Musing  a bit on madness…

Actually, the words “mad” and “madness” are quite commonly and innocently used in England.

Just here, in North America, there’s an aversion to it.

It’s time we reclaimed them, as gays and blacks have reclaimed the words that accurately describe them.

Frankly, I love the term. I love the fact that all of Shakespeare’s “fools” and “jesters” ~ often considered “mad” ~ were the only characters in his canon to speak the truth.

“Manic Depression” was changed to Bipolar Disorder by psychiatrists ~ to soften the sting out of this ancient and more accurate descriptive term.

Bipolar is a ridiculous and meaningless term…

What does it really mean? It doesn’t change the reality of living with severe, sometimes profound mood swings.

There are so many problems with the term “mental”, including a “them and us” attitude that will prevent progress in changing the perceptions of people about those of us who happen to live with emotional health issues, including mental health issues and addictions.

And who doesn’t?

Language matters. It’s powerful and political. And I don’t like political correctness. I like honesty.

A reader, who is very upset with my use of the term “emotional health,” wants to stop reading this blog and leave our community here at Coming Out Crazy.

I see “emotions” and “moods” as synonymous…

That’s where we differ. I am not my diagnosis. That the first thing. I am me. My mood disorder is unlike anyone else’s, despite a similar label. Oh, how I detest labels, but “emotional” is no label. It’s a reality of life. We all have emotions.

I wish we could sit down and discuss this…

But that isn’t going to happen because of our differences, which can be opportunities for learning. Personal growth, I think, evolves when two people can work through a problem and begin to understand each others differing opinions and perceptions.

Honestly, I interpret the word “emotional health” as a benign and inclusive term encompassing a whole health hemisphere ~ the other being “physical health” ~ and together, you have the totality of health. Mind and body, soul and spirit.

I don’t see “mental health” issues as disorders or illnesses or diseases…

So, on Monday, whilst sitting in Dr. Bob’s office, I was feeling utterly overwhelmed.

I have this harassing disconnect between what I know versus what I feel...

We were therapeutically jousting…

I did not win.

When I left after 60 minutes (which he always gives me, sometimes more) I felt battered and bruised. Beaten.

Not the way I usually feel when I leave his office. Lighter. Freer. Buoyant. Hopeful.

When I was a kid, a long time ago, long before I learned about feminism, pre-Betty Friedan, I remember my father joking with my mother.

Though on reflection, I don’t think his joke was very funny.

My father would say to my mother, in jest, because I know he adored her, ”Maybe it’s time I traded you in for a new model.”

Sometimes I wish I could trade myself in for a new model…

That’s not a put-down, but given that right now in my psychotherapy with Dr. Bob I’m struggling with a few very old records that won’t stop playing ~ that I cannot break ~ and I’m increasingly upset and disoriented by the values and dynamics of the medical model when it comes to emotional and mental health, I’m thinking it’s time for a new model. A new belief system. A new hybrid, perhaps…

Here they are. Lucy’s puppies.

Two boys and one girl.

They’re beautiful and healthy and happy and one of these little guys is now residing in Vancouver, a 10th birthday gift for a little girl from her adoring father.

I won’t dwell on these puppies. I have other issues to discuss, more relevant to my mandate here.

I must, however, stress this. When I was 17, I was given my first dog, a two-year-old Yorkshire Terrier named Derriere ~ Derry for short. This was following my eight-month stay in a Toronto mental hospital called The Clarke Institute of Psychiatry.

Unspeakably fragile, I needed a focus…

I had been psychotic and for four months during that hospitalization, catatonic. I came out of it, but my doctors had little hope for me and told my mother on my discharge that I’d be a problem for her all my life, a “revolving door case.” My mother soldiered on, one day-at-a-time, choosing not to believe them. She had little support or guidance, but instinctively she felt I needed a focus. I was unspeakably fragile. A little dog to care for, she hoped, might ease my recovery. She believed in me.

Would you believe that severe swelling of my calves was caused by stress and heat?

My kidney transplant team never mentioned that possibility. Everything was A-Okay as far as they were concerned and they sent me back to my family doctor.

My psychiatrist Dr. Bob said it was highly unlikely, when I asked him a month or so ago.

It never crossed my G.P.’s mind.

So for more than four weeks, I was stressed beyond belief.

No one knew what was wrong with me…

I was tested for obstructions. Another word for cancer or a tumour. Was there something preventing the fluid in my legs from going back into my body? That’s what my G.P. wanted to know.

As I was battling with my compression pantyhose. Teaching. Travelling. Public speaking. Managing my household. Walking my two Dandie Dinmonts three times a day. Trying to not worry. At the back of my mind, I kept thinking it might all be stress. And heat. I always swell in the heat.

Yet no one ever took me seriously…