A Wild Blogger Recognition Award Appears!

Jeanette at My Life with PTSD & Bipolar: Mental Health Matters kindly nominated me for
Write a brief story about how your blog began. I’ve been running The Dissociated Press for five years now (holy cats, time flies!) and have been documenting my journey to mental health–or at least, relative stability and improved daily functioning. When I started this blog in 2013, my life was a total mess. I was in an unhappy marriage and missing a lot of work because I was freshly diagnosed with bipolar 1 and adjusting to my new medications. I ended up losing that job, which was a major low point.

There have been a lot of low points throughout my blog-writing history, but things have dramatically improved in the last couple of years. I escaped from that unhappy, unsupportive marriage, enrolled in graduate school for clinical mental health counseling at a great school, and got engaged to a lovely, wonderful man.

I still hit depressive episodes from time to time, but unlike my pre-medication, bad relationship days, I take comfort in the knowledge that my life is so much better than I ever could have imagined. I have a wonderfully supportive partner, and his family is incredibly encouraging of me sharing my journey. My classmates have expressed appreciation for my candor, and I’ve been able to help a lot of people through my disclosures.

Advice for new bloggers is something I haven’t really thought about, but my main piece of advice is to write for yourself first and foremost. TDP has evolved over time–at first, it was a place for me to get my thoughts and experiences out into the ether in hopes of finding others who were also struggling.

Also, I like to focus on and directly address my readers as a group in my posts and always try to end a post with a positive thought or insight. It prevents the blog from feeling dreary and helps promote the overall message: recovery is possible, and recovery never looks the same for everyone. Your journey matters. Your message matters. Your experiences matter.

As I’ve gotten healthier and stopped focusing so much on my illnesses (which are still a main focal point of the blog, albeit in a different way), I realized that my relatively small following was a great audience for information about the stigma surrounding mental illness.

I realized that everyone, but especially others living with my specific conditions (PTSD with depersonalization/derealization and rapid-cycling type 1 bipolar disorder) could benefit from learning about the latest news and treatment options. I’m building up quite the library of scholarly articles and studies, and if there’s enough interest, I plan to post a few quick-and-dirty rundowns of them.

Again, I can’t thank Jeanette for this nomination–it came out of nowhere and I feel very honored about the whole thing and appreciate being recognized for my work. Validation and recognition for what I’m doing always feels nice! Also, the badge image is really cute.

My Picks for Nomination:

The Global PTSD Survivor Blog

Bloomin’ Uterus (a blog about endometriosis, which I also have)

Ruth at PTSD – Accepting, Coping, Thriving

 

 

News Day Tuesday: Acronyms! (Or: MDMA for PTSD)

Good morning, readers!

School started last week and there’s been a lot going on in my life on the personal side–my 93-year-old grandma, who essentially raised me as her own for most of my childhood, has been ill and I’ve once again been dealing with anticipatory grief.

Anyway, on a happier note, here’s some news for you about PTSD. (And it’s literally happy–it’s about Ecstasy!)

In a nutshell: those lovable FDA officials just granted MDMA “breakthrough therapy” status as a potential treatment for PTSD. Clinical trials will (hopefully) be easier to come by now, and I am very much looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Important distinction: MDMA isn’t FDA-approved, but this is a huge step in a very promising direction.

Right now, PTSD treatment options are super-limited. My brand is pretty wicked, but my only option for dealing with the symptoms is lorazepam/Ativan. I count myself lucky that I only have depersonalization/derealization, anxiety around crowds, and the occasional nightmare. It could be a lot worse. I’ve written extensively in the past about my experiences with dissociation (hence the name of the blog), but like most things, you get used to it.

But it’s not something anyone should have to “get used to.” None of us should have to accept the symptoms as our “new normal,” and for many, the symptoms are debilitating. That pretty much goes without saying (though of course, I decided to say it anyway).

I recently completed a research proposal for one of my summer classes, and while it was a painful process for someone who’s not a big research fan, it was definitely eye-opening. There has been shockingly little research done on depersonalization/derealization; most of what I encountered deals with “dissociation” in broader terms and the individual disorders are either not specified or are all lumped together in a mass that ultimately provides no insight about the actual conditions.

Anyway, that’s a post for another day. What I’m getting at is that PTSD is an incredibly complicated beast. While some symptoms are consistent, it never looks the same in two different people. Anecdotally, the symptoms can look different at various stages in a person’s life.

Seven years ago, I was having flashbacks (not the dramatic Hollywood kind where you’re literally in the memory–the kind where you sort of space out and the memory plays out in your mind’s eye while you’re pretty much unresponsive to the real world). Then, in 2012, the flashbacks stopped and the depersonalization/derealization got its hooks into me and has been hanging on for dear life ever since.

Like I said, you get used to it. The pain fades. You adjust to never really feeling “real,” to being in this perpetual dreamlike state. When it spikes, I try to welcome it as a new adventure and pay attention to what feels different without getting anxious or judging it as “bad.”

Still, it would be nice if there was something out there that could help just a little. I’ll be keeping my eye on the MDMA  breakthrough and keep you posted on further developments.

In the meantime, readers, what helps with your symptoms? Grounding exercises are one of my favorite things to do if I start to feel anxious. It’s less tedious than counting things.

News Day Tuesday: New treatment for PTSD?

Good morning, readers!

This week, I rustled up an article about some exciting developments in PTSD research.

Basically, scientists are looking at glutamate (one type of those fun little things in your brain that sends signals) and how alterations in glutamate levels affect PTSD. What this means for us is that PTSD is now being studied on a molecular level, which means that new treatments could be on the horizon!

My PTSD is generally well-controlled, as far as “controlling” it goes. I’m still mad-jumpy and don’t have a good time in crowds (the dissociation spikes, and sounds that hit my left ear first seem to make it worse, though my previous psychiatrist had no idea why). I still feel depersonalized/derealized every single day, though the level of detachment varies widely. I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes it better or worse, but admittedly, I’ve been super lazy about charting it.

However, I’m sleeping soundly for the first time I can remember. I think a lot of us can relate to the hypervigilance and, by extension, light sleeping. Loud noises still startle me awake and my fiance sometime scares the bejeezus out of me by touching me–gently–to wake me up. But! and this is good news–the sounds of the cats wheezing or vomiting or fighting don’t wake me in a panic. It’s more of a “God, this again?” reaction, which, while not fun, is better than waking up with a racing pulse and momentary confusion about where I am.

As far as journaling about symptoms goes, I’m still trying to figure out a system. How many times in a day should I note what’s going on upstairs? I don’t want to become obsessive about it, as I did with my mood journal when I was first beginning treatment for bipolar disorder. At the same time, I want to make sure I have an accurate log of my symptoms and the events that may have caused an increase/decrease in the weird floaty feelings of unreality.

That being said, it’s sometimes hard to notice the changes because they’re subtle. Because this has been chronic for six years now, it often takes an absolutely massive spike before I notice anything is off. On a related note, I often don’t notice the symptoms decreasing because hey, it’s my “normal” now.

Any ideas or tips, readers? Should I follow the standard day/time/preceding events/level (on a scale of 1-10) format I’ve used in the past for mood tracking? What system(s) do you use?

I look forward to hearing from you! I’ll see you next week and as always, stay safe and remember to say one nice thing to yourself every day. Today I have two: “My new DIY manicure is bangin'” and “I am surviving my fiance’s work trip with zero negative emotions!”

It’s important to focus on the positive, especially when our emotional weather is often stormy.