A Tightly Woven Web of Mental Illness and Mental Health

Hello Good People! If you have any need of gifts for Mother’s Day, or wanted to have a look at another blog, I have partnered up with another blog website called Dear Ava. Visit them here: https://dearava.com

I know most of you would like to get into the meat of my blog, but I wanted to mention a couple of things. First of all, there is a photo on the right hand column of this blog —————————>                                         and if you click on it, you can download a free copy of my latest book, “Alert and Oriented x3: A Snapshot of a Severe Psychosis” Those of you that read and enjoy this book could really help me out by doing one of two things: one is to write a review of it for amazon, and the other is to consider becoming my Patreon sponsor. The reason I am asking people to pledge me money is because I am switching to offering my work for free or at very low cost because I decided it is more important to help others and reach as many people as I can than to get rich, but still I have expenses to meet, so I am asking those who can afford it to visit my Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/leifg and consider sponsoring me for $5 to $8 a month. For those that do sponsor me, I will regularly send new content I create, such as short stories and poems, and have special offers open only to those who are able to sponsor me. Now for the blog at last!

So, I have been thinking a fair bit about something. The first and most prevalent thing going through my head is that right now I am extremely sane. I don’t know if anyone out there has had the opportunity to take a WRAP course (Wellness Recovery Action Plan) but part of what they teach about is to try and get to know your illness or addiction. As you get to know it, you start to look for signs that first of all you may be having a stressful day and then writing out different coping strategies you have to help you get through it. Then you go to the next level and you try to be aware of when you are sliding into the danger zone of your addiction or mental health problem (this is not accurate of course, but I would encourage others to look up and read up about WRAP on their own and definitely consider taking the course, and if you have a mental health issue it isn’t a bad idea at all to download the app from Google or The Apple Store and fill out all the information so you have all of your personal coping tools written out for yourself) there is more, which I will try to explain in a moment, but something I have been learning to do lately is simply to be able to tell when I am falling asleep. I don’t know how many others have the same problem I do, I know insomnia is a curse of people who aren’t working and take medications. My problem is that unless I take something to help me sleep I will only sleep 1-2 hours at a time, then feel the extreme need to have a snack before trying to go back to sleep. This packs on the pounds in no time and I have been struggling not just with not feeling rested during the day, but also with gaining far too much weight to be healthy. I have even been diagnosed now with diabetes, and having a heck of a time lowering my weight to improve the condition.

Anyhow, to get back to the indications that I’m asleep, it often takes me a fair while to fall asleep, and I have to lie down stone still for quite a while. I try to notice when my thoughts become garbled and when I am thinking of things that don’t make sense. This is when I know it is time to sign off and try and rest as much as I can. This method is also extremely useful, along with tools given me by taking the WRAP course, in keeping a close eye on my sanity in general. At one point I made an actual list, but over time I have been just keeping the list of indicators I may be having a ‘breakdown’ in my head. One of the most serious ones is when I am being paranoid. Last time I got sick, I became deathly afraid that the people in the apartment next door to me could hear all I did and were angry at me and literally wanted to kill me because of the noise I was making. I started tip-toeing around the apartment, opening my cabinet drawers with extreme care and caution. This is an extreme thing, but I have now tried to become more aware of when I have rational fears and when I have irrational ones.

The next thing that will indicate to me that I am near the point of needing help is when I start to think that there are people from my past who still want to help me become rich or own great things, or even marry a certain person I went to school with many years ago. Thinking about this one person at all is distressing, but when I start to think that she is contacting me, which she would never do (this person is happily married and wants nothing to do with me) then I know that I am in psychosis. The first thing I should do when this happens is to try and find a way to contact my doctor and see about being checked in to a psychiatric ward or psychiatric hospital.

What is truly great is that right now I feel very comfortable in my own home, I don’t worry at all about my neighbours, and I even have a close female friend who has made me totally forget about this girl from my past. At one point I was thinking about her so much I actually approached my doctor with the concern that I was a stalker. It was good to hear from him that if I were a stalker I wouldn’t be telling him about these things though he couldn’t do much to help my unhealthy thoughts about this person. Again another positive thing is that I have never gone out of my way even slightly to see her or approach her and I really don’t want to.

One of the greatest things about literature, and about being a writer is that you can play with and explore things that haven’t quite happened. Yesterday I found myself writing out a story about a middle aged man who was obsessed with a woman to a point of comparing every female he saw to her, and as the story progressed, he met a young woman online who he actually thought was the person he was obsessed with conspiring to finally fall in love with him. I would just love to be able to put this story here on the blog, but the truth is that if I did, it would mean that in the eyes of publishers, this story was published and it would significantly decrease the value of it. If anyone really does want to read it, and take advantage of more creative content from me, I encourage you to become a Patreon sponsor, it would do so much to help me get my work to a public that it can really help a lot. Once again, my Patreon profile can be found at https://patreon.com/leifg there is no obligation to do this though, and if you can’t or don’t want to sponsor me, you will still get this blog and you can still download and share my book all you want. Take care dear readers, and for those who are able, I thank you for your support!

The Wonderful and Amazing Side of Living With Bipolar or Schizophrenia and Depression With Anxiety

Hello Dear Readers! I tried to get an image into this post but ended up with TWO! Sorry, beyond my control.  Please scroll down past the below book cover to read today’s blog.

The book cover below is my finest work so far in my career, which goes deep into what it is like to suffer from a mental illness and to slowly recover. I have gotten a lot of great feedback about this book, a lot of it from people who either work in the field of mental illness or suffer from one themselves. I would encourage anyone who reads this blog to order their copy and suggest it to anyone they knew who works in the field to buy one as well. The book is $18 USD and can be found at amazon.com just click the link and it will take you directly to the ordering page. I really feel the message of decreasing stigma and increasing awareness of mental illness is something we all need to strive towards, so please support a struggling writer and enrich your mind at the same time. (more blog to follow below)

You can also click this text to be taken to an ordering page for my book.

Professors and All Educators can purchase class sets and I am available for public speaking engagements which I have trained and been richly rewarded for.

Well, I wanted to post a cat picture but I was having problems getting my photo editor on WordPress here going. I wanted to talk a little about cats and how they relate to us all. I have always been fascinated with cats. They are so incredibly cute, they often have a surprising degree of intelligence (I once met a cat who could use the toilet and even flush it). One of the things I have often envied of cats is partially their trust when they are in a home where they are treated well and loved. All they have to do is find some place warm and they will curl up and drift away. Cats spend a good portion of their lives sleeping but still have the ability to jump up on laps, climb a book case or get into all sorts of trouble. As I approach 50 now I am finding that I have less and less energy to to the things I want to and I find it extremely necessary to work out often to keep myself fit. I don’t know if cats completely enjoy the lives they live, but it all seems simple enough, a little can of food now and then, a few ‘good kitty’ back and belly rubs a day, perhaps a long nap next to the radiator and they at least seem content. Traditionally, cats do have a valuable job around the house, they are meant to kill vermin and mice.

One of the things that has bothered me was that for a long period of time in my own life, I sort of lived like a cat. I laid down a lot, I gave myself permission to get through a day and not accomplish anything. Sometimes that can be very difficult for someone with bipolar to do as the highs of the ‘highs and lows’ sometimes make you crave action. I still feel pretty guilty about this, but when I was in this state of boredom and wanting action, I often went and gambled, either in a casino or at a video lottery machine in a bar. These were absolute poison to me, I became addicted to throwing away my money for the faint hope of getting back more than what I put in. Even now I have memories of the thousands or perhaps even millions of times I spun the reels on those damn machines hoping for a full row of bells or lucky 7’s. Total self destruction, and total addiction to the adrenalin, the money mattered little. It of course was extremely humiliating to call up my dad the night after spending everything to beg for or borrow enough for a little food and maybe a cheap movie rental.

I am now in an interesting position. I work a couple of days a week for a couple of hours and I have been very careful with my money and so I have been thinking of taking some time to just work on my writing or just be by myself. I think this would be a recipe for disaster. I feel so good when I go and work, when I can reach out to someone in one of my writing classes so that they can help heal or express themselves. Just like having the desire to have disposable income, I really want to have disposable time. I love it when I can come home at noon from work, not be completely broke and be able to set up my video game console or find a book to read that holds my interest. One of the funniest things is coming home early like that doesn’t always help with my writing. When I get inspired to write, it is usually around 1:00 am when all is quiet and I am a little tired but not so tired coffee won’t wake me. What often happens is by 4:00 or so I have a short story draft finished and then in a mad panic I will try and find people to read it when it is in no shape to be seen by anyone. I think one of the reasons my writing career hasn’t taken off like it could is this laziness to write second, third, and fourth drafts. It all goes back to the idea of having disposable time on my hands. To have that time to just be a cat and take a long nap and a large sized snack. What worries me the most is that I am going to just continue to be something of a lazy writer, and I know a lot of people in psychiatric hospitals or under treatment have their little vices as well. Some love to eat and order pizza five times a week. Some get involved in sports they will never compete in or idolize sports figures as though they knew the person. There really is a good and bad side to this all though. I believe that when a person has a mental illness, it is extremely important to allow them to have their stress-free time so they can heal. Having psychosis or going into a psychiatric hospital is a horrible experience, and a person has to build up their self-image and sort out all of their problems which can take quite a bit of time. I am so grateful that when I was spending this time, I had a dad that would drive all the way to my apartment, pick me up and take me for a long walk in the River Valley of Edmonton. This act of kindness and my interest in reading is what got me through, what made it possible for me to bounce back.

Another issue I wanted to discuss is that some people worry about getting older, and some people use coping skills that make getting older not an issue to themselves. One of the things I know about getting older is that as your body ages, and your mind isn’t as sharp as when you were a teen, you simply become more comfortable in your own skin, you may have a lot of aches and pains, but you are much better equipped to cope with them. I have also noticed that my dad who is now 82 sleeps much less, and takes a walk to visit my brother, then after cooking supper and playing cards with friends, he reads a lot of incredible books until it is time for him to sleep. He never seems to worry that his time on Earth is limited, that he is ‘nearer the end than the beginning’ but it doesn’t bother him. Keeping yourself busy when you feel like you are old and useless can be a good way to pick up your spirits. Of course, if you feel very deep down in the dumps, it is extremely important to discuss things with a family doctor or psychiatrist. Something I have learned to do is to try and work as much as I can, to save my money, and then take the money and invest in people, in friendships. And it really pays back. I was very saddened to read a letter an elderly woman wrote scratched out in almost illegible print of a note she gave her next door neighbour, begging her to consider being her friend. Our relationships can be some of the most important and rewarding things about our lives, and if a person gives to others of their time, their resources, sometimes even the use of their homes when old friends are passing through town can truly build better, more, and stronger relationships that gets a person through the tough times.

Enjoy life. Many people don’t like to leave their houses because they have anxiety, but I think the truth is that hiding away only worsens the situation, and it doesn’t do much good for a person’s social skills. I have extreme anxiety. I have been able to overcome it when I am giving a talk or a presentation about mental illness to eager students who are there to listen, but when I get up in front of a crowd at a thing called ‘The Edmonton Story Slam’ to recite a five-minute story, my hands shake so hard I can barely hold the paper I read from and I have a hard time looking at audience members. But in truth, I have made some fantastic friends from going there as a regular storyteller, and it has greatly enhanced my ability to feel comfortable around people.

Well, dear reader, I should truthfully leave things at that. Once again I put out the call for anyone to suggest a topic for a future blog. I can almost always be reached at viking3082000@yahoo.com

For now, just be a cat. Don’t worry where your next meal is coming from, if it doesn’t arrive you can go out and find great sport in catching a bird. Nap often and never turn down a little affection.

Best,

 

Leif Gregersen

 

 

 

Schizophrenia and Bipolar Won’t Stop Me But They Can Make Me Feel Like S*%@

 

Please support my efforts to continue and expand this blog and vlog by becoming a Patreon Supporter of mine

https://www.patreon.com/leifg

When I was in the hospital some 19 years ago, I really thought my life was over. It was a long, drawn out affair where supposedly I was doing something wrong and I couldn’t be helped until I stopped doing that, and each step of the way I was threatened with everything from going to a real jail to being tossed (literally) into an isolation room at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.

I must have written a hundred times about that hospital experience, but there is a lot to be said about it. I was in a mental hospital for six months, and I really thought the people there couldn’t break me. But again and again I was toyed with, threatened, assaulted, isolated, and ignored and eventually I didn’t know my ass from a hole in the ground. When I was finally released, I was thinking straighter, but everything in my life was a mess. I wonder, I keep wanting to put my former doctor in there in a good light or at least try and avoid talking about him, but in recent months I have been given a contract to teach patients in the same wing of the hospital that my former doctor works and all I see is the same old ignorant, pompous ass that I used to hate so much. And time and again when I talk to people that are stagnating, having been in the hospital for many months and had almost nothing done for them I ask who their doctor is and they name the man who was in charge of my every breath and whisper for five long months. Even the staff hate him.

It was an interesting situation I was in. I had slowed down the dose of one of my three or four medications that had been working well for me for some time. All the doctor had to do was ask me what happened, then go back to the original dose and I would have been fine in weeks. It seemed though that they wanted to torture me in there. I will say though, as a person who works in the psychiatric hospital, sometimes it takes incredible amounts of patience to try and help people who are in there. I really don’t blame the patients, they are in a confused and difficult situation and it is hard to tell who is their friend and who is their enemy. It is often heartbreaking to see people who have been in the hospital for a very long time that I once knew well and all they seem to be able to do is to tell me to f— off or worse.

Still, there are many rewards to the job. About a year and a half ago I had a creative writing class in a different part of the same hospital, and there was a patient who was extremely disagreeable, and disrupted and insulted and more. But he had his wits about him and I kept on with my patient stance and at the end of the class, he said that the writing class was the best therapy he had ever received.

I guess what I would like to write about in this blog is what to do if you have a doctor that you don’t feel is working in your best interests. It may not be good to go directly to that doctor and tell him off and request a different doctor. I did that and what happened to me was that I was buried in the system, treated like garbage and lost 6 months of my young life plus the years it took to recover from the trauma of living in a place like that long-term. What I would suggest is to write to the hospital administrator, and perhaps the head psychiatrist, and try and explain your case. The sad truth is that many people who are in the hospital will be delusional and unable to function well enough to do this task, and there are others who may be able to do it, but not without tipping their hand that they are in a state of severe psychosis. If at all possible, it is important to keep a good relationship with your doctor in a psychiatric ward or hospital, and to be as honest and forthright as you can be. Sometimes it is very hard for a treatment team to find out what the best course of action is to get a person better. Just about any hospital visit to a secure ward is going to come hand in hand with a certain amount of anger, violence, belligerence, and with the level of training that some of the staff have, you will find that their chief method of dealing with these reactions are with anger, violence, and belligerence. I hate to think how many patients across the world are sitting in a hospital not properly medicated, with no fixed date of being able to leave because of the fact that the people who are supposed to be helping them are childish and vengeful towards people who have lost their ability to control their actions without just a little help, ie the right medications and time enough to stabilize.

The good news in my case is that yes, it took time for me to stabilize, yes I had a terrible, traumatic time in the hospital, but the fact remains that one day I did walk out of there, and I accomplished so many things from publishing books to travelling a much larger chunk of the globe than I ever thought I would. I would like to think I beat those awful people that had no faith in me, didn’t believe me when I said I had written a book (I’ve now written over 13) but the truth is when you have a mental illness you never really win. One year ago, I was put on a medication that simply didn’t work for me. I got horribly mentally ill in a short period of time and it was only through the help and assistance of my dad, my doctor in the hospital, and an incredible treatment team at the Grey Nuns Psychiatric Ward in Edmonton that I was able to recover. I still don’t feel 100% after that incident, but I have a rule that I can’t let a day go by without trying to improve my future and improve myself. In the time since I left the Grey Nuns, I wrote a book about that hospital experience, and just finished another collection of short stories, and so many opportunities have come my way. I wish all of you the greatest success in your endeavours, remember if you would like to ask me to cover a specific topic, or if you would like to order one of my books, or even just tell me your story, I would love to hear from you at viking3082000@yahoo.com I currently have two memoirs regarding my journey, “Through the Withering Storm” and “Inching Back to Sane” which cover my teen years before I was diagnosed, and my adult years after I accepted my diagnosis. Class sets are available, and more information about these and the rest of my books can be found through links on the header of this website. Best!!

Leif Gregersen

First Mental Health Coping Strategies Video Blog

Are There Alternatives to Psychiatric Medication?

 

What a beautiful summer day to lie in the grass and watch a soccer game. When I was younger, I really didn’t factor in the fact that your body decays (in most people) as you get older. I had read a few articles about people in their 80s running marathons, and athletes having comebacks at 50. I started to decline a long time ago, and it likely had to do a lot more with my bull-headedness not wanting to listen to advice like not running in excess of 5 miles, not running on pavement, getting proper shoes for every type of exercise. That was the beginning, I destroyed my knees at the age of 20 years old. But what really got to me was not just this disability, it was also the medications I took. They made me drowsy, lazy. They made my hands shake and messed with my balance. Getting through this was one of the more difficult times of my life. I was good at a few sports as a youngster, I was a decent basketball player, but for all of my teen years I was a smoker which made this nearly impossible. I also loved to play pool, going to the pool hall every morning instead of the second half of my Law 30 class. I dreamed about one day having a pool table at home, and I think I could have been on my way. But medications derailed me. What could I do?

Medications have gotten better since then, and I even know of a few people who take what I do and it works for them and also their hands don’t shake at all. I really don’t ever want to recommend people to go off medication, but there are instances where a person can be on too much, a Doctor can usually spot this in a moment. This is why sometimes it is useful to get a second opinion, especially when you find your medication side effects debilitating. My mom, near the end of her life, was on a lot of medications, but my parents put a lot of faith in her psychiatrist. It hurts to think she could have had a better mental state or a better quality of life if she had been on less. One thing I want to emphasize is that in her final years, she would never miss a psychologist’s appointment because in her mind and my dad’s, that was the only treatment that helped anything.

There are two sides to this coin, one is that I have encountered (and I am no therapist or doctor) studies that said therapy alone is better than medication alone. Of course as I said, I don’t recommend going off meds, but if you can somehow combine your treatment there are chances of feeling better than you are now and any time healthy means you are headed towards a time when new and ‘better’ medication can be developed. My former Psychiatrist, an amazing man named Bishop, whenever I asked about a new medication he would say that what I had was working well, he didn’t like tinkering with people who were doing well, but left it up to me, emphasizing the question, “do you want to take a chance at going back where you were?” Well, for me that was no option. Last time before I saw that doctor that I had been in the hospital I was in a terrible state, being beligerent and abusive, deluded into thinking the world revolved around me and having people respond in kind with everything from flat out insults and threats to a severe beating from a guy who didn’t like the way I crossed the street. No, I did not want to go back there.

Some time later, with a doctor that my old doctor recommended, a decision was made to try a newer medication, and I got very ill and spent a month in the hospital–after I had worked so incredibly hard to build my life back and show stability and such. All at once I was delusional and paranoid to the extreme again. Sadly, this is something anyone with a mental illness must come to expect and prepare for. For more information, look into something called “The Wellness Recovery Action Plan” or WRAP. They have an app for phones that allow you to outline things like trigger warnings, ways to help with symptoms and more. The app is based on a course that I found very helpful, and attribute my quick recovery from the relapse of my condition too. It also helped that I had gained a great deal of knowledge about my condition, perhaps mostly by being a part of the Schizophrenia Society.

So, today’s blog is getting pretty long, I will sum things up and try to explain more in a future blog. First off, look into funding or affordable therapy. In Edmonton there are even free therapists as I am sure you can find in any major Canadian city. You drop in, fill out a form, and wait and see someone confidentially who is qualified. But this is a quick fix. When you find you care stable enough, I recommend things like the WRAP course and others, but I also recommend Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Just as a warning though, I believe they state that it takes a commitment of around 16 (if I remember correctly) sessions to read benefits. If you are having any problems finding resources, please email me and I will see if I can help connect you. Look for services you are insured for, and also for services operated on a sliding scale. I once spoke to a hospital counsellor after my mom passed and she wanted me to pay $20 or $30 a session, not so much because she needed the money, but she wanted to make sure I was able to commit and consider my treatment a priority.

I will just sum up and say, if you are having mental health difficulties, first try and contact your psychiatrist, then any psychiatrist, then a medical doctor, learn all you can about your illness, get active in learning (books) and groups (Wrap and many others). Find out all you can about your medications, then find out about counselling. And don’t worry if you seem to take one step forward and two back in your mental health journey, we all have good days and bad days.

Leif Gregersen

viking3082000@yahoo.com

Link to my first memoir:

Through the Withering Storm