(Author’s Note: This article was originally published on Medium.com, but is being updated and uploaded here for your reading pleasure! I’ll be updating and posting old articles under the “Pickup Truck Diaries” moniker now and again! This was originally published in the summer of 2019.)
You never expect to be trapped into the spiral of suicidal ideation. It just “comes” with the realm of mental illness and disability.
Unfortunately, “the spiral” usually finds you first, and drags you along for the wildest rides. It’s one hell of a ride of course, and the spiral is damn sure to drag you across every sharp stone, sudden drop, and tuft of grass along the way.
It usually starts as a couple of negative thoughts. These turn into shame and you start to bash yourself when no easy solutions are forthcoming. Slowly, as you try to out-think your feelings, your logic gets wonkier and wonkier!
Ultimately, killing yourself somehow filters down through your brain as a possible solution as you start to exhaust logical solutions to your problems. (Pro-tip, it’s not.) This feedback loop of negative spiral continues ad-nauseam in a downwards direction that just keeps getting worse and worse as you continue to berate yourself and the thoughts get more and more negative.
It remains like that until you realize that you can’t get off the ride. You quickly become trapped in the spiral itself, flailing with or against your own brain to let you out. And depending on your own unique brew of diagnoses and histories, this struggle can look like any one of a billion scenes straight from the textbook on “real fucked up shit.” To boot, your rationalization often keeps curve-balling into crazy extremes.
For me, a man who always tries to logic his way out of problems, it feels like hell when you realize there is no logical solution to easily get out of the spiral at a whim. You fixate on the whole thing as a problem to solve, even when there is no logical fix. Once you have enough of these episodes in a row, you start to fray at the edges, and your overall mental health even in your non-spiraling moments takes a nosedive. Add the possibility of other people using this process against you or obliviously making it worse in an ever-crazier world… Well…
Long story short, it sucks!
And so — here we are.
I’m writing this article because I have been trapped in that spiral many, many times. Long before I knew what the spiral even was.
I am writing this article because I want to help people like me, and I want to help other people to help people like me. If I can help even a single person, writing this article is worth it.
One is all it takes for it to be worth it.
I also wrote this article because I want to get serious about writing again now that I am in the slow, agonizing process of coming out the other side of one of the darkest years of my life. (Update: And I have a book deal now, so there’s that!)
So strap in boils and ghouls, because this is a long one! You may have to come back to it a few times, and that’s okay! In addition to length, there are many parallels between coming out stories from the LGBTQ+ community and the stigma around Disability and Mental Health and Illness, so don’t be surprised if this wavers between personal story and factual info! And if LGBTQ+ folks can use this article for good, then by all means, PLEASE fly at it! (I feel like this is a great IBDD episode, anybody from Toothless want to talk coming out stories as a deep dive?! –> The Itty Bitty Dilly Dally Podcast)
A few disclaimers, first. Before we can even begin to analyze the spiral and all the bits and pieces associated with my own experiences with Mental Illness and Disability, I need to do two things.
One – I need to acknowledge that while I have a couple of degrees lying in a box somewhere, neither of them are in Psychology or Psychiatric Medicine. My specialties are firmly in the dual realms of Humanities (Drama/English Lit/History) and Education (Secondary).
I am merely the entirety of my lived experience, and I am not an expert. Thus, I am wholly speaking as the patient and not the professional. I mean, shout out to Psych 100 and a slew of Sociology and Anthropology courses, of course.
Two – This obviously is some pretty rough stuff, so make sure you engage with this when you’re in an okay place, for obvious reasons. I broke down and cried like five times when originally trying to write this, and had to take breaks. You can shelve it and come back to it if you need to. And that’s okay. We can yell the words “trigger warning” all we want, but actually understanding how it all works is unique to the individual. You know yourself best.
Please take care of yourself.
With those two very important things safely out of the way, we have to take a few steps back, and warp twenty years backwards, to the far off land of the mid-nineties. Life was simpler, and simultaneously harder in so many ways for so many people that you could write a book or two or three about it, which many fine folks have done, and I am considering. (Update: What do you think The Pickup Truck Diaries is?!)
It was a time of change and transition and hope and fear, just like right now.
Just like it will likely always be.
I come from a small logging town an hour’s drive away from Vancouver. See, there are two cities named Vancouver within a day’s drive of each other and you could honestly choose either one for this story to continue. That “small logging town” part plays heavily into this story. (Many of my favorite bands like Modest Mouse and Nirvana are from the twin Vancouver areas, which have similar histories and legacies!)
Being from a trades family on the poorer end of the socioeconomic spectrum colors everything I am and I carry that baggage to this very day. Just like your own background and the places you have lived will color your story.
The trades context is important. Some of the most profound cases of poor mental health are in the trades among dudes who are right-wing macho-men. I myself pretended to be one such macho man for a long time, before I learned that softening my edges does not make me weak. (Expect “The Logger Guru to cover this!)
See, in small towns in the nineties, and especially in trades communities — mental health or even the notion of mental illness was firmly fixed in the realm of the more severe. Things like Schizophrenia existed to the common folk, (RIP James) but if you weren’t experiencing constant and extremely aggravating symptoms, the public and private support systems of the day just didn’t know what to do with you.
Weird, strange, queer, bizarre, odd, etc. These words were used pretty interchangeably. In lots of places they still are. It sucks to be made to feel like you are out of place amongst the norm.
Anyways.
As a kid, I loved to read. I still do! I loved make-believe and playing outside and video games and riding my bike and all sorts of awesome things, some of which I’m only just now starting to explore again twenty five years later. A normal kid, or so I thought.
My home life? Well, it was definitely privileged compared to what your story may be. And I’m so sorry if you had to struggle through severe trauma, sexism, racism, abuse, neglect, or similar issues. I can’t fix them or undo them for you, as much as I really fucking wish I could. At this point in life, I can only do what I can (like this piece of writing here) to try and find our commonalities and help us heal together. I can make space for you in my circle so you can make space in yours for others.
Regardless of whether you believe it or not, privilege exists. It’s a thing we have to acknowledge and understand. As a 6’3 beefcake of a white dude, I will rarely if ever be catcalled in the street, or prejudiced against in everyday life. If not for my hidden disabilities and mental illnesses, I’d be playing the game of life on “easy” mode, you could say. One can still die on “easy mode” of course, as can we all. But… I can still button mash my way to victory far more sloppily and still have a good chance to survive.
Remember, my story may look different from yours. You might be playing the game of life on “hard” or “insane” difficulty. (Bit of a pun there. Unintended at first but now totally intended.)
Back to the story.
My parents fought a hell of a lot. Both of them have complicated histories of trauma with their own parents, and my only ownership of those stories is in how inter-generational trauma was passed down in varying doses to me and my two brothers. For a lot of people, inter-generational trauma is an every-day struggle that is managed on top of Mental Illness, Disability, and the other struggles I mentioned above. As a result of this, I hold small places in my heart for them. For example — I respect my dad a hell of a lot for going completely the opposite direction of his own PTSD-afflicted war-veteran father and choosing sobriety for my entire life at home, and for doing his best to try not to live in the hell of toxic masculinity and become a very open minded dude over time.
That takes guts for somebody in a profession like logging.
Regardless, I don’t think either of my parents realized how much they were actively engaged in the act of fighting with each other. Most of the time it was about money, and the lack of money. Logging is famous for extreme boom and bust cycles, and we continually ping-ponged up and down financially, which in the mid-nineties, just wasn’t something you talked about. The myth of the middle class was still alive and kicking! (And it very much still is a myth.)
In such a small town, people talked, of course. So it was a constant stress for my folks to be trying to raise three young boys while simultaneously owing money all the time and trying not to lose the house and also feed the family. There were plenty of times we ate eggs and toast, or good old canned Campbell’s mushroom soup, or had a pot of turkey stew on the stove for like a week. When dinner was served, dad would always get his dinner first, and me and my two brothers would absolutely load up because we knew there wasn’t enough for seconds. It created a super unhealthy relationship with food, but we never went hungry as far as I remember. (Fuuuuck PB and Honey sandwiches.)
Before meds, I was always hungry, but that’s for later in this article.
When we started to hit school age was when things really started to break down. The structures were chafing for me, and I really struggled. The first signs of being “off” were small — like an “incorrect” pencil grip. Or a stupidly good vocabulary, but extremely limited math skills due to dyscalculia. My grandmother, a former elementary school teacher had taught me to read with the help of good old Dick and Jane at the age of two. That meant I could read novels in a few hours or days, but throw any sort of math equation at me and I would stall out like a semi hauling uphill. I tend to do what most folks with disabilities do – check your work eighteen times to ensure perfection.
And that takes time.
For people with mental illnesses and disabilities, even the small stuff can really have an effect on you. You recognized the sorts of kids you got grouped with, you felt alienated for being the only one to require a rubber pencil grip to correct your writing, and so on, and so forth. You got pulled out for extra help and support (which, being a teacher now — pull out support is so desperately needed back in our schools).
I’m still self-conscious to this day about my unusual pencil grip and “T-rex” typing style, regardless of whether I can type at 70wpm or not.
As the elementary years progressed, I developed an anger problem which was triggered when I was pushed too far or bullied by other kids. This happened a lot, because I was ostracized a ton for my quirks. I used the other kids with issues as scapegoats and was cruel to them and played the shitty social hierarchy game. I wanted to sit in the corner and read and be completely left alone otherwise. I wanted friends, but refused to be treated like garbage. I did harmful things to others, usually resulting from being like a bear that was irresistible to poke.
Kids are cruel. We know this.
A lot of teachers genuinely did care, and they were kind, and loving, and tried their best to minimize the differences in treatment. There are a lot of awesome teachers out there who don’t get nearly enough credit for constantly being on the edge of breakdown, especially with tough kids like I was. So if you are a teacher, or know one — please let them know what they mean to you.
What teachers mean to the world…
Anyways, once these differences were identified and marked as being things that could not be corrected through normal school means, the meetings and assessments began. If you are reading this for context, and haven’t been subject to them, I can only tell you one thing.
They suck.
You’re pulled into a room with a strange adult, who tests you on any number of factors — IQ tests were a big one back then. Flash card memory tests, vocabulary tests, formal interviews, informal interviews, meetings you’re there for, meetings you’re not there for, and so on, and so forth. Due to the erosion of our public schools even back then, often the testing stops or you get stuck on a wait-list to be assessed at the next step along the way. Many parents have to pay for private assessment to get an answer.
Obviously that privileges those families able to do so and the poor kids who often need the most help get left behind. So my parents too, bought into the system. They would drive me in to Vancouver to the child hospital’s psych unit Sunny Hill for more tests and interviews and the like.
At least two or three times during this years-long process, I ran away from home because I was so fucked up about it all.
See, for a few years both my parents were convinced I had Asperger’s Syndrome, or was a high functioning person with Autism. (Update: ADHD is now classified alongside autism, which I have no idea how to feel about!)
They bought books on Asperger’s, which they read and gave to me to read, so near the end of the testing, even I myself was convinced I had Asperger’s!
Of course! It made sense!
All of the symptoms matched perfectly, from the inability to hold eye contact, to the tendency to self-isolate, to the hyper-focus and obsessions around specific things, and so on and so forth.
And on that note I apologize for any unintentional Ableist language as I’m only just engaging with this stuff for the first time in two decades. I am still learning how not to discriminate and how not to perpetuate certain narratives against both myself and others similar to me. It’s really really hard, but I’m still trying.
My memory of the entire process over that five years is choppy and most certainly incorrect in parts. Trauma has that effect sometimes. I remember getting into the car with my mom after one of the last tests at the Children’s Hospital — I was maybe twelve at the time. She told me I had been diagnosed with ADD. Of course, she was furious. He had no idea what he was talking about! I was the exact opposite of Hyperactive! I was impulsive, yes, but he had to be wrong! That couldn’t be it!
In the nature of full disclosure, for the next 17 years, I was only aware of being diagnosed with two things — ADD, and being “gifted”, whatever that meant. At least, this is what I remember being told. Choppy memory. So for a large part of this story, I absolutely believed a half-truth about myself. In reality, I have five taglines floating above my head from varying points in my life, and depending on your own beliefs on labels of all kinds, they can be helpful and/or harmful. For people with Mental Illnesses and Disabilities who get stuck in black and white thinking like me, I personally find them helpful. You are free to disagree. That’s the zeitgeist, baby.
My official diagnoses are: ADHD (Inattentive Subtype), Social Anxiety, A Learning Disability, and more recently, A Major Mood Disorder and Depression. And of course, there’s some undiagnosed trauma here and there.
I wanted to make a joke about adding “super smart and handsome” to that list. But I refrained. You’re welcome.
So at least, the ADD diagnosis was true. All ADD is classed as ADHD, by the way, and now it’s classified into three types. You can be the hyperactive type, the inattentive type, or some combination of both. I had no clue about this until very recently.
And that was it. The testing stopped when I was around thirteen or fourteen.
I think this was largely because as I grew into high school, I learned some better, more socially acceptable coping strategies to survive the public school system. Replace anger with biting wit and humor, be lightheartedly cruel before people can be cruel to you, treat people like objects, float between social groups so you never have much skin in the game, etc. Knowing what I know now, most of these are all terrible and harmful coping strategies. Please don’t do these things. Except maybe the humor. Making people laugh is a good thing if it is from a place of care and love.
I “got better.” I started being active again and lost weight in grade eight or nine, despite spiking up and down throughout elementary school between obese and rail-thin. To this day, I still have stretch marks across most of my body from a mixture of growing two and a half feet in a year and the spikes and nosedives in body weight. I once had an ex tell me they were my ugliest feature when I asked her about my physical appearance. But to me, they’re like a map of what my body has lived, tattooed on my physical form. As an adult, I really love the idea of tattoos that tell a story as a connection to this.
My “tiger stripes” tell the story of my body better than my tattoos ever can.
Even though I “got better”, there was one thing for certain — I avoided the special education department like the plague as I wanted to distance myself as far as possible from being “othered.” (Which is the act of engaging in acts of classical tribalism to discriminate against people). And, as a result of this avoidance, I floated along under the radar because I was no longer having anger issues and I was able to make a few friends. (Although I was a shitty friend — I’m sorry old friends.)
“In grade 9 or so, I decided that due to the intervention, tolerance, and love of a few key teachers that put up with my lingering delinquency and tendency to half-ass my work to float right through school at a fifty percent pass, I would pursue a career as a teacher. The other reason I changed my tune is that a friend of mine committed suicide that year.
I was a shitty friend.
When she stopped coming to school — I didn’t reach out, and I up and dropped her off my radar. When she died, I couldn’t even bring myself to even go to her funeral. I pretended I was fine, that we weren’t that close anyways due to my refusal to get close, and that her death’s affect had nothing to do with the fact that I knew I had to clean up my act before my own shit did the same to me.
I didn’t put two and two together about her death until much later.
I am still grieving and healing now, from something I pretended to be stoic and “fine” about for fifteen years.
It was the early aughts. Depression just didn’t exist in mainstream culture outside of discussions about Kurt Cobain, which always gravitated to drugs. There was an attempt at 13 or 14 to try to get me on ADD Medication, which back then was only Ritalin, but I wasn’t wanting to take an Amphetamine in the middle of my small town’s Crystal Meth crisis. Literally the first time I smoked weed as a teen it was laced with crystal meth, because that was how drug dealers hooked kids back then. Meth and ritalin, I literally thought they were the exact same thing.
For the week I took ritalin, it made me feel foggy and slow and stupid. I refused to take it after that.
With a new, nebulous goal of becoming a teacher, I needed to be quick and “smart.” So I worked harder than I ever had before.
All because suddenly, I had a purpose!
I used and relied on my solid vocabulary and excellent long-term memory, and did my best in the focus, short-term memory, and the mathematics department. Thank god for Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic The Gathering, as I would still probably be mathematically illiterate without those two card games. They make for excellent SPED tools.
As a result of leaning on my strengths and avoiding my weaknesses, I got into University with a very good average in most classes other than Mathematics, and despite a period at eighteen or nineteen — when I fell into a deep depression that lasted a year or so, I was actually hitting the goalposts I had created for myself! The entire time, I had no clue that I was working three times as hard as my peers to achieve the same things. I worked countless odd-jobs. And I stayed in Vancouver for six to seven years living in poverty as a student to avoid going home as much as possible because I finally felt “seen.”
I even managed to hit the final goalpost and become a teacher somewhere along that path!
Overall, I was a success story beyond most people’s expectations. People with Mental Illnesses and/or Disabilities are overwhelmingly marginalized and left in the cold, often literally finding themselves doubly marginalized by also being in the homeless community. The idea that I had somehow been resilient and capable enough to not only go to university but to get a professional degree was crazy.
I’ve seen different stats over the years and let’s be honest — the outlook for folks with Mental Illness and Disability like me usually isn’t pretty.
Throughout that period though, in my personal life I was also having a lot of extremely toxic relationships, which unfortunately allowed me to double down on many of my more toxic coping mechanisms. The coping mechanisms that were hurting me in the long term were helping me in the short term, so they were justified in my mind.
I also had no clue they were even toxic in the first place! In some cases I was the toxic one, and in some cases they were. See, part of this process of trying to heal is acknowledging that I can’t change the past. I can’t carry it on my back like a turtle anymore, self-flagellating myself for it. I can only do what I have been trying to do — tell people whom I’ve hurt that I’m sorry for what I’ve done when the opportunities arise. To own it. To acknowledge that I have said and done terrible things. I refuse to scapegoat it on my Mental Illnesses or Disability, and I refuse to not at least try to atone for it, no matter how long ago some of it was.
Honestly, I think that’s a dangerous trap a lot of people can get into — citing their actions as the actions of their Mental Illness or Disability, and subsequently not taking responsibility for what they do and say.
If you are stuck in that trap…
Fuck you.
Wake up.
You are the only one responsible for what you do, for the choices you make, and the actions you perform. Your own stuff influences you, but you can’t let it control you. Some stuff is definitely predisposed, but there are a lot of resilient people out there, fighting the worst of their symptoms like true soldiers.
I digress.
As a result of these toxic romantic relationships, I can tell you that the cycle of abuse is very, very, real. And it doesn’t always look like the stereotype we all think of in the news, either. When you are in that cycle, you don’t see anything but the inside of it. You perpetuate it without realizing it. You normalize what is being done to you and what you then do to them. Hell, I didn’t even start to understand what a healthy relationship was until after the worst one was over and my friends started to come out of the woodwork and tell me how thankful they were that I was free.
I am not perfect.
I am a galactic distance from perfect. But I know now that the relationships you cultivate should be reciprocal, and they should have boundaries that are respected. They shouldn’t be forced, and they shouldn’t reduce either your worth or their worth as a human being. I kind of think this applies to all relationships — friendships, romantic partnerships, whatever.
Too often we hold onto toxic relationships because we’re either afraid of the blow back if and when they end, or because a lack of other meaningful relationships keeps us feeling trapped with nobody else to turn to. If you are being isolated and reduced as a human being — please get out.
I am just as guilty of not following this advice, for having boundaries that were too strict, or for not having any boundaries at all. For keeping people around me in my circle that were not my kind of people. When you have a Mental Illness or Disability and you already feel broken or damaged (which is not true), it’s really hard to find “your” people.
Some of the hardest decisions are whether or not to cut people out of your life in fear of being alone and having nobody.
Whew.
You can already see the rhythm of this article by now, I hope. A bit of story, and then a bit of reflection and insight that I’ve learned through my life and healing process. The healing process is eternally ongoing.
Back to the story part!
I continued on along my planned path, and after a brief stint back in logging I ended up getting a job in my hometown as a teacher. As the job scene was tough back then for teaching, I jumped on it, even though being back in your hometown after an extended duration away has all sorts of problematic situations. (It still does. Cronyism, plutocracy, and nepotism are real.)
I continued on as such for five years, actually getting rave reviews from parents and feeling pretty good about my career, until last year I broke.
This is where it gets heavy again, and we bring it all the way back around to the spiral, hopefully for better after it indeed got worse.
I moved around between different schools chasing contracts, and was working at an Alternate school for what I thought were the exact right reasons. I wanted to help the kids that were at risk and flailing like I had been for a good chunk of my childhood and teenage years. But Alternate school settings are tough. This isn’t a surprise to anyone.
Everything that you’ve read about in this article thus far is present in that setting, and more. As a teacher, you’re constantly stressed out, trying to make a difference or reach kids that are working through their own trials, struggles, and anything else you can imagine. They just might not be at a place in their lives to hear any messages you’re trying to send.
The school itself was a couple of two decade old portables. Another sad reality of our public school system. It’s underfunded, and usually the people on the ground floor are the ones who suffer and find themselves overworked, as do the kids, while others make six figure salaries. And in any education, a lot of the time you can’t control which kids like you and which kids hate you. You often can’t control habits or behaviors — just like you can’t control the traumas that created them. These are all common facts in Alternate Education settings, and I can’t risk going any deeper into detail for obvious reasons.
So, in November/December of that school year, I broke.
I kept showing up to work, but I was relying so heavily on my old coping mechanisms that I was in full on “Robot Mode”. “Robot Mode” is a neat one, one that I only realized was happening once I was in that setting. Even calling it “Robot Mode” is a sort of coping mechanism, as it’s my colloquial way of saying I was trapped in fight or flight mode, doing my job but basically existing in a sort of full-on autopilot.
See, over the past twenty years since I had last really had any encounter with a Special Ed or Mental Health system, I had developed a very specific set of skills.
And not the Liam Neeson in “Taken” sort of skills.
One of these skills was that I had learned to repress my emotions almost entirely to a point in which I hardly ever expressed anything other than “playful jest”, “kind helper”, or “mild frustration.” I had taken on the guise of the Stoic Roman Philosopher where I was entirely “go with the flow” or “follow the system precisely and exactly.”
I could not regulate anywhere in-between the two.
The human brain is a fascinating thing. Even in crisis mode it finds a way to stay functional at all costs. Our society thrives on that. People overwork themselves into the ground because doing so makes them appear more competent or studious or resilient.
This is complete and utter bullshit.
I know that fact a little better now that I’m post-collapse, but it’s still hard to avoid falling into those patterns, those cycles, and those old coping mechanisms.
I might keep fighting this battle for the rest of my life.
So I was trapped in “Robot Mode” in every second of every day — completely functional, but beginning the slow process of melting down from the inside out.
After a few instances of full on panic attacks and freezes, (some of which I was able to hide, others I was not), I began to spiral frequently. This happened almost entirely at night time outside the view of others. I was desperately trying to sleep while simultaneously being unable to. I maybe got 5–6 hours of sleep a night at best. I woke up anywhere between 6–10 times a night in short bursts. And in my waking moments before falling asleep, I battered myself with the coping mechanism of “the taskmaster” even as I died in my dreams over and over again as I have for the past twenty-plus years.
This handy coping mechanism was another doubled edged sword I was constantly cutting myself on. My inner monologue acted as an inner critic, shaming, berating, and annihilating myself and my actions constantly in order to stay functional and get things done. It had been great for kicking me in the ass and managing my diagnoses while in university, but I now know it’s like your own inner demon, slowly crushing you with the sensation of never being good enough.
With the taskmaster’s unhelpful help — I spiraled in my depression and it got really, really dark. Getting low enough in the spiral to be at the point of suicidal ideation was frequent. Remember, I thought I just had ADD and was “gifted”, so I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t like everybody else outside of attention and focus issues, which I had actually gotten on hormone based prescriptions to fix!
I started to aggressively self-isolate, which is another symptom of depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. In hindsight (20/20!), it’s hilarious, because as an educator, I know this is usually the point when a kid stops showing up to school, and needs some intervention, pronto.
But I could not see it in myself.
It works like this is your brain:
You feel like a burden to your friends and loved ones. You don’t want to bother them because you have this expectation via “the taskmaster” to only ever be happy and okay in social situations.
You cancel every social engagement you have, and isolate yourself from everything, often staying in bed or just indoors. And because we generally just suck as a society for checking in on each other, any amount of silence from your peers is part of that self-fulfilling prophecy that “nobody likes you anyways, nobody wants to talk to you, etc.”
You may reach out to your closest friends, but being stuck in the cycle is often too much for friends and family who aren’t keyed in to how some of these things work. The worst things they can say are things like “you’re just having a self-pity party”, and the worst things they can do is awkwardly not know what to say, so they vanish completely or shove solutions at you. Which makes things worse.
If you’re doing “vanishing” as a friend of someone with a Mental Illness or Disability, please please please reach out first, as someone with Anxiety/Depression/Mood Disorder issues will almost NEVER reach out first. Remember? They view themselves as a burden, and are constantly telling themselves things to double down on why they are worthless and nobody wants them around!
In my case, all of this culminated in that I had to have a friend basically tell me on the phone that I needed to go to a hospital to wake me up. To clue me in to how deeply into robot mode I had fallen. To how poisonous the taskmaster had gotten. I was starting to research painless ways to kill myself that wouldn’t be traumatic for family and friends, and was actively looking for ways I could utilize my death for something positive. We need to talk about this. I AM “ASSIST” TRAINED AND I DID NOT TALK ABOUT IT.
See, I had built up this false narrative in my head for two decades about what it meant to be a man, to be a teacher, to be a human. I saw myself as this titan, flip-flopping between grandiose world-saver and worthless peon. If I could not exist as I imagined I had to, I was feeding into the self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is the most dangerous part, and the most destructive. See, for me, and maybe for you, your brain is your enemy in Mental Illness — another thing I’ve learned now. You cannot trust where your brain goes first. Your brain is in full-on crisis mode, unable to process things properly, and the lack of neurotransmitters in said brain in some cases means you cannot bring your mood up easily.
This is coupled with the fact that you cannot out-logic emotion, when all your brain is trying to do is exactly that. It’s actively problem solving, and with each new solution the taskmaster shuts down, it goes more and more morbid in the selection of solutions.
Listen.
You can repress emotion all you want. You can tell yourself that people are relying on you. You can build stories that justify anything you’re doing. Mental Health and Addiction are intertwined as a result of this — because your brain is literally creating a self-fulfilling prophecy and relapse is often dependent on that narrative being true. “You were destined to fail all along.”
In the heart of that collapse, I saw myself as worthless. I had failed the expectations of the taskmaster, so I was weaving false narratives in my head about how I was evil. Or it would flip into grandiosity — I could be as strong or smart as anyone else, but I believed that I would still fail because of who I was fundamentally at my core, in some manner unrelated to those positive traits.
And what was the center of this apparently dark and twisted core?
In my case — Mental Illness. Unaccommodated disability.
It was a false prophecy my brain created, that was self-fulfilling.
I saw myself and my attached diagnoses at a basic level as broken, damaged, flawed, fucked up, and I was carrying upon my back the traumas and histories of my fucked up life. I was comparing my trauma and all that baggage I had been carrying for twenty years to the trauma of the kids, of my colleagues, of everyone around me. My brain told me that they had it worse but were still soldiering on, so I had to do so no matter what, because I was fucking broken.
But I am not broken.
You are not broken.
You are not damaged.
I am deserving of love.
You are deserving of love.
It took me seriously and constantly considering killing myself to finally reach out for help to a man I jokingly refer to as my “platonic husband #2.” In addition, thank god for public institutions like healthcare, because without some sort of social safety net, I would be dead right now.
Every time somebody with right wing views tells me we should cut social services, I want to scream at them. I want to slap them across the face because they can’t see how many people just like them are being saved when they start to break down. Especially when those people come from a trades background like me and are so much at risk.
But, in my case, despite finally realizing that I needed external help, I still had a lot of trauma. I was still actively spiraling constantly and I was stuck in robot mode. The taskmaster was still there punching me in the chest and berating and shaming me every hour of every day. And one of my big hang-ups positioned in the way of getting help was my experiences with support systems as a kid in the 90’s and early aughts. I was stalled out by the extremely clinical and sterile realms of assessment in my past and of Mental Illness and Disability through the lens of my own experiences and memories, and yes again, the magic “T” word, trauma. This was trauma that I had convinced myself I did not have because it wasn’t nearly as bad as the trauma other people had experienced around me like physical and/or sexual abuse. Somebody else always “had it worse.”
So to me, seeing a counselor/therapist/psychologist was one of the most terrifying things on planet Earth. I was incredibly averse to it. And being unable to process emotion by being in robot mode all the time made me unable to even see or acknowledge that fear. It was because I would have to become vulnerable to a stranger for one of the first times in my life.
To many people, and especially guys my age and older who are still stuck in that Toxic Masculinity of the ages before 2010 — being vulnerable is rationalized consciously or unconsciously as the same as being weak.
Again, I feel like I have to stop.
Being vulnerable does not make you weak.
You are allowed to be vulnerable.
You are worthy of love, and care, and respect.
You fucking matter.
The hardest part of healing is getting over yourself, and even I myself have to stop thinking of this process as being “healed” or “cured.” You manage your disability, you do not cure or heal it in most cases. If you have a half-decent employer, they will accomodate you. If they are shitty, they will deny you accomodation.
All that shit I was carrying (and I still am!) was dangling in my face and telling me that seeing a counselor was the same as a weakness. It was a form of needing help and I was a big tough dude! Other people needed that help, and I had no problem watching and encouraging them to get it. But in my mind’s eye, I was strong and resilient and had made it this far, so why would I ever need help?! Hadn’t my coping mechanisms gotten me this far? Far farther than what people had expected of this pathetic kid with Mental Illness and Disability who could never control his emotions?! I had far exceeded the poor logging family disabled kid I was destined to be!
Stop.
Asking for help does not make you weak.
Again, for the people in the back.
ASKING FOR HELP DOES NOT MAKE YOU WEAK.
I’m two hundred and sixty pounds, six foot three, and built like a god damn tank. I was confident and unique and for the past ten years had a beard and dressed like a fusion between biker, hipster, and punk. I had an idea in my mind that I could never ask for help because asking for help made me weak.
Asking for help does not make you weak.
You are worthy of love.
Talking with one of my friends, I finally decided it was time to face my fears.
I would go to counselling.
Unlearning a lot of my old coping mechanisms was the first step. I started with the counselor slowly, the same as most people like me. I had learned never to trust easily. I always had one foot out the door and was unwilling to fully commit, to be vulnerable. It was the same old song and dance I had practiced with every social group I had ever been a part of for two decades. Deflect with humor, change the direction of the conversation, etc.
I danced around questions with the air and grace of a ballet dancer with rationalizations and excuses. So we started by figuring out what I had been diagnosed with, what it all meant. It was clinical and logical and far “safer.”
A month and a half post-collapse, now engaged in the counseling process, I went to my childhood doctor’s office and paid them $35 to put my entire medical history on an old-school CD-ROM disk. (Which is kinda bunk for wanting my own medical files). I spent an entire day going through it, stopping to google things I didn’t understand. I read every single transcript and meeting report and assessment. I didn’t remember half of it.
And I finally learned everything I had been diagnosed with.
Part of me was angry at first, for feeling so lost and confused and in a sense betrayed — by the system, by my parents, by all these professionals who had set me up to fail. There were a few more things in that medical history than I had been aware of, or remembered.
So I needed to take the time to come to terms with my past.
No one is at fault for what I lived through and experienced.
Nobody betrayed me.
My past was the question, but I was still hunting for the answer.
I went back to counseling, I started talking to my doctor about what things meant, how it worked, about what could help.
As an aside — props to young doctors out there. There is just so much more you need to know nowadays. The realm of mental health is stuck in a nebulous zone that for a long time was only loosely affiliated with general medical practice. Doctors have come a long way, and often the only one with stigma about Mental Illness and Disability in the room was me. They treated me like any other patient.
So I started to delve into learning about each of my diagnoses in counseling, as I was unable to really get at any of the big emotional pieces right away for a variety of reasons — my own deflections being a big one. I was shocked and amazed at how little I even actually knew about my Disabilities and my Mental Illnesses. We began to pull them apart, one by one.
I slowly learned some of the presenting pieces of each one: the black and white thinking of the Learning Disability and ADHD, the nature of mood disorders as neurotransmitter hormone imbalances in my brain, etc.
There was a lot to know! And for so many years I had known almost nothing, outside of small things, like caffeine being good for the ADD!
Once I got a handle on how they worked and what each one did, I had to actually start changing some of the old coping mechanisms that had kept me alive for so long, but which were harming me at the end of the day.
First to address was the robot mode. I had to actually feel emotions without repressing them for the first time in two decades.
It is such a strange thing to realize, that for decades, I had been so afraid of the angry me that I had been as a little kid, that I couldn’t feel feelings. I literally turned off the tap whenever they started to surface. I had been going into full prison riot lock-down mode!
There are four primary emotions, I learned.
Four.
Fear, Anger, Sorrow, and Joy. But for me?
No fear, no sorrow, no anger, and especially — no joy.
They were there, lurking at the edges of the construct of a person I had crafted myself to be. But I had this built-in trained reflex to tense up and repress them if they ever surfaced. For most of my life, I was told by my parents not to “emote.” It had done a number on me and really fucked me up. So I was literally unaware of the feelings, and honest to hell, I genuinely thought I did not experience them. It really does take a trained professional to tease it apart over time, and even now I have only scratched the surface. There are dozens of these trigger points I still need to unpack over time.
All of a sudden, Pandora’s box had been opened.
For most of my life, the only dreams I ever had were war dreams — I’d always be fighting for my life against innumerable hordes in a variety of settings. Usually I would wake up with a start when I died in the dream. Sometimes this would happen up to ten times a night. When I was about twelve, I’d even roam the halls of the house at night, unable and unwilling to sleep as a result. When I was a teenager, I got heavy into World of Warcraft and hardcore raiding late at night. (Holla at my T4-9 raiding homies.)
But, all of a sudden — I started to have these strange dreams in which I would change forms freely, often not even having a body, and I’d often wake up crying with this bizarre feeling of catharsis. My first interactions with sorrow, I think.
I think I was grieving.
I still notice sorrow the most, because it has the most obvious tell — tears and a heaviness. The crying was tough. I had trained myself not to cry, and I wouldn’t, sometimes for years at a time. As a dude, even though logically and in my beliefs — I knew it was okay for boys to cry, I had still internalized the old saying so deeply to shut off all my emotions that I actively have to go the other way now. I have to stop myself from shutting down and repressing the feelings every time they come up, even when they seem to be random or inappropriate.
People feel feelings. That’s normal.
That’s another extension of society, by the way. Functional is conflated with unemotional. That is also complete and utter bullshit. I’ve been in Education long enough to know that every person who is ground floor is there because of an excess of emotional connection to why we’re there, we’re just conditioned to hide it behind the veil of the professional.
This is usually weaponized against education professionals.
I’m at the point in the process now that a year or more after the darkest moments, I’m only now feeling these things in bursts. I’ve been told that it’s “work.”
God damn, isn’t it!?!
To stop when small things activate and trigger me and sit in those feelings no matter how uncomfortable it might be. To cry alone in my truck or in the shower or when certain lyrics in songs hit pressure points in my psyche. I’m slowly starting to understand this part with each new trauma I pull out of Pandora’s Box to actually interact with. With each old way of thinking I am slowly deconstructing and getting rid of at the end of the day. I have to acknowledge that these coping mechanisms and thought patterns worked to keep me alive and going for a very long time. But that doesn’t mean I can’t clean house.
We all have to let things go.
Damned if letting go isn’t the hardest thing in the world, especially when it’s not merely objects or people, but literal pieces of your mind and soul.
“Work” feels like an understatement sometimes. I am performing self-surgery on my own sanity.
I have to acknowledge that due to some of my diagnoses, this part is harder for me than for folks who are diagnosed with only one or two things. You have to learn to be okay with that. To know and accept that you’re working twice or even three or four times as hard as other people navigating these same things.
One of the ways ADHD and the Learning Disability manifests is not in being slower or stupider. It actually comes in those black and white ways of thinking I mentioned earlier, with varying lapses in attention. Everything appears to my brain to forever be all or nothing, which explains a lot about why ADHD is such a battle against impulse. I know all too well that shame that one experiences when they lose the battle against their condition, and then they do something impulsive.
You feel like you’ve lost.
Remember.
You have not lost. It will be okay.
The sun will rise tomorrow.
And the work never really goes away. It changes from active, constant work into management. You get a handle on your stuff, and then you learn to manage it in healthy ways. Other people with Mental Illnesses or Disabilities often abuse substances and alcohol to numb themselves out and drown out some of their stuff, in a similar but different way of how repressing was for me. That must be so fucking hard, as for me the ADD and its’ black and white thinking lets me quit things cold turkey fairly easy.
I can’t imagine the battle of will it takes when the only feeling of positivity or joy you get is in that moment of substance use. The amount of management required when addiction comes into play is a mountain, I’m sure. If you’re dealing with that now, know that for what it’s worth, I respect you for your willpower and the management and work you are doing. Keep it up. Always take two steps forward, even if you take one step back.
And so.
The work continued at the same time as more counselling, and while for some people just the counseling is enough, it wasn’t for me.
Seeing a Psychiatrist was the logical next step.
This is another thing I did not know — I had so strongly and actively pushed away from Special Ed. and Mental Health, that I didn’t know the difference between all the different roles. As a kid, the people assessing me were all doctors or school and hospital employees in my young mind.
The simple version?
Therapists, Counselors, Nurse Practitioners, and Psychologists are different levels of people you talk to to help you figure stuff out. Psychologists can diagnose, but usually they don’t write prescriptions. (At least here in Canada!) Psychiatrists are actual doctors who have specialized in Mental Health. They can diagnose, and can write prescriptions in most cases.
For the past twenty years, outside of that one week I was on Ritalin, I refused any sort of drug that would affect my brain outside of social recreational uses. That’s because the Ritalin made me feel foggy, dumb and slow, even if it helped with focus. Usually my brain fires a million miles a minute, which is great for creativity and outside the box problem solving, but it’s bad for focus and calm, collected, repetitive tasks. It’s also hell for things like regulation, deadlines, and even just basic health like meal portions and screen time.
Addiction and Mental Health go hand in hand, remember?
Despite riskily dabbling in all sorts of things in my University years, I had no addiction issues when it came to substances (I did smoke cigarettes for a few years and was very good at hiding it). But I definitely did have an unhealthy relationship with food, and an enormous fear of Addiction itself, because of how prevalent it is within my family history.
So in lieu of prescription drugs, I had been building those other coping mechanisms instead. Remember that everybody’s Mental Illnesses and Disabilities will manifest in different ways! The ADHD makes the Mood Disorder and Anxiety all fucky, and they interact in different ways. Depending on what different folks have, they can have different symptoms entirely which present differently, and all of them need different things.
So how did my coping mechanisms work if I hadn’t numbed myself out with substances, and I wasn’t on any prescription meds outside of focus-based ones for ADHD? (Which I had finally started, as endocrine drugs now existed.)
Remember — my first coping mechanism was that black and white all or nothing thinking. I had leaned into it to create a taskmaster that berated and shamed myself into focusing and getting things done by making lists.
This was sorta bad.
Largely because it again forced functionality to take precedent over actual wellness and thriving. It also compounded with the shame and other issues I’ve been carrying my whole life. No prescription could help me there.
The second coping mechanism was an insane caffeine intake when I was working. I would literally drink like a pot of coffee in 4 hours if I was writing, marking, prepping, etc.
See, stimulants have a bit of a backwards effect on ADHD. Stimulants like the caffeine in coffee slowed me down and helped me focus, and for me depressants, can act like an upper. (A fun fact in spotting undiagnosed ADHD in Gen X and the Boomers is an insane caffeine intake to unknowingly self-medicate!)
All in all pretty messy stuff.
So knowing this, one of the things I’ve done is quit drinking outside of extremely light social drinking for that reason. And I’m trying to cut my caffeine intake down by switching to herbal teas. (Update: It’s why you always see me on “Something Wicked” with a big mug of tea!)
It’s helped a lot, especially with sleep! Also… Hangovers just suck! Also, also… It sends your brain chemistry for a loop and a half! Also, also, ALSO – if you’re on endocrine drugs it can kill you by overloading your liver.
As far as I know, in the fifteen years since I had last tried Ritalin, science had developed a type of prescription drug called a neurotransmitter re-uptake inhibitor. I do believe there were some early ones even back then, though!
In my basic understanding of them, they help the brain keep the good chemicals your brain makes naturally — often serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, from being reabsorbed by your body too fast. Your brain makes the chemicals as per normal, so you’re not messing with anything aside from the rate at which they disappear. For me, this was a breakthrough, as I had refused any medications for fear of that whole stimulant-crystal meth correlation in my brain.
As a couple years ago I had already finally relented to my doctor and asked for that something to help me focus with marking and prepping regarding work… For the first time in my life I learned that there even were these non-stimulant drugs that were basically hormone therapy. This was basically 99.99% of why I had refused to take medication for anything prior. When I tried it for the ADD, it worked like a damn charm.
Of course, not all medications work for everyone, and finding a drug and dosage varies person to person, so ask your doctor or psychiatrist first, obviously. Also, don’t self-medicate with substances at the same time, because they can have some nasty interactions. Also, it can take years to find a specific cocktail that works for your disabilities, so be patient!
But I’m not trying to preach at you.
Do what works for you as long as it’s not harmful to you or others. Please know that science and medicine are a lot different from how they were when I was a kid and experienced these environments.
Of course, even taking the ADD medication, I had no clue such a magical thing existed for depression or anxiety, too!
All I know is that it opened the door to finally, maybe, sorta, kinda, exploring the giant glaring issue of fixing my brain chemistry that had been malfunctioning for actual literal decades. Learning that my brain does not make enough of certain key neurotransmitters was new, and it was strange. I was just lucky enough that I had taken a pre-nursing Biology course by accident and knew how the Endocrine (hormone) system worked.
I wasn’t as afraid as I had been before.
As I’m even now still navigating this area as I write this article, I must stress again. Please please please do not take medical advice from this article.
I am just trying to help inform you as to my experiences and how I have navigated my own crises. Knowing that my brain was literally misfiring like a truck with a wobbly wheel was new and strange and something I had to grapple with, as well as something I had to talk very carefully with my psychiatrist about.
Realizing that I may have to take the mental equivalent of an insulin shot for diabetics was tough to learn. If this is new to you and is something you feel like considering for your own diagnosis, it may be tough for you to learn even right now.
You got this. We’re almost there.
So… Moving forward I would have to explore the effects of different medications and see which ones had the least side effects in order to kick my brain’s ass into working normally. Again, I am still actively working this out with the guidance and expertise of my psychiatrist, and everyone will have a different experience. I found that some medications definitely still made me mentally slow and foggy, and some had super unhelpful side effects (like being hungry all the time on top of an already constant hunger, which leads to crazy unhealthy weight gain). A lot of these medications have sexual side effects as well, unfortunately.
Your body is unique and you and your doctor know it best.
TALK TO YOUR DOCTOR OR PSYCHIATRIST!
Again, some people find that they can fix stuff with just counselling and refuse to access medication.
I SUPPORT THAT 100%!
Again, different strokes for different folks.
I was approaching my disabilities originally from the angle that they were medical issues that could be cured. Some could be, and others could not. I am stuck with these things for life. But I can manage it just like a diabetic manages their blood sugar or someone with a wound that has to change their bandages. I’m slowly growing used to the idea that it’s okay.
I am okay. You are okay.
Remember.
You are worthy of being loved.
We need to normalize these things!
I highly doubt anyone reading this article would dare laugh at anyone forced to live as an amputee, for example.
Disabilities are real and legit.
Part of the reason I’m writing articles like this is to end the stigma around even talking about all this, to try and get people to see that you can manage your Mental Illnesses and Disabilities. And to help normal folks understand what it’s like living with them. Or at the very least, so you can start unpacking everything in your bag one piece at a time so it doesn’t end up killing you by your own hand. It’s all about finding tips and tricks and strategies to manage your life so it becomes bearable and manageable. When you’re in the depths of a spiral, you have to remind yourself of what you need to do.
It’s hard.
It’s so fucking hard.
I am not “better.”
I am not “fixed.”
I am not “cured.”
Because I am slowly learning that I have never been broken in the first place. I am merely coming out the other side of a two decade long struggle with Mental Illness and Disability. One that almost killed me. And oh hell, it’s still going to try.
When your own brain gets stuck in recursive logic loops to the point where you rationalize death as the only escape, you have to realize something is fucked up and find a way to get out of it. Because if you can’t, the spiral will simply continue. We need to help folks get out of their own head and talk about it!
If you are somebody with a Mental Illness or Disability… It’s not your fault that things are hard. But you can beat this, or at the very least, manage it. You can cage your own brain, in a way. You can do this with therapy or counseling of all kinds and techniques, with medication, with social support networks. If you are somebody reading this who wants to educate themselves to support somebody in the category of the former…
THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.
THE STIGMA HAS TO END.
And.
Remember.
You are all worthy of being loved.
Is it sticking in your brain yet? Do I need to say it again?
If you take anything out of this article, when you’re having a dark moment, I want you to remember that line. Just turn it on yourself. Pretend I’m whispering it in your ear if you need to. I will straight up record a youtube video of that shit you can play on a loop.
“I am worthy of being loved.”
I have to say it to myself every damn single time the taskmaster comes back to haunt me with negativity and shame and fault. I still can’t look in the mirror and say those words out loud without breaking out in tears.
I am a two hundred and sixty pound, six foot three man, and I still struggle to tell myself I am worthy of being loved.
And my process isn’t done. I just felt I had to do something in terms of “striking while the iron was hot” as it were with this long-form article. I have a long way to go yet. I am neither your superior nor your mentor in this, I am merely a source of knowledge and support, because I am struggling just like many of you are struggling.
I have one quarter of a road map. I’m learning that I don’t have to be the smartest or the strongest. I’m learning that I need to find validation from within myself, and not externally from others. I’m learning that I am the master, and not the victim. I’m even learning about my gifts that are the opposite side of the coin!
This is the great part — the superpowers!
For example, my anxiety is part of being activated 24/7 in fight or flight mode. One of the benefits of being “on” all the time is that I’m really good with empathy because you’re hyper-vigilant of your surroundings and the people around you! I can read people pretty well for intention and emotion based on words and actions, even when they think they have a good poker face!
My whole life, I thought everybody could do this, and were actively choosing to ignore the wants and needs of others, but a really, a large number of people never stop to think twice about what’s going on in that other person’s head or life!
And the list of benefits goes on! The ADD hyper-focus means I sat for hours upon hours and was happy as a clam to hammer out this article without getting distracted once! I forgot to eat or drink outside of my herbal tea for like six hours as I typed away the other day!
The black and white thinking of the LD means I can navigate governmental paperwork and systems like a champ and memorize entire documents!
And now… I am desperately trying to change so I can figure out what I’m actually doing with my life. Is this the path I stay on? Or is it not? These are the questions that nobody alive can answer for me or for you. No level of anxiety via hyper-vigilance will let you see into the future. No amount of ADD will let you hyper-focus your way through every single challenge.
I am trying to look at it now with benefits in mind and not negatives. A complete opposite of before. To balance my rational mind with all of the skills and methods available to me, whether it’s radical acceptance in DBT style therapy, or simply changing the way I treat others around me by creating firm boundaries for myself.
I am still walking the path. I am still healing. I am still shouldering the burdens of my past.
And I am offering a metaphorical hand for you to take, simply to walk with me. To pull you out of that dark place you might be in, or to give you the knowledge you need in order to offer that hand to a friend who could use it. Maybe to beat your own brain and see that hope does exist, despite what your damned spiral is trying to do to you.
This is a lifelong journey.
You got this.
Remember.
I am worthy of being loved.
You are worthy of being loved.
And not always, but sometimes… It’s enough.
Now, let’s get the fuck out of here.
-McRaeWrites.
