I'm very sensitive to words like depressed, bipolar, mental illness, etc. My father is a case of legit bipolar disorder. He's not one of the millions of misdiagnosed bipolar patients; he's the real deal. All my life, my dad has been a timebomb. It always just took time for him to go off on a manic episode lasting 2 months, all his money, and a lot of my family's peace of mind.
These days, he's got it under control with a massive cocktail of prescription medications. So he's not really the main topic of conversation/gossip in the family anymore. No, I'd say that title goes to my brother and myself. He's the uncontrollable alcoholic. I'm the junkie. All my aunts and uncles want to give us their advice, ask us questions about our struggles. It's annoying.
But then they ask us about our father. We say he's the same as he always was. They then look at us silently thinking, "I wonder if either of those boys is like their father."
I am paranoid as fuck about mental illness. I'm so afraid of being depressed by something other than opiate withdrawal. I'm afraid of turning out exactly like my father. I do hate him, by the way. A lot to be specifically. I'm not Oedipus or anything but I just really don't want to turn out like him. So that makes me overly sensitive about terms like depression and the like.
I'm not bipolar. I'm so tired of anyone suspecting it. Every time I've ever gone into therapy it's all they want to talk about. So I lie about it to my psychiatrist now. I officially do not have any family history of mental illness.
I've observed a few things about therapy and psychiatry thanks to this perspective. When they rely on family history in diagnosis, they prescribe antipsychotics for insomnia, SSRI's for anxiety, and nothing for ADD. when they don't suspect any inherited illness, they prescribe ambien and benzos for sleep, benzos for anxiety, and adderall for ADD.
i don't know what that means about the profession or how it deals with its patients. i don't even know the odds, genetically speaking, of me receiving my dad's bad genes and becoming a manic-depressive person. but if by just mentioning that my father is bipolar, in family and therapeutic settings, i get treated differently. it's not a good thing.
These days, he's got it under control with a massive cocktail of prescription medications. So he's not really the main topic of conversation/gossip in the family anymore. No, I'd say that title goes to my brother and myself. He's the uncontrollable alcoholic. I'm the junkie. All my aunts and uncles want to give us their advice, ask us questions about our struggles. It's annoying.
But then they ask us about our father. We say he's the same as he always was. They then look at us silently thinking, "I wonder if either of those boys is like their father."
I am paranoid as fuck about mental illness. I'm so afraid of being depressed by something other than opiate withdrawal. I'm afraid of turning out exactly like my father. I do hate him, by the way. A lot to be specifically. I'm not Oedipus or anything but I just really don't want to turn out like him. So that makes me overly sensitive about terms like depression and the like.
I'm not bipolar. I'm so tired of anyone suspecting it. Every time I've ever gone into therapy it's all they want to talk about. So I lie about it to my psychiatrist now. I officially do not have any family history of mental illness.
I've observed a few things about therapy and psychiatry thanks to this perspective. When they rely on family history in diagnosis, they prescribe antipsychotics for insomnia, SSRI's for anxiety, and nothing for ADD. when they don't suspect any inherited illness, they prescribe ambien and benzos for sleep, benzos for anxiety, and adderall for ADD.
i don't know what that means about the profession or how it deals with its patients. i don't even know the odds, genetically speaking, of me receiving my dad's bad genes and becoming a manic-depressive person. but if by just mentioning that my father is bipolar, in family and therapeutic settings, i get treated differently. it's not a good thing.
