Being normal

I got to thinking about psychologists and the effort that is underway to update the Diagnostics Standards Manual, called DSM IV-TR in its latest iteration. I have no doubt that some of the conditions some people have and described, er. diagnosed, in the DSM are real and individuals need help if not intervention.

But I've slowly come to the conclusion those bunch of mostly white old guys are expressing more of their morality than a professional view of peoplef, and I say this for several reasons.

First, they call anything they think isn't normal abnormal. Ok, that's a word, but it's also a word that stigmatizes the individual that what life gave them and who they are isn't right and they're not like the rest of people, they're just not normal. They don't have a condition, but they have either a disorder or a diseaase, a mental health problem society wants them to at least treat if not cure them.

I find that repulsive.

People who are perfectly fine getting along and getting through life now have a label they're not one society thinks is normal, all because this crazy bunch of old white guys says so. Ok, that's a bad description of them, for today anyway, and there are a lot of good to excellent therapists and psychologists, but when you look back at the history of psychology up through the 1960's, it was established and dominated by a bunch of old white guys.

And they made it clear that their "opinion" was true and real about people, but in reality was just their opinion based on a set of observations they made with "patients" who they deemed mentally sick. And yes again, some were sick as some conditions are serious and require therapy, but some conditions in the DSM are simply made up ideas about being normal, meaning their morality of society.

I make no bones about the fact I have genetic (lifelong) Dysthymia. I was diagnosed in 1991 on Depression day (October) when I visited a clinic to see why have always had a mild depression since childhood with several episodes of severe depression. It turned out I was the only person that afternoon and had a near two hour conversation with a psychologist. I had a few followups with other psychologists, but mostly decided it wasn't worth the time.

Why?

Because psychologist have to first label you, meaning diagnose you using their interpretation of the DSM, and then they cure you, or they try. But the trick is this form of Dysthymia isn't curable, not with drugs, not with therapy, and not with a combination of both. These can help you deal with it and get through life better, but it doesn't do the one thing that is most important to you.

They don't inform and educate you about it. I've had some say I'm self-diagnosed, and that is partly true. After the session that day I read the DSM for a variety of conditions. I found and have a small collection of books dedicated to Dysthymia (since it's only given a passing glance in 99% of psychology books). And I listened to interviews with psychologists about depression and its various forms.

In short, a psychologist pointed me in the right direction seeing who and what I was and I followed the information trail. And I've followed the trail to understand it, to learn to live with it and to get through life. I'm a normal human being, as normal as everyone else. And that's my beef with the DSM.

Its used to punish people. And it's used by the medical profession to control people, to exercise power that you're abnormal and they're not, and they have the knowledge and tools to cure you if you go along with them, meaning don't fight the diagnosis and treatment, and certainly don't disagree with their view of you.

And this is where I part company with them and the DSM. I'm not sick. I'm just me. We all have our own quirks, maladies and demons, and we all have our childhoods that we bring into and carry through our life. But does any of these make us "sick" simply because a buch of old white guys wants to think and say we are?

I learned the ways to improve myself, both physically and mentally, through exercise, photography and my focus on what I want to express in the world to help others. That doesn't mean despression is gone, it's always in the background of my mind and only a step away from my consciousness to take over, and perhaps fall into an abyss, to find the total darkness of my existence for awhile, until I light a candle and climb back into life.

And I know all the drugs in the world won't help, and could actually hurt. For me, in a way, my Dysthymia keeps me sane and focused, and in a way a little angry. I may see the world a little negatively and have difficulty comprehending others' inability to see the whole of life and the world (people forget that ignoring things doesn't change things), but it's the world I see and live, which is fine with me.

And I don't have a problem telling a bunch of old white guys to go fuck themselves.

And all this isn't just about Dysthymia. The DSM has other conditions they've long labelled abnormal, some removed, like cross-dressing (now a fetish, which I wonder if some of them are and didn't like the label) and homosexuality (only because some of their own came out of the closet), and some deserving of removal, like transgenderism which is just the normal range of sex-gender expression and behavior (some of them are now, so there's hope for others). And I'm sure you have their peeves with some of the conditions.

Anyway, I roll on through life knowing the DSM is a good door stop, paper weight for flattening print (no, I don't really have a copy of it, God forbid, it's a waste of money when it's on the Internet), and other neat things for something big, boxy and heavy. But most of all I'd like to see the word abnormal abolished from the lexicon of psychology. You'd think a bunch of old white guys could find a better way to make people feel good about themselves?

Shadows and ghosts

I was listening to NPR's Saturday Weekend Edition with Scott Simon's interview of Patrick Hemingway. Scott asked Patrick about the "shadow of suicide." I forgot Patrick's answer but it wasn't about suicide, but it got me to thinking about the incidence of suicide in people and families.

And the thought?

Well, in short, the shadow of suicide runs in families, wired in the brain, and pased on to each generation, wired in descendent to awake when the circumstances arise or the situation occurs. We, in such families, all have the reality of suicide that runs in our mind, and most of the time quietly resides where shadows dwell, out of the light of the day, but it walks through the past, present and future of the family and engulfs some to act.

The ghost of suicide sits in our mind, often throughout their life and sometimes absorbing our soul and spirit to fall into the depths, and maybe the solution many think is wrong or worse. Yet, those who know not the mind of those afflicted never feel or begin to grasp our ghost, and know not the depths of our affliction to seek solace in the darkness for answers and solutions. It is our ghost.

The ghost always lives in the shadow, the shadow of the family, to appear when genetics and experience are right, and the individual experiences the ghost as their own, to fall into the deepest cavern of depression where some succomb and succeed, and the rest are never the same. It prevades our mind and our life, throughout it all.

As some people stand in the sun and find happiness, we stand in the sun for the warmth from the darkness and respites from the ghost. And we fear it won't last before the shadow blocks it and the ghost appears. And we struggle through the darkness for the next light and warmth from the sun, hoping, knowing the consequences if it doesn't. We sometimes fear our own mind, where and when it falls under the shadow under the spell of the ghost.

So, we live in the shadow and with our ghost, for we know in the end, death will win, by our own hand or by life itself. And we will find relief from our existence, an escape our history, and freedom from our ghost.

Suicide in NPs

I was reading an article on suicides in National Parks. It's interesting. Not because someone wouldn't commit suicide in a National Park, but because people forget suicide is about time and place. Everyone who commits suicide has to determine, when, where and how to die. And everyone who commits suicide wants to die in a place they love and find comfort.

What's so hard to understand? A National Park is a beautiful place to be and people find a person connection to be there. Some for a visit and some, like me, for a lifetime to keep going back. And some would like to die there. I plan to have my ashes spread in my favorite spot, if I can arrange and the National Park Service is accommodating, which I understand they are, and if they're aren't, people do it anyway to the departed.

So why the inerest in the article?

Well, I once thought about what I would do if faced with emmient death, meaning know the short time I have left alive due to some calamity, illness or accident. I doubt anyone would be able to find me, at least well into the future and I've essentially disappeared from this life. Harsh and cruel? Not really. Facing certain immediate death, we all should have the right to choose when, where and maybe how. That's just being humane and human.

And as I've written, I've seriouslythought about suicide twice, and once planned and nearly executed it, stopping just a handfull of seconds before fulfilling it. I'm not always sure what changed my mind, but something did and It haunts me still why I did and why I didn't. It's the reality of living with Dysthymia, suicide isn't always far from the surface of your consciousness, sometimes to pester you with hints about life and death.

It's no longer a serious thought with me anymore, or at least it hasn't been since the early 1990's between my brother's death and my Dad's death. But I still have to be conscious of it to make sure it's not just hiding. So I can understand what the article is saying, but I don't understand why it's a concern. How many people jump off the Golden Gate Bridge every year? Too many but they know it's a reality of the bridge and its attraction.

I'm also curious what training the rangers get for suicide prevention. Enough to stop it and get them to help? I can't see where they would get more because talking with someone on the edge about to commit suicide is risky and touchy, and I doubt that many rangers have the perspective and experience to save but a few lives. And do they get a standard method of persuasion? While I know rangers have a lot to do, with only two dozen or so suicides every year at all the the most common spots, I can't see where it makes them sufficiently qualified to be a suicide counselor.

The article didn't say how many they prevented, so it's hard to say if their efforts works, except I expect it does in some places and at some times. But if a person were convinced to commit suicide, only luck would make a ranger save that person. National Parks are too big and public to stop everyone, and you don't know if some deaths are accidents or suicides, and we know there at least one or more orders of magnitude more accidents in National Parks, so the rangers have more important things to learn and do with visitors than worry about the rare person who wants to die.

Anyway, I don't have an answer, just an observation. I don't have a problem with rangers helping the obvious ones, but the rest? They shouldn't worry about them, the rangers didn't walk in their shoes to understand, and if they did, who knows what they would do then. The best you can do is know they died in a place they loved.

Being a glider

I was trying to think how to decribe sliding into depression, whether you are experiencing from some events, situations or circumstances in life or you're, like me, suffer from Dysthymia and fall into a moderate to deeper depression. It's hard to describe to people who haven't experienced it, and it is different between the two types, being predisposed to it or just experiencing it from something else.

And as usual, I still have 4 am conversations with myself, sitting on the deck watching the night slowly slip into the daylight. Feeling the silence - actually all the noises from nature to the trains in the distance, of the hours after people are home and before people leave for work. There with my coffee and the darkness.

It usually makes for a good environment to let the imagination soar and be set free to explore wherever it goes. And to imagine conversations with oneself. We all do this, it's often some of the most productive time people have, somewhere between sleep with dreams and being alive and active doing what you love. Some people prefer real conversations over imaginary ones. And I like both, nothing better than one with friends at a tavern discussing the universe and everything in it.

And so, today I imagined being a glider, or sailplane as some call them. Once you're released by the tow plane, you soar on thermals and follow the wind. You're so high you never felt better or more alive. And you know one thing, you can't fall. You see, unlike conventional aircraft, a glider literally can not fall, it has to glide down in a spiral in a fight between its maximum descent rate and the air.

The key is that once you begin a descent because you've lost the thermal keeping you up, there isn't much you can do, except glide down in a spiral, looking for a thermal to level out or even ascend again, or find a place to land the glider on the ground, preferably safe, like an airport, but sometimes a field, a road or some place worse. The odds usually aren't in your favor until you can find a place to land and try as you might with the plane to get there.

And that's what it's like, a slow downward spiral in mental space. You can't stop falling, the best you can is find a mental thermal to stop descending. And if not, keep going until you land somewhere, somewhere you can sit in your darkness wondering where the warmth and light went. But you do know you've stopped falling. That's what's important. And you can begin to find some peace where you are and some way to think through what to do.

There are other ways of falling into depression, mostly it's a sudden freefall, like stepping over the edge of a cliff into an abyss so dark you can't see the bottom, and you fall into the darkness, surrounding by the silence of it until you stop. Either way, falling or gliding, you're there, at the bottom with no sign of light and no sense of up down or sideways, not unlike a diver so deep in the ocean your only guide are your own air bubbles.

All of my periods of depression have been gliding. I've found myself on the edge of my own grand canyon and stepped off to glide into the abyss, and then to find bottom in the warmth of the darkness and quiet. It is its own world and you are in your own world. Reality and the rest of the world is imaginary. This is your reality.

And the way out, back to normal sanity? The same way you fell, slowly gliding. You need to find and nuture a mental thermal, and ride it until it ends, level and find a new thermal. There's not easy or quick solution or exit back, and, in my opinion, drugs aren't the answer except in extreme cases. Nor is therapy to some extent. The answers are always there. Just there in front of you.

But in the darkness they're hard to see, let alone grasp. Once you do, though, it's still a fight to keep from falling back or down again. It's both a conscious and subconscious fight, or more a dialog with yourself. You have to believe in yourself, sometimes blindly and sometimes without a thought if it's right or wrong, just believe. Some don't and often don't survive in this world.

The darkness is pervasive when you're at the bottom, and sometmes, when it begins to feel warm and comfortable, you think you have an answer. It is one answer, the one many don't like, and often criticize. That's not fair or right, but having never been there, they don't know any better. It's their own ignornace and naivety, and their own arrogance for criticizing.

And before you argue I'm not accepting the professionals and their solutions, namely either drugs or therapy, I'm not. There are times and there are people best served by either or both. But, in my view and experience, they're often just short term answers to longterm issues individuals have with themselves. If professionals can help that, great, but it's not a given or the only answer.

And so, that's my thoughts from a 4 am conversation this morning. And the morning comes through the fog in the lowland and the clouds above. I'm still aloft and haven't crashed in some time, although I've lost my thermals at times. Nothing new, and I know what to do.