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http://www.svherald.com/articles/2006/05/05/local_news/features_and_opinions/columnist1.txt
Saturday, May 6, 2006
Last modified Friday, May 5, 2006 1:25 AM MDT
Finding the freedom to heal
COMMENTARY BY PAT WICK
HERALD/REVIEW
Today I wanted to share the following story from an area resident:
My name is Kim, and I am 34 years old. I have lived in Sierra Vista since 2003. Over the years, I have been diagnosed with several brain-based illnesses, including major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder and borderline personality disorder. I also have struggled on and off with an eating disorder.
I grew up in a family with a strong military background. I have never tried illicit drugs. I had always been a good student, graduating third in my high school class. I received a scholarship for college and graduated from ASU (Arizona State University) with my bachelor’s in social work in 1995.
I was a teenager when I first experienced depression. At 15, I was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital twice. Both times my parents took me to the hospital, only returning weeks later to pick me up when it was time to leave. There has been a conspiracy of denial ever since. No one talked about what happened to me or asked how I was doing. No one took me in to follow up on the treatment that was prescribed for me. In fact, my parents didn’t even tell me what I was diagnosed with at the time. It was as though it never happened.
Through my 20s, despite my illness, I put myself through college and managed to work and carry full class loads. While I was able to manage symptoms of my illnesses to some extent with medication, there were times I still engaged in self-harming (cutting, bruising, burning myself), and struggled with my eating disorder. I simply learned ways to keep it hidden from others.
I began working in the mental health field right after college. For four years I worked at a suicide prevention center as a behavioral management specialist. I also have worked with the mobile crisis response team in Maricopa County.
Ironically, it was soon after I began working at the Arizona State Hospital in 2002 that I started to hear voices. I also began to experience visual and tactile hallucinations. I recognized these as symptoms of psychosis and was absolutely terrified. I called my doctor and was immediately hospitalized. My whole world came crashing in. I was terrified that I may never be able to work again or be a productive member of society. I gave up the hope of working on my master’s degree.
To survive, I went on public assistance, which to my family, especially my father, was unacceptable. In fact, he considered people who could not work, no matter the reason, to be “worthless, useless bums.” When I couldn’t “pull myself up by my bootstraps,” I became a source of shame and embarrassment to my family, and felt further isolated and alone.
I ended up moving to Sierra Vista a couple of years ago because my father was stationed here. Any idealized notion I had of becoming best buddies were obliterated soon after moving in with him. While he did provide a place for me to live, he also made it painfully clear that he was completely ashamed of me and resented having to help me.
For more than a year, I tried my best to work. I started at several part-time jobs, but found I wasn’t able to handle the stress, medications were not helping and electro convulsive therapy gave me memory problems. I couldn’t concentrate and was experiencing panic attacks. With the aid of public assistance, I was able to move out into my own apartment. It was only a year ago I felt well enough to think about working again.
Now, I feel like life has been presented to me for a second time. I started a part-time job at a wellness and recover center this past October. It is far different than any job I have had. I receive tremendous support from the other staff and feel I can help others. I am also attending a new group at SEABHS (Southeastern Arizona Behavioral Health Services) which uses a specialized approach called “dialectical behavioral therapy” for people with BPD. It is helping me to learn to cope with the symptoms of my illness more effectively.
I find myself evaluating my relationships, with friends and family. I am realizing that I can create my own circle of support, and I can choose to not deal with people who are trying to hurt me, take advantage of me, or who cannot be supportive. Contact with my family is very limited now, with the exception of my 92-year-old grandmother, who continues to be a very supportive person in my life.
My family’s response to my illness is a perfect example of stigma. Stigma has affected my life in other ways as well. More recently, I experienced it from a neighbor. When I moved into my apartment in Sierra Vista, I shared with a neighbor a little about what I was going through. Recently, when I complained about noise and fighting coming from the neighbor’s apartment, the neighbor screamed: “Don’t listen to her, she’s mental!”
Another example of the stigma I’ve experienced has to do specifically with the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. I learned while working in the mental health field, before being diagnosed with BPD, which has a unique stigma attached to it. It is a disorder most clinical professionals dread having to deal with. I had heard people say: “Oh those borderline people are impossible to work with, manipulative, difficult, don’t want to help themselves.” I think for this reason, when I was ultimately diagnosed with BPD, it was an extremely difficult label to accept. It was also very difficult to trust that any counselor or therapist would want to work with me, or be invested in helping me.
Those of us who are living with a brain-based illness really don’t want to have our illness. Most of us want to work, and make a positive contribution to the world. I don’t know where I see myself in 10 years, because this thing called “recovery” is so new to me. I want to take advantage of every opportunity to grow, and I think I need to give myself time to be with this before I set any concrete, long-range plans for my life.
I have a new tattoo. It is the Japanese symbol for “freedom”. It symbolizes for me my freedom from the judgment of others, freedom from self-harm, freedom to have boundaries, freedom to say “no,” freedom to choose who I want to have in my life, freedom to be myself, freedom to heal.
PAT WICK is assistant general manager of the Sierra Vista Herald/Bisbee Daily Review. She can be reached at
520-458-9440, Ext. 604, or by e-mail at pat.wick@wickcommunications.com.
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