Trigger Warning: Descriptions of violence, mentions of suicide and gun use.
As I watch mass shooting after mass shooting play out on CNN and Obama’s recent town hall on guns, the same themes play out over and over. The mentally ill are consistently blamed for gun violence as a convenient scapegoat to avoid facing the real culprit for gun violence: toxic masculinity and the sheer ease and availability of gun ownership in America.
Trigger Warning: Descriptions of sexual assault while in a psychiatric facility, and being disbelieved by authorities.
i was getting ready for bed, when they brought in another girl. i’ll admit, i engaged her in conversation for a while, but then the conversation got awkward. she started saying things like “i want to fuck you” and “you have nice boobies” to the point where i got very uncomfortable. i told her to stop or i would go to sleep, as it was late and i had already taken my night meds.
I’ve stumped my therapist and psychiatrist, they cannot seem to find a cause or a cure to stop this behavior. It’s embarrassing in public, but I cannot stop. When I go to see my psychiatrist, I cannot stand up and say, “hey this is not working for me, this is not helping,” it’s always me agreeing on everything they say just to get out of there. Even with my therapist I still keep most things to myself.
TW: suicidal thoughts, abuse
All of this could’ve been prevented. All I needed was my mother to support me, build up my self esteem, get me help for my eating disorder, be someone I could talk to. Instead she tore down what little self esteem I had bit by bit, contributed to my eating disorder, and was generally untrustworthy, unpredictable, and indecipherable.
I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Brent Jones. In his first post with us, he writes a poem about emotions and self-esteem. Thanks for sharing with us, Brent!
La tempête fait rage dans mon coeur / The perfect storm rages in my heart
Quand les vagues prédestinées du destin rencontrent lentement le fond marin, l’océan dans sa grandeur n’est pas assez grand pour les contenir. / When the predestined waves of fate met the gradually shaped bottom of the sea floor, the ocean in its greatness was not big enough to contain it.
I have been binge/purge free for 4 months on the 9th. I’ve had to tackle it from multiple levels. The only thing that has worked for me is not trying to regulate what I eat and trying my damnedest not to get caught up in what is ‘healthy’ and what is ‘unhealthy’. I eat what I want, make sure I get enough, and stop when I’m full. This was NOT easy initially and I still have moments of panic and insecurity. I know I’ve lost a bunch of weight but I still weigh X pounds. I’m fat. (I claim that title intentionally.) So, there is the body dysmorphia and fat phobia to be addressed.
Once upon a time, there was me. I was a drunk. I wanted to die. I couldn’t handle the way I was living anymore. So I went into a recovery house. I failed. I went to another one. Three years into sobriety I had a mental breakdown. Things have been fucked ever since. But through it all I’ve also had this eating disorder, see. So it’s not enough to try to get my life back from mental illness. I’ve got an eating disorder too.
My alcoholism reached a head in spring of 2013, brought to desperation by the death of my wife and my subsequent despair. By this point I was drinking from three pm onward everyday, first wine and then vodka, whiskey or rum. Nothing would bring her back, but I could annihilate myself. It was starting to dawn on me, though, that this was making me nothing but miserable. I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything. I wasn’t socializing or running errands. I could barely cook. Being on disability, I wasn’t working. My full-time job was getting to the bottom of the bottle.
This is the final installment of the DBT Skills series. I want to say a special thank you to Breyonne for her hard work in writing this series – I know it will be useful for so many of our readers!
When I first heard the words ’emotion regulation’, the first thing I thought was, Oh great. Another therapist trying to tell me that feelings are just feelings, they can’t hurt me, they can’t kill me, blah blah yadda yadda. And I’ve been to enough therapy, enough counseling, enough self-help meetings to know this, even if only theoretically. So I wasn’t prepared to learn a whole lot from this module. I couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Trigger Warning: Mention of rape
I am beginning to pathologize the sexual desperation I have felt for a cis-male-flesh-cocked lover in my life lately. This is new for me as I have mostly never been able to enjoy penis-centric heterosexuality and I consider myself exclusively queer. I have been incredibly weighed down by my sexual dysfunction for my entire sexual life. By sexual dysfunction, I mean my inability to experience healthy arousal, be orgasmic and/or connect sexually with another person without fear of becoming triggered. I haven’t had many positive end results when attempting to experience sexual pleasure with another person of any gender/orientation.
