed by the insurance company. We tend (Dr. Carlat asserts, as he is a member of the psychiatric community) to treat all psychological problems the same way – with a pill and a few words of encouragement. Because of this rote approach to treatment, patients are often misdiagnosed and medications are over prescribed. In the end, we miss- serve our patients, failing to offer them psychotherapies that are sometimes more effective than drugs.

My therapist said that some of the worst offenders are the GP’s who get fifteen minutes or less to discuss problems with their patients before the next in a long line of clients passes through their office.   “My friend tried …” Or, “I saw an ad for…” The GP doesn’t have time to ask why the patient feels they need the drug; they just write a prescription. Who, my therapist asked, is going to invest hours a month to work out of their depression with psychotherapy, when a pill can be taken. The quick and easy method of relief wins out each time. No one, he insisted, is thinking long-term.

The resulting frenzy of psychiatric diagnoses has damaged the credibility of everyone in the field.

I only wish that this was true. I think the mental health profession is getting off scott-free. My little voice certainly isn’t going to sway anyone or start a revolution. Robert Whitaker’s book is getting buried by APA, NAMI, praise for Judith Warner, etc.

Who is paying attention to the fraud? No one is discrediting the psychiatric field because few people in the general public even know that they have placed their trust in a faulty system.

We like to see ourselves as neuroscientists, rationally manipulating levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin in order to get patients better. But the fact is that we have no clear evidence that chemical imbalances are at the root of any mental disorder…. We don’t know if changing levels of serotonin [by prescribing Zoloft or Celexa, or any other drug] is the actual curative mechanism. Nonetheless, we give patients elaborate explanations of how the drugs work chemically. It makes psychiatrists feel more scientific, and gives patients a feeling of confidence, but it’s little more than made up neuro-babble.”

As Robert Whitaker’s research revealed, psychiatrists wanted the magic pill just the the Real Doctors have – an antibiotic to cure the troubled mind, to correct the “chemical imbalance”.  Never mind that there isn’t an imbalance, we, the unsuspecting public doesn’t know better. I was won over by the neuro-babble just like millions of other believers.

The fact is that psychopharmacology is primarily trial and error, a kind of muddling through different candidate medications…. depending upon which company’s sales rep or which academic “Hired Gun” recently made a pitch for one or another drug. Indeed, when our most esteemed colleagues have essentially joined the marketing teams, it makes it that much harder for us to practice our craft responsibly.

“The fact is” should make everyone sit up and take notice. Do  psychiatrists ever admit to one another that long-term results are not favorable for psych meds? Maybe not to us, the unaware public, but among themselves, do they nod and wink as they are writing out the prescriptions?

From Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic:

The pharmaceutical companies would not have been able to build a $40 billion market for psychiatric drugs without the help of the psychiatrists at academic medical centers. The public looks to doctors for information about illnesses and how best to treat them, and so it was the academic psychiatrists – paid by drug companies to serve as consultant, on advisory boards, as as speaker – who in essence acted as the salesmen for this enterprise.

Bipolar/BPD Daniel Carlat, Robert Whitaker

My daughter is doing well. Lots of plans. Off to Australia for a photo shoot the first week in July. She is busy getting her apartment packed up because when she returns she will have surgery on her foot. She is in a fifth floor walkup and wouldn’t be able to negotiate the stairs with the crutches that she will be on for a couple of months. She is sorting through her things and arranging for a mover. She is going to try to find someone to sublet her place for the final couple of months of the lease.

When her foot has healed, she and the ex-father are going to try again in their off-and-on-again relationship. He is putting her in charge as the manager of a new restaurant he is opening.

Exciting? YES! But also stressful and demanding.

Yesterday I asked how she was. “Good, mom. Really good.” We talked for about a minute. She sounded chipper but tired.

It was less than a month ago that she was unable to get dressed or leave her apartment for days.

The cyclical nature of this illness makes me nervous.

What if? What if it all comes tumbling down and she is on a BMX bike (subject of the photo shoot) thousands of miles away and all systems shut down? Then what? I can’t go to Australia to pick up the pieces!

I want her to live her life to the fullest. I know that she will self-medicate to push through but even that sometimes doesn’t work. Example: two weeks ago when she called and I came running.

But, then again… maybe it will all be ok.

Stress is her nemesis. She is already worrying about the impending surgery. The photographer is a friend but there will be lots of pressure to preform in a timely fashion. All the while, she will have the anxiety of functioning at her best for the ex-father hanging over head. He has never believed that she is struggling with anything other than being a spoiled brat.

I am holding my breath. I want her to succeed. I want my daughter to be everything that she believes that she can be. But, I also know that she has put a lot on her plate and she is a perfectionist and when the smallest part of the plan falls through, she might go down with it.

I am the keeper of the HOPE TORCH. I am forever optimistic that she will conquer her problems and step into her old/new life. The one where she is funny and smart – all the time. The one where she gets up in the morning, gets dressed and hits the day full of confidence.

Bipolar/BPD cycling through emotions, hope, stress

Barbara asked me if I think Keven’s meds are making him worse. He is just getting started on his journey through the mental healthcare world after kicking a heroin habit. He is symptomatic and frightened. They are scrambling to find the right medical team to help him.

Susan was put through the ringer by the healthcare community and was told that she would have to take meds for the rest of her life. Then, she took control and decided not to be at the mercy of the industry. She is getting better; the shift was in how she approached her healing. She quit listening to the professionals.

My daughter is sick. She is very often so empty and her brain so lost in chaos that she cannot function. But, then it passes and she is ok. Almost like periods of remission. At one point, she was told that she would be on meds for the rest of her life. At the last treatment center, they told me that she could never live on her own.

Mental illness exists. We have been conditioned to believe that doctors have been trained to understand the body and mind and we should trust in their expertise to treat all our illnesses. Susan was able to look at this paradigm and refuse it. Barbara is struggling to understand how to grapple with all the information that is coming at her through blogs and doctors.

I can only refer to my daughter’s story.

My daughter has always fought depression She was diagnosed as being “profoundly depressed” at the age of five. She saw therapists and neurologists and doctors yet continued to struggle until she went off to college when her world fell apart. Anxiety, body issues, depression, feelings of worthlessness forced her to a complete stop. Benzodiazepines and alcohol became her reliable relief.

After a particularly frightening series of events, we began looking for help. It was hard to find. We searched in every part of this country. We discovered warehousing of the marginally affected with mental illness, rampant over-medicating and disregard for the rights of patients. But, my daughter was sick and afraid and we kept looking. She settled briefly at a renown clinic in Houston, Texas.

My daughter was deprived of the benzodiazepines upon her arrival at The Menninger Clinic. They do not allow benzodiazepines on their premises. Most physicians and medical authorities agree to taper their patients slowly off of benzos to avoid developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Going cold turkey will result in benzodiazepine dependence withdrawal. The abrupt discontinuation or too quick reduction will cause increased heart rate or blood pressure, sweating, tremors, confusion, agitation, or impairment of memory, judgement or intellectual function. Severe withdrawal symptoms can occur after as little as three weeks of continuous use of benzodiazepines. My daughter had been using Klonopin and Ativan for a year by the time that she was admitted to Menninger. And, she was a heavy user.

Long term users like my daughter who are dependent on benzos are at a high risk of this severe and possibly life-threatening withdrawal syndrome. I have no idea why Menninger stop administering the benzodiazepines without tapering my daughter off of them slowing. I have done research on the internet and with a library of books on mental illness. I assume half of what I read is grounded in scientific fact. The rest is maybe written by doctors who have first-hand experience but have not done extensive research. And then, there are sites for patients to vent and tell their stories. I did not read those with the same degree of trust that I did the books written by doctors and professors. But, this is changing. I read these first-hand accounts with much more interest now.

Even if I were to believe half of what I read about discontinuing the use of benzodiazepines, everything that I read cautioned the patient to reduce their intake slowly. Some symptoms of the withdrawal are identical to the symptoms for which the medicine was originally prescribed  – insomnia, aches and pains, flulike symptoms, hot and cold flashes, headaches, nightmares, agitation and restlessness, anxiety, terror and panic attacks, depression, depersonalization, mood swings, indecision and irritated bowel syndrome.

My daughter suffered all of these symptoms while at The Menninger Clinic. Because of the abrupt termination of the benzos, she also experienced urges to commit self-harm, shout out, throw things, break things, delusions, violence, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, confusion and mania.

Benzo withdrawal syndrome can last from a couple of months to several years.

Continuous users like my daughter experience disturbed sleep as a consequence of tolerance to benzodiazepines but experience worsening rebound insomnia when their dose is reduced too quickly. My daughter didn’t sleep through a night at The Menninger Clinic, despite their frantic efforts with sleep-inducing drugs.

Her brain’s ability to react to stress was weakened by long term substance use.  She has trouble experiencing pleasure from normal enjoyable life events – eating, exercising and social interaction. For the 10-15% who are faced with this protracted withdrawal syndrome, it might might take years to recover.

There is actual structural brain damage that takes place from being taken off the the benzodiazepines too quickly.

My daughter was under the care of one of the most respected mental health institutions in the country. They did this to her. She is still suffering consequences of this abuse years later.

Though I have told this story before, I now am reviewing it as a piece of evidence that the system doesn’t work. Concrete proof. I look through her records and am blown away by the amount of drugs that were tried. Over and over again. She felt less than human and constantly acted out and consistently got thrown out of residential treatment centers and hospitals. The antidepressants, antipsychotics, antianxiety meds have all messed permanently with her brain.

She was intuitively fighting the system! Her body was say NO NO NO!

At each place, I blindly trusted them. Because I wanted peace. I wanted my daughter to be ok. Because I believed in the system.

I have 20/20 hindsight. I see now the overmedicating and vain attempts to quell symptoms. I see how wrong they were to abruptly terminate the benzodiazepines.

I continued to believe in the system until long after my daughter took the situation into her own hands and fled Austen Riggs. She said that she did not want to take meds for the rest of her life that clouded and dulled her experience. She wanted to start over.

I fought her. I wanted her to see a doctor, be part of a program, get into a day clinic.

I have completely changed how I view her treatment. If she had been spent time in psychoanalytic, cognitive, behavioral, DBT, interpersonal, integrative – any talk therapy rather than falling  for the quick fix of a drug, she might have had a better chance. She might have held onto better brain function. She is now plagued with the inability to concentrate, hyper anxiety, disrupted sleep patterns and the scary cycling in and out of symptoms of BPD.

Talk therapy takes time, and a pilled popped hits the system hard and fast. We all initially liked the results.

Now I realize that the long-term ramifications of drug therapy do not seem worth the pain my daughter’s life has become.

Bipolar/BPD, Uncategorized

Everyone who is dealing with mental illness, care taker or a patient, should read Robert Whitaker‘s new book Anatomy of An Epidemic.

Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

Are the drugs my daughter takes causing as much, if not more harm, than good?

He complies evidence that has been kept from the public that will surprise and alarm every reader.

I am in the middle of reading it and I am chomping at the bit to tear the pharmaceutical companies and their minions, the mental healthcare doctors in our country, apart.

Bipolar/BPD Robert Whitaker