Discriminating taste

I have to confess something, something that catches me by surprise occasionally and frustrates me about me.
I hate being stereotyped and stigmatized. I hate being discriminated against for my ailments. I hate feeling the subtle and not so subtle changes in attitudes and perceptions that some people manifest when they find out that you have a "mental illness" or mental health related issues.
I hate it so very much and it is especially difficult when you have the intelligence to know how you are flawed and the intelligence to pick up on the discrimination, ostracizing, stigmatizing etc.
But the confession... I do the same thing.
I am prejudice against my own disorders, against my kind.
...And I don't like being lumped into the same category as those people.
I know a few people who have bipolar and I don't like some things about them that I know are directly related to the illness they have. I wonder if I am a bad person for feeling these things and even wonder why I feel these things. I am scared of them myself half the time. Or am I disappointed? Disappointed with how they handle or how I do? Or am I disappointed that even with them I can still offend and not fit in?
I wonder if this is normal for all of us that have these problems?
But I also sincerely wonder if maybe I really do not belong in the same category because mine seems to be directly linked to TBI. I wonder if a strictly biological bipolar may be different than a TBI bipolar?
Manic, I fit the definition of. I was manic. But I did not loose touch completely and I was composed well enough to hide it. Or had I just conditioned and trained myself well enough? and that is why I feel some annoyance and frustration with others?
But I also think there is some association to the level of breaking and the age of the breaking. As I have said, prior to this, I think I had not gone much above hypomanic. And I am much older, with much more experience under my belt... I have also chosen to distance myself from those things that can be triggers. I don't embrace a trigger so easily. I'd rather not be in that consent battle. It is something people in my family and many of my local cultures and subcultures really do not understand. It is why I am not so stalwart and involved in the church that I was raised in. Spirituality and religion can be very slippery slopes for a delicately balanced brain... I have found more peace and stability with some distance and yet that makes people very uncomfortable. But my overly spiritual and scriptural associates that have similar issues I feel pain and embarrassment for... and I find myself feeling my own discriminating feelings...
Maybe I am projecting my own insecurities onto them? Maybe it is a fear of what I may actually be or come to be?
My mind and heart want to figure this out and be at peace with them and me. Be at peace with my association.
And yet, I don't really want to think about it right now at all. I just want to be a fun mom again. And I want to have friends again. But I also do not want to be that me again. I want to be more free and more accepting of all that I am. I want to love my perfectly imperfect.
...and truthfully, I want to feel loved, valued and accepted.
I suppose I have some work to do still.
And who is still actually reading this anyway? And why?
Check in now and again if you don't mind. I'd love your feedback

If you want to pull the wool you might destroy the sweater.

"It is all three, isn't it?"

I still talk to that place in my heart that he allowed me to keep him. 

Allowed

there just may be more to that than you (my blog audience) know.

I have tried to kick him out of my heart but he knew how to root himself deep and I was so broken that at times those roots that broke me were somehow the only thing holding me together. It is a strang place that no rational and fully stable person can ever really understand. 

... and I will be made out to be crazy for the things I am not crazy for 

Even after and when they deny the crazy that I was...

November 12, 2018

I made a mistake. I talked about my husband. I explained how what we (Dr. P and I) had been working on had helped me in my relationship with my husband. 

He was not happy about this. He changed on me. The spark in his eyes was gone. He was cold and distant. 

One of two possibilities: 

He had developed feelings and caught him off guard 

Or

It confirmed I was non-compliant with his efforts to subtly turn me into his own personal toy

Either way, he was done with me.

But with a strange plea of "don't disappear on me completely"

to which I pointed out "you are breaking up with me and I am not happy about it"

Then he, "unfortunately there is still a human element to all of this."

and later, "I told you not to try and solve this." 

I was not compliant again. 

and he was scared. 

I could see it in his face. I could see it in the paleness and the picked off scabs of a stress break out. I could hear it in his replies, implied but neither confirmed nor denied. Rehearsed or influenced by some of the same articles I had found and read about transference and countertransference? 

I could hear it in his struggle to regain the balance of power.

I could hear it in his over compensating when he looked me straight in the eye and declared, "I am not scared of you." said the way every person does when they have decided to confront their fear and have to lie to themselves until they start to believe their lie. 

I could hear it is his chastising, "that's not funny," when I laughed about the insanity of a bipolar personal contact that once, while in a manic state, believed one companion to be God and the other to be the devil. 

I could hear it in his direct, loud and firm command to "stop emailing me" and in his back peddling softened reply of "they are too deep and they can get me into trouble" when I reacted in a way he may not have expected -a way that suggested I have dealt with that kind of forcefulness plenty and I may not be so inclined to respond the way he'd hoped since I knew those types of bold threatening tactics too well. 

I could hear it especially loud and clear in his final statement, "so we can agree to a clean break?"

And yet, still he could not resist testing those boundaries, checking to see if maybe I might be more compliant or more interested, and maybe just maybe, after the confessions of the depth and complexity to my transference and the the suggestion of mania, maybe just maybe, he hoped that I might manifest those with the paradoxically desired but condemned sexual advance by the patient.
I could see these.
I picked up on this.
As childish and naive as I was in those moments of managed manic magnificence I picked up on the manipulations in his playfulness,  the moments when he forgot he was scared, and could not resit playing with the child that I was, mistaking me for an adult themed toy. Tempting. It was far too tempting

and it worked to his advantage (it always does, he knows these games well and plays them regularly, I have seen it more than with just me) 

Control, he regained by playing, turning me into a game again.  Because I trusted and loved. 

But my instinct was awake and bold. It took liberties and spoke for me at times, long before I knew what I meant. 

And my will to survive, my fight and flight responses heightened by the risks and threats that the mania was immune to, they picked up on so many things. My heightened senses and rapid processing working at superhuman levels picked up on every subtlety, nuance, inflection, movement, energy... the entirety of the situation would replay in my brain for months and months to follow, not missing anything in my brains quest to solve what was happening to itself and why. The mysteries had to be solved. His "I'm okay with being wrong" was not okay in his misdiagnosis. 

Was the missing of the mania intentional? Did he break me? Or was I already broken and breaking? Had he developed feelings of reciprocated magnitude and intensity or was it the mania (that he had overlooked) suggesting this to my desperately-trying-to-settle brain? ...Or was he really and truly a diabolical grooming therapist that dropped me when he saw that I was not compliant and I broke because of it? Did I break because, even though I was not physically compliant, the grooming had worked on an emotional level and suddenly grieving the loss of him was too much for the physiology of my brain since it was coinciding with  PTS (post traumatic stress), TBI realities, and a flooding of returning memories?  

"I told you not to try and solve this"

"I don't need more friends"

"I don't believe in forever anymore"

"my life is very complex right now"

"I could lose my license because of you"

"...I will never have anything to do with you outside of therapy."

"I would have to agree to it"

"You only see what I allow you to see" 

"I don't do well with blurred boundaries"

"why? are you a stalker?"

"what we have had is a beautiful thing and I would not want to fuck that up." (really, who says that?)

"I connect easily with people"

"I am okay with being wrong"

"I am going to let it burn out and I suggest you do the same"

... And I feel like, in his cryptic way, he may have been trying to warn me, that he would do whatever he had to, to hide and cover anything that would reveal who he really was and what he really was up to... or was it just that he would cover anything that could potentially threaten his livelihood...

I would love for clarification- I am not afraid of the conversation and I am not the one hiding or trying to hide the truth.

But... I will repeat, the best liars hide their lies in the truth. 

Which makes me think

"It is all three, isn't it"

Grooming, countertransference and the breaking of me and then denying it (mania). ... maybe it is more like 4 or 5 things, 4 and 5 being a whole lot of mischief. 

"You only see what I allow you to see" 

Oh, but I see so much more and I see through you- And he knows it. He makes the command in hopes that his statement will pull the wool curtain over my manic heightened perceptiveness. 

Parenting after Mania and the Psychology of role reversals

What is most bothersome to me right now is how this wild ride has affected my kids and my ability to parent them...

It has been so hard on them. To watch their mom first break and become emotionally unstable, tired, foggy, forgetful, etc from a car accident and the PTSD* that followed then to watch her break a thousand times worse from a therapist.
...

"It is not normal for people to fall in love with their therapists," my son expresses to me about a month ago when I am trying to get to the bottom of what is really going on with him. Why he is failing all of his classes, impossible to get out of bed in the morning and other things...

Chastise me if you want, for not keeping this hidden from my children, but when you break as big as I did, it is handled the way that it was by the providers that should be helping you, you are as openly honest about things as I am, and it lasts as long as it did, things like that will not stay hidden from your teen kids or anyone. And it might also be worth noting that the area of my brain that is specifically built for keeping things in is actually broken and the space for this kind of storage is now smaller which means I can retain and refrain less... I wonder if that has also contributed. 

But I also think it likely could have been even worse if I had kept it hidden. 

I think this because I know what I was experiencing and it was hard to keep from blowing up completely even with letting out some of the steam as it built. But I also say this because I know of too many people on both the parent and child side that have experienced a lot of emotional distress from keeping hidden what was really going on. Often they are referred to as "skeletons in the closet" or "swept under the rug" and from what I have witnessed hiding the truths and realities is not constructive or healthy and often leads to far worse as people bury more and more, and hide the truly heinous acts that are happening. Unwillingness to face and talk about issues has not ever proven constructive or healthy to me.

AND besides all that, that is exactly what they Neuroscience Institute was doing with me, why on earth would I then repeat the same neglect and abuse with my children? 

They had lost there mom. I may have been physically present but I was too often lost in the madness and unavailable because of how hard I had to work simply to stay ahead of the death sentence I was given. 

They deserved to know and they deserved to know why. 

It has been so hard on them. 

And still they are such amazing kids and so much more compassionate, understanding and even practical than the adults and professionals that were supposed to be. 

When my son said this, what do I say?

Caught off guard and heart broken for him I was not sure how to respond, but two things I remember doing. I explained that it actually is normal for people to fall in love with their therapists and it is very common. What is not normal is their therapist falling in love with them or implying that they had and then dropping them and refusing to ever have anything to do with them...that and I apologized, because I am sorry for all that has happened and for how hard it has been on him. To which he replies, "It's okay, I know it's not your fault." And I try to make sure, I hope and I pray, he is not now burdening himself with guilt for his feelings and frustrations. He is entitled to them and they are not unjustified. But his loving forgiveness and understanding, regardless of his pain, lets know how lucky I am.  

He and my daughter have both said this to me, more than once... They are such sweet, good kids. And I am grateful that even though they have frustrations with me, and they have this pain and cross to bare, they know when things have been very much out of my control and they were stalwart and strong when I was so very broken. They carried me so many times.

I love and am so grateful for them.

But there is a flip side to that coin; this type of role reversal (even though it was not a complete role reversal) makes it very difficult to return to more normal parenting and having parental expectations. 

It is confusing and hard for all of us -the psychology of it I don't want to delve into right now because it exhausts my brain. But I do know that it is another way that I now feel incredibly insecure. I almost feel like I no longer have the right to parent them...

...At a times when they are unravelling and when the fall apart some themselves because of this, as I improve and become more stable. 

* note: The PTSD that followed was linked to a TBI I was hospitalized for at age 12 -this put me reprocessing from both an adult and childlike state.
** this article is being published with my son and daughters permission. When I asked them if they think it has been a good or bad thing that I have been as open and honest with them about this as I have my daughter plainly and confidently says, "I think it has been good" while my son points out that he thinks it has "probably" been good because, "you know that I hear things that I am not supposed to hear and don't hear things that I am supposed to hear. So if you had tried to keep it hidden I probably would know even more about it but it would be a very different version." He would  not have really understood or had a clear picture of what was going on in addition to feeling like he could not talk about it. 

My mania is not angry

I choose this photo for the background because TP and human waste in wilderness area's angers me. My choice in response is to try to help educate people. Please pack out your TP and crap. 

Somethings are very hard to explain. Somethings are not so hard to explain but are nearly impossible for others to understand if they have never experienced it for themselves. 

Mania is both of those. 

My sister said something about my manic anger being the drive in pursuing action against the Neuroscience Institute... 

This made me angry.

Because it was much more likely that rational anger is what was actually preserving my life. 

The mania had me going back and trusting them when it was clear I could not and should not.

It was my mania that trusted them when they said it was not mania. Mania does not want to be seen for what it is. It wants to be your superhero, superpowers, and connection to God or higher powers, or, at times, it may even want to be the higher power itself. And it (mania) can be very convincing. 

My mania was sweet, happy, powerful, perceptive, and far too loving and forgiving. 

My mania kept trying to convince me that my heart now belonged to the therapist that broke me. That I belonged to the therapist that broke me. 

My mania recognized that I needed to be sacrificed for the man who loved me too much to have anything to do with me.

My mania, understanding that I had been there for me, knew that "it" was me and it wanted me to obey his suggestion of letting me burn out for him. ... the him who I now belonged to... the him that I knew I could not loose right then. The him that I tried to show the mania to but would not accept it as that. The him who need me gone...completely. 

Was it me or my mania that saw the yin and yang in his office and knew I was there to balance something out for him? Was it my mania that felt a power struggle?  

When I heard the inflection and noticed the light in his eyes spark when he asked "why, are you a stalker?" I knew that it was an epiphany- a way out for him. But I think it was my mania that believed it was a suggested way to reconnect after he "terminated" the professional side of things. 

Even when the evidence was showing that it had been an epiphany becuase he was clearly trying to make me out to be a stalker, my mania still held onto it's belief and even felt fed my his actions and denials, thinking it evidence that I was messing up by trying to go the more logical, appropriate and ethical routes that the Institute, he, and the rules that be, told me I should go. 

Mania made a mess for me in pursuing the "right" course of action.

And their denials of it simply fed it and I was progressively loosing me.

BUT fortunately for me, you can not gaslight what is already lit up so their dishonest gaslighting games and set ups were obvious to both my manic and not manic brain. 

This is both hard and easy to explain, but I'd say most people really don't get it... It is so easy to say, "just do this," or "just do that," and "it's really not such a big deal." 

But

Mania IS a BIG DEAL

It is a MAJOR BIG FUCKING DEAL

...and as much as I don't really want to use it, the F word is appropriate here because that is exactly what mania does. It rapes you, repeatedly, of your logic and rational thinking. It unlawfully warps your knowledge and turns you into a carnal creature that just can't get enough...

But most baffling to me is the calming drug like effect that man had on me... 

So Anger, as I have memed, is not a "bad" thing. It is not the emotion that had hurt me through this and is causing harm, rather anger may very well have been what pulled me out and saved me from the game playing and gaslighting of me by that man and his institution.

And here is a theory:

Maybe TBI survivors often struggle with anger after their TBI because anger is what pulled them through? 

Maybe we need to embrace our anger, see it for what it is, utilize it for what it is, and us it to help pull us through. It is not anger that is "good" or "bad" but rather it is how we choose to respond and what we choose to do with it. I believe all emotions are like that. 

...and because of mania, I have learned that happy, just like anger, can be deceptive and can also lead to "bad" things or "bad" choices. 

A Bursting Nut Shell? (maybe it is a manic nut)

1. Many people just can't seem to wrap their head around the difference between a LCSW and a doctor of neuropsychology. If you have been to a neuropsychologist that knows what they are doing, you will know easily that there is a big difference. A neuropsychologist really is most appropriate for diagnosable illnesses, complex cases, and head injuries. They know the medical and physiological stuff as well as what is realistic to expect from a person with certain conditions. They know how to help you understand what is physiologically and psychologically going on with your head. Sometimes so well that you wonder if they have the same condition (Dr. She is that good).

2. I am tired of feeling silenced and powerless to do anything. I am disgusted more now than I was before when I try to organize the evidence of malpractice that is my burden to prove if I expect any of the many wrongs of the Neuroscience Institute to be righted. Wrongs that effect insurance settlement, impressions of me, treatment options, and opportunities within the industry that I belong in. Wrongs that are dangerous to practice, and wrongs that were harmful to both me and my family. Wrongs that will for ever scar me and may have actually contributed to some of the physical harm that has befallen my head (bipolar, encephalomalacia with gliosis, and seizures)...

3. As I tire of waiting in silence for lawyers that are not filling me in, as I wait too long knowing that these very bad practices have not been addressed and are likely still going on, and since I want to move on but do not feel okay with turning a blind eye, I find my conscience increasingly burdened as I know the "right" thing is not the easy thing and I believe I need to be more publicly vocal about this.
But it is very hard to explain in a short and concise way that warns people of the dangers...

4. Now lets see if I can explain in a super condensed nut shell what happened with the Neuroscience Institute, people like to hear the story of it and get easily caught up in the drama of transference and countertransference but they fail to comprehend or believe the malpractice part of it.  They will happily use the very reason misdiagnosis was such a big deal to justify their disbelief of the shear insanity of what really did happened and how I really was mistreated.
My situation was not just a problem with a therapist who was offering "counseling services,"
The problem was that:
I was first under diagnosed by my TBI doctor who had asked to be my primary care provider for TBI and auto accident related injuries.
I had a neuropsychologist who broke me when he either lost objectivity due to countertransference (something he had strongly implied, but later denied) or because he was grooming and I had not responded they way he had wanted me to.
Trusting him completely, loving him, and not knowing what was really going on with him or my head I found myself in an even bigger mess when he completely missed or intentionally misdiagnosed me, ignoring the mania I was experiencing, to cover his indiscretions and boundary violations.
... crap right out of a movie, to hard to explain here...
 ...then I was mistreated for trying to address this with them, without getting anyone into trouble, and for asking for clarification. They would not allow for any conversation about what had happened and the unplanned outcome of my condition. I was put through a bogus investigation with the Patient Experiences and greatly misrepresented by my "patient advocate" who did not stop the investigation when I realized and told her I did not want understand the point of the investigation and did not want it to continue until I did. This was after she told me it was not likely to help me "but it would help other patients." I also told her I was afraid they would use it to reinforce the bad policies that had and were hurting me since I was never even granted a conversation with her in person or the person leading the investigation at all. ...again more movie like drama with things being said on the phone but not reported in any of their documents... and the director I was not allowed to talk to and would they would never name decided the misdiagnosis was accurate based solely on the fact that the man in question had said so, despite the other evidence, some of which they acknowledged in the report and after they refused to even read/include my side of the story that I had insisted they included if they were going to proceed with the investigation. The patient advocate stated that the director had said it would not have made a difference on his decision. In addition to denying transference and mania (the misdiagnosis of my condition), the report also included their declaration of there had not been any kind of "inappropriate relationship" and proceeded to explain their justification for that when, at that point, I was still being stupidly protective of said therapist (something he manipulated me to be) and had insisted myself that there had not been and that I did not want the investigation to be about that.  (I was naive and I was processing things from a strange psychological place of both an adult and a child due to the PTSD and flooding of memories I was experiencing at that same  time so I did not realize the inappropriateness of it or why said therapist said he could "loose his license because of you [me]")
After speaking with the therapist my doctor then feigned care when she was actually denying me proper medical care and referrals because (or at least the evidence suggest) they thought, or they wanted it to make it appear, that I was simply there pursuing the therapist that had now officially terminated me.
-more movie like insanity including the office director that yelled at me in front of my kids and denied me my records and a copy of the patient rights- no wait this was before the investigation- Just drama from the office staff and assistants and my doctor refusing to refer properly but trying to get me to leave.
After months of progressively fading into the insanity of my denied and underrated condition, I finally left, still loving and trusting all of them and thinking they would come to their senses and stop treating my like a liability when I was not. I finally realized I could not keep coming back.  (except the office director and the unnamed director, I did not love them at all and due to my compromised mental state I though they must be the real enemy that my doctors were so afraid of)
... More drama, appeal denied, gaslighting, and "terminated" from the entire facility for the very conditions and problems I had tried to talk with them about that they were denying.
...In a fight for my life and left alone to try and find appropriate help after my doctor had told me she would help me find a new team but then had her staff tell me she could not so go through my insurance...
..more drama... I am literally fighting to stay ahead of the voices that say I need to be sacrificed for him and them, that I am dying and need to die.
In the nick of time I find a new provider that right away see my deteriorating condition that was misdiagnosed and gets me appropriate care. As I am starting to improve I knew I had to report them but still wanted to believe in the institution and providers so made every reasonable effort to reconcile, allow for clarification, and to seek understanding, which resulted in my being threatened by a lawyer with harsh false allegations and threats to criminalize and penalize me if I did not stay quiet about all of this.
...There is just no short way to explain this... and all my attempts fall short so very short...

The good news

This here blog is loosing interest again. But I also don't solicit it much, and the spinning eddies my brain has gotten stuck in, I am sure, get old and boring for others which is fine by me.
And that is exactly what I want to share today -the fine by me-ness of how I am feeling lately and, as my beautiful friend Renée would say, "the good news."
I am so incredibly grateful for the stability of mind and chemistry I have been feeling lately and pray that it continues. I am so incredibly happy with the improvement and that I am continuing to improve in my mood stability and even confidence.
I have been able to write about being broken by a therapist and then punished for it by the institution that fosters him, and the reality of my loss of touch with reality, and it has not caused the ptsd style symptoms that I have previously experienced. My skin is getting thicker and where before I would have been so worried about offending people and being misunderstood now I just don't care and can say confidently "it's on them" when someone is acting like a jerk.
I feel like I am coming back, finding myself and developing who I am again.
This is so nice.
But the nicest is that I am feeling happy, excited about things, and confident but not high. I don't feel like I am going high again...
Oh my gosh it has been so long!
...so long that as I write and allow myself to savor and enjoy this joy I do start to feel a bit leery of it and I remember it is time to take those meds that will keep this enthusiasm in check.
It is a strange existence that I have but I am so very grateful for it because it makes boring and normal so much more enjoyable!!
aaah
 I just wanted to share. I hope that I can keep this momentum and help others find it too.
And I think it is also worth noting that I have felt more love and support lately. Also I have a new medical and psychological team that is working with me and for me. These things make such a big a difference.

And we don't fight...hiding in plain sight

I'm doing really well. I am so glad that this is true and becoming more true every day.
And yet I am still very timid when it comes to putting myself out there
And when it comes to fighting that battle that I know more and more needs to be fought
but that, ironically, I also want to fight less and less as I improve..
It is mildly disturbing because I know that they know this about folks like me.
I know that they know we have little energy and little support to fight.
Plus they easily can paint you into a corner which they have done with me.
People won't listen because you are "crazy" and they are the experts who get to decide what form of crazy you are.
It is, of course, not them, it is never them, it is you
And that is crazy
and very sad...
So very very sad
so ...very ....very... sad
how I was used and then abused so very easily because I have had TBI,  mania (bipolar) and PTSD...
It is so very sad that they very people who should have been helping and protecting me used these things against me as justification for, or to cover, their misconduct.
It is very sad how people who can make a difference, who do have a voice fear aligning themselves with me because of the power and influence of the Institution that "ethically" discarded me for no good reason at all.
It is so sad that my talents and what I have accomplished are wasted and disregarded because they could not see me for what I am, because they fear that my knowledge and power threatens them and their's... Because they cannot see that I wish to work with them and not against them.
It is so very sad and my heart is so very broken by this even when I am well.
I see why I have hidden myself and why I run away from relationships and occupations before they abandon me. I see why TBI survivors and people with medical mental health issues hide, self isolate. We are abandoned and isolated, discredited, dismissed and dehumanized by those we are supposed to be able to trust and by the "experts" thus it becomes safer and less painful to hide and self isolate
I still feel safe sleeping and hiding.
I can also attest, for my own experiences and those of others, that some of our suicidal thinking is very much an inward reflection of an outward societal and cultural problem; it is a symptom of unhealthy societal perceptions and treatments of people who have mental health conditions. So we become like these:

Tiny little beauties hiding in plain sight.