I love to write but the format of writing and spelling are difficult for me. Mostly it is because of my processing disorder. And partly my outlook on life. For me "Just good enough" works. Why spend more energy on something for the best out put when just good enough gets you to the same place. Basically why spend more time on something you don't like or care about, when you can put time into things you do. Been that way all my life. This pushes against my need to do the best I can and usually wins when things get to frustrating.
So I had to write an autobiograhpy upon entering college to finish my BA. I wasn't graded on the material part but on grammer, spelling and format. I did just good enough. It is always hard to be graded on something that has personal value. The worse part for me was, the instruction and most of the class failed to understand it which is also a common occurance for me. Sometimes I feel like an alien where ever I am at because for what ever reason I fail to communicate properly leaving most of my conversations with people lacking in some way.
As I go through my papers from college and decide what to throw away and what to keep, I have also decided that some of them will go into this blog site. Maybe to be used as a vlog down the road. It will make finding them easier and to allow others to reflect on them as well. So here is the first one, my first paper of my Master degree.
Life is a rollercoaster is a famous metaphor. I understandit but it just doesn't work for me. The type of rollercoaster that would represent my life would defy the rules of sscience and never get any willing riders except for the death seekrs. The only control, on has with a rollercoast is whether or not to ge on the ride and I would have never gotten on this ride willing.
For me, life is an ocean. There is life above and below. If you flip over, you end up in the same place with the same but yet different landscape. I once saw how a dolphine sees their surroundings, which is an upside down landscape with the bottom being up and the top is down. This is a perfect metaphor for my brain. I am sitting in a little ru-a-dub tub and I am perfectly balanced in it. Sometimes I see the land and franticly try to get there becasue that is what a functional person does. The land represents the things that most people seem to have an easy time attaining. I just have to decide on a regular basis whether or not they are things I want.
I was born disfuntional into a disfunctional family with gernerations of disfunctional history. At the age of 38, Year 2003, I was told i had peronality disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder. On the website National Institute of Mental Illness, "borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness characterized by pervasive instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image and behavior. This instability often disrupts family and work life, long-term planning, and the individual's sense of self-identity.Originally thought to be at the 'borderline' of psyhosis, peoople with BPD suffer from a disorder of emotion regulation. While less well known than schizophrenia or bipolar disorder(manic-depressive illness, BPD is more common, affecting 2% of adults, mostly young women." https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/borderline-personality-disorder/index.shtml
The same site states that the mood swings can last up to a day, for me they can lat a lot longer. I can go into swings that last up to sixmonths which is why they took so long to diagnose. my road to self discovery stated withen I was 14, a day that is crystal clear in my memories. I woke up feeling different not like myself. I have no clear connection to my child self and my teenager self. It was like I was now two different people
There are many accounts of what it is like to be mentaly ill from all knds of different mental illness. There is a very good book about Borderline personality Disorder by Rachel Reiland. The Book is called " Get Me Out of Here". Parts of her life arin ways very much like mine, butin oterhways not. That is because mental illness tends to customize tot he person who has it. If a peerson has a curved spine, then he/she will learn to live a the spine that is bent and that changes lots of actions like how clothes look and how a person walks. It is the same for mental illness. I believe that all people know they are ill whether it is a phyical ill or a mental one. How they deal with it will differ, thus making it hard to diagnose.
i have many people from both professional and personal areas ask me what it feel like inside my head. I have thus come up with the iead inspsired from the movie "Men in Black". There is the scene where J and K are asking Beatrice about the bug that took over Edgar. She said, "It was like a big Edgar Ssuit." Thus I describe my illness as suits. Lately I have added color because color is a good way to describe my likes, dislikes, and emotions. So one morning I wake up with the blue suit on. the blue suit is that over happy state that reminds me of a Car Bear catoon. Little hearts and cute little yellow birds sing witht he happy face sun. The blue suit describes a manic phase. All the suits have different characteristic moods and likes/dislikes. I like the pink suit the best because that is the even keel where I walk like a normal person. I deal with emotions pretty well and seem to have aporopriate responses. An orange suit could be an angry suit or even diestructive ideal. Something will happen and I will wake up with a new suit. I have learned what kind of things trigger different mood swings. Most come as a hindsight of information.
Some suits are multi colored becaue inside of me, it is very easy to feel like yes or no to things. i am totally a maybe child, like waves that are hard and fast on top and cross waves down below. When someone sys, ' you know I like him an I don't, I totally get it. That is how I feel all the time. Emotions are not easy for me. Sometimes body language messes me up with how a person is talking. I tend to show an emotional face to the world but that is because that is the mask of control. If I can wait before making a choice, I love that but life doesn't always give us time to make the choices slowly and then my reptile brain needs to be kicked into overdrive, to deal with things quickly and usually ends up making the less then desirable choice. I live in that flight or fight pattern daily though I am now better at maintaining a balance due to self understanding i have learned over the years.
Now that we have established that I have had many large tital waves in my life and things from beneath the waves deciding to move me in other currents it is easy to see that my experiences with counselors has best been interestig. As a child my teachers liked me and wanted to care for me, while my peers didn't. I loved to do school work which made me very popular with the teachers. Learning is to this day very exciting to me and helping others to learn is what moved me towards my carreer choices. I was tutor in high school and Jr. college for people who had issues learning to read. My first conselor I remember meeting was in 6th grade getting ready to go to Jr. High School and he seemed to feel i was going to hae problems. He was right. Academically school was always easy, it was the peer interactions that prove to be trickier.
In high school, my counselor made the recommendation that I see the school mental health worker. I did not do well with him and he did not do well with my parents. At this time my parents finally seperated and my whole got a whole lot stormier. I was forced to take care of myself and proceeded to do a horrible job of it. It was decided I need to see a therapist more often but my parents refused to participate as was required and I stopped receiving any menatl health help. I was removed from high school and sent to a continuation high school for drop out, criminals and pregnant teen girls.
At my new high school, my art teacher was also my counselor. He was one of the main reasons that the school staff became my new family to take over with the one that had left me out in the cold. I wish I could say I trusted them all but I didn't because my mental health wouldn't let me. Adults lied all the time and hurt you because they had the power and many refused t o see how the world really treated me. It was always my fault somehow for eevery thing that happen. My fault that my father was a drunk, my fault that my uncle abused me, my fault my mother decided to relive her teen life, my fault that the peers hurt me. Always my faut. How could I trust anyone when those i should have been able to trust had failed me. It is a lesson that I have worked hard to correct.
I was once told that other people can sense when a person isn't quite right and that is why many children will shun a child who is menatlly ill. Mentally ill children make great targets especially when others support the attacks. Teachers, parents and others were quick to ask, "waht did you do to make them act that way towards you?" I have not only in my own life found this to be true but also in other children's lives that I have been lucky enough to be a part of. For me, I just learn to work hard to make people feel comfortable around me, but teaching children to social can be a bit harder.
All of my adult life there has been a need to ehlp if I can because that is something that was always missing in my yout, people who wanted to help. Really help, while my teachers were kind they never pushed to find out what would be really helpful for me. I learned that there are people who just need a little extra help for all kinds of reasons. Since I was 16 years old I have tutored peers, adults and children with special needs in one way or another. Social skills is one skill that many people seem to lacking or just need a little extra help in understanding. I think because there isn't a course on can take to learn what they need to know, it is just taken for granted that we will all learn it by being part of a group(family, peers and society). Sometimes thought these groups take it for granted that every one knows how to interact with others, especially if the individual is very smart. Really smart children can get lost in social actions and few peoople realize that even now in 2003. I am very good at observing a person and seeing where they may be missing an important of the silent code that every society has when learning and using social interactions ad cues.
When I decided to pursue the careeer of behaviortherapy, I was told I needed a masters degree. At the time I was following the path of a teacher, even though I didn't really wantt to be a school teacher. I have a talent that kind of has moved me down a certian career path. I can desing a lesson plan for anyone, I have a way of understanding how people learn. I learn this while in school of computer software programing. Though I had really been doing it for a long time, like teaching people to read.. i have a talent for teaching the most unteachable(described that way by others who tried and failed to teach them anything) children. I have changed many children's lives and many have come back over the years and thanked me for doing my best with them. I don't really believe that anyone is unteachable but that rather it is our own expectations of what is needed to be taught based on what their brains can do. I am very proud of the work I have done and the accomplishments I have helped others to achieve.
In my life at this time, I sit and wonder do I have what it takes to be a counselor, I have to think do they let crazy people become counselors. Most of the psychologists I have worked with in the school systems have told me yeas because we are all crazy and a few of us are menatlly ill. I believe it is important to tell people I am mentally ill. Most people have their own concepts of what mental health issues look like and how each one should be treated. Many people are afraid of mentally ill people espcially mentally ill children. They are fearful of asking questions. I know that sometimes it is hard to know what is appropriate to ask. When peoople ddeal with mental illness they still want to put peoople int an area or slot that is very easy to understand, but it is never that easy because well, people really are not easty. It would be grand if we were all like those cookie cutter perfect people and we all came from cute little perfect homes and lives but imperfections occur in all kins of different ways. And while many peoople may understand this logically, they fail to refelct it in their own lives and the lives around them.
One of the things I think I can bring from my own history to my career as a counselor is that I do know how it feels. There is none of theat, " Wow did she really say that or do that?" I know that people can do the things that makes most of the societies' population go, "wait what?" I observe people and wait to see what is going on before I decide if they need help or not. People say "help me" in many ways without saying they need it.. I know how to wait for those signs.
I have been an employee of various schools for over ten years working with all kinds of school populations. I have been working in both regular education and special needs. I like working with children and find joy working with those that others have gotten very frustrated with. I know how it feels to be held hostage by your brain and your illness. I have been a caregive and taught people how to care for themselves and their children. All of these jobs will help me become the best helper I can be in the therapy field. I do believe I am sensitivite to the needs of people and nojudgemental about their choices they make and the lifestyles they choose to live. I very much believe that every one has the right to be happy and content.
one of my biggest challenges is that I nned to understand my own illness and then to get others to understand it without it becoming an issue to how well I can do in being helpful. People are very leery about letting people with mental illness work with others. I can understand why, but not all people want to hurt others. I want to help, but I can't fix people only guide them to make their own choice to helpthemsleves.
So as i float in my ocean learning the suits I need to be successful and knowing what kind of suits I am wearing and how that helps or disrupts my life, I think about how maybe I need a super hero suit. One that can protect me while helping others. I know i will do good in this new career path I have choosen and it may move me in another current as I learn more about myself and what I have to offer the world.
The End: Not really. This was written about 16 years ago and a lot changed along the way. But I kept learning about myself which was very helpful. I don't have many manic eposides. I have learn that PTSD can cause a lot of suit changing, so I feel like I am in and out of the closet of my mind. But through all of it the one thing I did learn is the best thing you can do for yourself is not give up or give in. Sometimes it is just best to float in the sun and bask while taking a moment to reflect in the waves that life is most certianly interesting and rarely dull.
I know this was a rather long bit of writing but most papers in college are required to be long. I hope this gave you some insight to how I use to think of myself and how far I have come. Catch you all on the flip side and i am outta here....Peace all.
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