mental-illness

I don't want to be the person who gasps in fear whenever she hears the sound of a doorbell or a phone. I just want to lose myself in these hills, in the river winding west to the city of bridges.

You__e innocent until proven guilty,_ Mandy exclaimed, unable to hide her gleeful smile. She missed the way people used to have normal conversations, used to be more caring for each other than themselves, back in the Seventies and Eighties. These days, she realized, neighbors kept to themselves, their kids kept to themselves, nobody talked to each other anymore. They went to work, went shopping and shut themselves up at home in front of glowing computer screens and cellphones_ but maybe the nostalgic, better times in her life would stay buried, maybe the world would never be what it was. In the 21st century music was bad, movies were bad, society was failing and there were very few intelligent people left who missed the way things used to be_ maybe though, Mandy could change things. Thinking back to the old home movies in her basement, she recalled what Alecto had told her. __e wanted more than anything else in the world to be normal, but we failed._ The 1960__ and 1970__ were very strange times, but Mandy missed it all, she missed the days when Super-8 was the popular film type, when music had lyrics that made you think, when movies had powerful meanings instead of bad comedy and when people would just walk to a friend__ house for the afternoon instead of texting in bed all day. She missed soda fountains and department stores and non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags, she wished cellphones, bad pop music and LED lights didn__ exist_ she hated how everything had a diagnosis or pill now, how people who didn__ fit in with modern, lazy society were just prescribed medications without a second thought_ she hated how old, reliable cars were replaced with cheap hybrid vehicles_ she hated how everything could be done online, so that people could just ignore each other_ the world was becoming much more convenient, but at the same time, less human, and her teenage life was considered nostalgic history now.Hanging her head low, avoiding the slightly confused stare of the cab driver through the rear view mirror, she started crying uncontrollably, her tears soaking the collar of her coat as the sun blared through the windows in a warm light.

Repression. Her therapist, Dr. Solomon, loved the word. He'd say it slowly, letting it roll off his tongue. Sometimes he'd add a chin stroke for good measure. He always looked pleased when he did this, like he'd discovered the Caramilk secret or something.

It is psychotic to draw a line between two places.It is psychotic to go.It is psychotic to look.Psychotic to live in a different country forever.Psychotic to lose something forever.The compelling conviction that something has been lost is psychotic.Even the aeroplane's dotted line on the monitor as it descends to Heathrow is purely weird ambient energy.It is psychotic to submit to violence in a time of great violence and yet it is psychotic to leave that home or country, the place where you submitted again and again, forever. Indeed, it makes the subsequent involuntary arrival a stressor for psychosis.

Although it is important to be able to recognise and disclose symptom of physical illnesses or injury, you need to be more careful about revealing psychiatric symptoms. Unless you know that your doctor understands trauma symptoms, including dissociation, you are wise not to reveal too much. Too many medical professionals, including psychiatrists, believe that hearing_voices_is a sign of schizophrenia, that mood swings mean_bipolar_disorder which has to be_medicated, and that depression requires electro-convulsive therapy if medication does not relieve it sufficiently. The __edical model_ simply does not work for dissociation, and many treatments can do more harm than good... You do not have to tell someone everything just because he is she is a doctor. However, if you have a therapist, even a psychiatrist, who does understand, you need to encourage your parts to be honest with that person. Then you can get appropriate help.

Some survivors can be wary of most people, yet blinded by compassion toward fellow survivors or others who suffer _ or who pretend to suffer, or exaggerate their sufferings, in order to take advantage of the survivor. Some survivors overidentify with other survivors, not realizing that even if someone was traumatized or suffers in a similar way, it doesn__ necessarily mean that person is honest. Being either overly suspicious or overly trusting can create problems with a partner who is able to judge the sincerity of others more realistically.

If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain _ in time you will move through your pain.

It felt like this was never going to end. The world wasn't going to stop crashing down until there was nothing left of me but dust.

Every lineament of the girl's wasted body is a testament to her inner turmoil. Willow can only imagine what kind of pain she must be in to destroy herself that way. She knows there's something ironic in her compassion for the other girl, but she can't help feeling that this utter mortification of the flesh is far worse than anything that she herself has done.

My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She__ set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. I__ begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were fading and blending in with walls. She was shrinking. Or maybe her sphere of influence in the family was shrinking. My dad glanced at her, too, and then wrote something on a napkin. He slid it across the counter to me__on__ worry. Come home in one piece. Have fun and act like a sixteen-year-old for a change.

Any time I let it, the weight of living creeps in and starts to drag her down. It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored. People talk to her, but it feels like they are outside a house, talking through the walls. There are friends, but they are people to spend time with, not people to share time with. There's a false beast that takes the form of instinct and harps on the pointlessness of everything that happens.

It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when we__e deprived of something meaningful.

If you put the wrong foods in your body, you are contaminated and dirty and your stomach swells. Then the voice says, Why did you do that? Don't you know better? Ugly and wicked, you are disgusting to me.

With a damp palm, I turned the knob and cracked open the door. She was asleep in her freshly made bed. I can__ explain how relieved I felt for this simple mercy. She was here and safe on clean sheets.

It was the face of a human being who__ been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.

Uncommon anxiety came to us in common hours when other people were doing mundane things like taking out the trash or checking their phones. But there was nothing to be done for this. We couldn__ change who we were or what had happened.

depression in its major stages possesses no quickly available remedy: failure of alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder as it reveals itself to the victim, and one that helps situate it squarely in the category of grave diseases.

Show me what you've written," I said, although I wanted desperately to avoid looking at it.