this is just cute and psych related

The Cookie Test from Mark Pearson on Vimeo.

wow.

This is incredible.


http://gizmodo.com/5682758/the-fascinating-story-of-the-twins-who-share-brains-thoughts-and-senses

Being green

I know the It Gets Better Project was created to support the gay community through what was a harrowing number of cases of suicide and bullying. However, I think this project speaks for anyone being bullied and I think that people with mental illness definitely fall in that category as well, young people especially.

So thank you Kermit for your message about being green, we would not have you any other way!

I could not think of a more appropriate message for this blog where I strive to show the common ground we all have, the crazy things we all do and the reality behind a very stigmatized and dramatized population.



Cheers to being green!



To being different and fabulous in whatever beautiful way you are!

Beetlejuice... Beetlejuice... BEETLEJUICE!

Okay so I'm a little late on the mandatory Halloween related post but I can not let this go by. Halloween has always been and will always be my favorite holiday for the one reason that it involves mass communal dress up. Slutty costumes/silly costumes I don't care as long as I get to walk down the street in full out face make up and in character and it is widely accepted I am DOWN!

I don't think I have ever not dressed up, even when it was so not cool in middle school, social standing be damned, I was dressed up. When I was reaaaaally little I was a major girly girl and I remember my costume at age 5 as a Fairy-princess-queen-ballerina-mermaid.... I was seriously ambitious. Then as I got older, age 9-10-11 I got into be scary. I mean I may have thought I was scary, correction, I KNOW I thought I was scary but come on, when you are 70 pounds of tiny blonde freckled child, there is only so much some plastic fangs can do for the cause. Still, kids love being scary and kids love being scared. Now you will be hard pressed to get me into a horror movie but when I was little I was all about it. I remember watching The Shining, when I was 11 from behind my grandfather's big leather chair who didn't know I was there or he would have obviously kicked me out of the room. I know there are exceptions on both sides here, but generally speaking, I wonder why we lose our love of fear?

You may be thinking, oh hell no, when I was little I was SO not into scary stuff but come on, did you ever play light as a feather/stiff as a board? The game where one person is "dead" and you tell a story about how they died and then everyone puts two fingers underneath the person on all sides and start chanting "light as a feather/stuff as aboard," while raising the person up until they allegedly, levitate. I never had the levitation thing happen but come on.. that is kind of creepy shit for a bunch of 8 year old girls in floral pajamas to be into after watching A Little Princess, on VHS... right?

I remember after the first time I saw Beetlejuice I lied in bed at night once the lights were out and I whispered it.. "Beetlejuice"... "Beetlejuice".... (squirm with anticipation) "BEETLEJUICE." I did this many times after that and it was almost a bed time routine. I was always a little afraid he would pop into my room and then I'd be in trouble.

Or Bloody Mary! Did you ever hear that one? That if you look into the mirror at midnight and say "Bloody Mary," three times she (I don't even know who she really is.. I just pictured something like Carrie...) would come through the mirror and kill you and then drag you with her back through the mirror into... I don't know really... but it wouldn't be good. Well I tried it, multiple times, no luck.

When I was in 3rd grade my friend told me that if I said "hell" three times I was going there for SURE. So of course, I said it, waiting to be whisked off the playground by some demon but again no go. Maybe that one only applies after death... so if I end up in some fiery Bosch-like afterlife I will surely curse my daring 3rd grade self.

Kids are often really fascinated with death. As much as I tested the waters with all this superstition, I was also terrified that I would die in my sleep. Children don't really understand the concepts of consciousness and this is a common fear. I had those little Mexican worry dolls and every night I would put one under my bed and tell the doll my worry, that I would die in my sleep, and she would keep me safe.

As we grow older fears like this subside as we begin to understand our conscious existence and the idea that we continue to exist even when not fully conscious. With more life experience we also become aware of the fragility of our existence and grasp the permanence of death that is incomprehensible as a young child. Some researchers have shown that children do not fully grasp the permanence of death until about age 11. As we grow older we try and integrate our lives into something bigger and more lasting than our mortal selves. We strive to leave legacy, have children, develop faith, connect to a god, connect to our communities to become something larger and more lasting and more resistant to our mortality. This is all part of a theory called Terror Management Theory that was actually pioneered by one of my professors. I recommend you look it up if this interests you. The main point is I think there is less of love of fear as we age, because that fear holds more meaning as we become more aware of our own transience.

But let's not get too morbid shall we? I still do the Beetlejuice thing sometimes...

Restraining Order

Just another Tuesday at the office. What did I do at work?
Ya know, went in, checked my e-mail, got strapped to a mattress frame by 18 other employees.

Okay, it was not just another day at the office, it was the mandatory safety and restraint hospital training for anyone who works directly with patients. Restraints are a technique that were used much more frequently in psychiatric hospitals up until about 20 years ago. I know when people picture someone who's "crazy," the image of someone in a solitary padded room or strapped to a bed often comes to mind because that is what has been shown in so many movies. However, this is really an uncommon practice now, and that is mainly because so much paperwork has to be filed for insurance purposes when any kind of restraint (could be just as simple holding someone's arms down and walking them to their room) is performed.


So it is Tuesday around 1:00 and everyone is sleepy from lunch and tired and bored and we have to get up and learn how to use the 4 point (wrists and ankles) cuff restraints and of course they need a body to do this on so after waiting 3 or 4 seconds while everyone avoids eye contact with the instructors, I volunteer. I have to lie down on this "mattress" which is more like a gym mat and the other 18 people in the room alternate holding me down, cuffing me and tying the leather cuffs to the mattress frame with what are basically leather belts. I was listening to them as they all did this and a few comments were "this is so creepy," and "this is like a nightmare." I have to say, as someone who was fully conscious and aware of what was happening and in a training environment that was not remotely high stress, it was freakin creepy. Having people you don't know, hold you down and realizing how little you can do in that situation and being unable to really keep up with who is doing what and where, it made me a little anxious. From that, it's still very hard for me to imagine what it would be like if I was not fully able to understand what was happening and if everyone was totally serious and the tension was high.

There is a lot of negativity towards the mental health practitioners for doing these restraints. They are usually portrayed as cruel and unnecessary and even torturous. Let me just say, as someone who has had to perform a variety of different kinds of holding restraints (not using any sort of stretcher/cuffs) that they can be necessary. For example, when you have a patient who is psychotic and clawing at her face and completely out of touch with reality, if you don't intervene that patient can seriously hurt herself. Usually restraints are done (at least from what I have seen and from how I personally believe they should be used) to intervene when the patient is a harm to him/herself, and on occasion when a patient is a serious threat to another patient or staff. As much as I like to paint a picture that mental health is not as scary as it is made out to be, those movies don't come from nothing and these situations do happen, usually on more acute units. Note: they do NOT happen at every hospital and they do not happen on every unit at every hospital and this should in no way be the predominant image in your mind of what mental illness looks like, I cannot say that enough. Where I work, they are performed on some units and so all staff have to learn them. First, we learn about a million different ways to try to verbally distract the patient or calm him/her down without any kind of touch. But on the occasion that does not work we learn the restraints.

If I had my way I would order everyone who potentially has to do a restraint get restrained. I don't think you can be as good surgeon if you don't know what it is like to go under the knife. I don't think you can be as good a doctor if you don't know what it's like to be really sick. Of course we can't all share the same experiences, and I think for some reason people find mental health issues the hardest to relate to. Actually I believe the reason is because these issues are actually the easiest to relate to and that threatens the idea that people have, that they are in complete control of their bodies, minds and emotions. So convince themselves that mental illness is something bigger and scarier and more overblown that it really is so that they can believe that it could never ever possibly develop within them. I think people have less empathy with mental health and illness than with physical health and illness because of this and so I think as practitioners we have to go the extra mile to try and empathize that much more.

So go ahead and question my sanity, I do often enough, but I was glad I had that experience.

Friday night

photo credit-me


Wooooo Friday night!!

I have always been a social gal, I like hanging out with people. Recently, I switched out my Friday 9-5 research shift for a 3-11 evening shift on the adolescent girls residential program at the hospital. Was I a bit worried that I would regret sacrificing my Friday evenings... hell yes... but I was absolutely positive that gaining some direct patient time and decreasing some quality time with my computer screen would be an upgrade.

The first couple shifts were great. The other staff were all incredibly cool and I was surprised by the girls. I had worked in a more severe unit before and these girls are all transitioning, getting ready to go home but just stopping in for a "tune up," as I heard it often called. My first day I say girls with shoe laces and elastic waist bands and headphones and panicked thinking of all the gruesome ways these things could be used to self harm... I think I visibly jumped when one of the staff handed a girl a pair of scissors for a crafts project. I was on high alert as my previous training had molded me to be, so it took some time for me to relax and get used to this new patient group. I have to say, working with this psych stuff does kind of make you crazy. I mean when you see someone wearing headphones and the first thing you think is "oh my god, she is going to hang herself with those from her closet beam..." that's kinda messed up.

Well, really this is just the tip of the iceberg folks. I called my Mom two weekends ago coming home from work and the conversation went something like this,

"Mom I just had the best night ever!!"
"That's great honey, what happened?"
"I WENT TO AA!"
...pause...
"Ok, I know this is you, and I know there is an explanation here, but this is not exactly the normal tone that accompanies that statement, you do realize this yes?"
"I KNOW BUT IT WAS SO COOL!"
"Ok.. I need to go to bed, but I am glad... you had fun."
"Thanks! "


Truly, I cannot even explain what it was like to you because the actions themselves are simple and everyone knows them. You read from the big blue book and you go around and say what you got out of it or how it related to you and your story. This group was all women and it was so cool to see this little secret community. Mental illness, in all forms, I think can be really isolating and I think group therapy approaches can be a really cool way to break out of that and that is essentially what AA is about.

So I didn't really give up my Friday nights, don't worry, I'm still out being social, just not having any cocktails.

Today's entry was brought to you by the letter Y...

Okay, in case my post Keeping Up with The Jones', bummed you out, and you read that article about the weird twenty-something decade of postponed adulthood and thought, wow... at least I'm not the only one but damn. And in case you are now daydreaming about your childhood days and how simple they were, hanging out and watching Sesame St, long before complex computer animated cartoons came into play... I have found something that might just solve all your problems (well at least the two specific aforementioned problems).

http://jezebel.com/5646999/twentysomethings-need-their-own-sesame-street

Enjoy, YipYip!

Land without technology- Epilogue

Okay... so... I must make another concession on the topic of technology being the downfall of all that is good and right in the world. Also... if it's not reading across, I am definitely being sarcastic here, as there are numerous benefits from technology at large. My harping is mainly focused on the preservation of creative thinking in young children while their innate developmental tendencies allow for it to such a florid extent. But, New York Times, you bring up some interesting ideas with this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/magazine/19video-t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3&ref=general&src=me

While this is still not tackling my issue of fostering organically generated creative abstract thought, it does make an interesting case for ways the mass appeal of extremely reinforcing video games can be harnessed and used to benefit kids. I guess I am now wondering why this hasn't been utilized to a larger degree sooner? Educational tech games have been around a while. I know when I was a kid, I could spend hours on Math Blaster... does anyone else remember that computer game? It was awesome, and believe me when I say, me describing anything related to math as "awesome," is a rarity.

I think one of the major important parts of this article, was mentioning how testing is such a scary huge deal, you pass or you fail, live or die. Those tests are so stressful for kids and teachers alike and I think they really take away from the purpose of learning. While as the article mentions, some people feel kids should learn for the sake of it, not through games, kids aren't learning from the sake of it now, they are learning for the sake of the exam and isn't that even worse? I don't see the benefits of learning out of fear and pressure and stress rather than out of fun and enjoyment and enthusiasm. I think there is something to be said for the forgiveness of mistakes that is taught in video games. Sure you may die a gory death but you get to try again, sure maybe a few levels back... maybe all over again, but the point is you get to learn from mistakes and go back and that is a really valuable lesson.

I still don't think this is an IDEAL system to implement and I think age restrictions for tech based learning should be put in place. To me, that video of a two-year old smoking was just as scary as videos of two-year olds playing with ipads. But, I do think maybe there can be a happy medium.

While we're on this, can someone design a video game for GRE prep? It's a little late for me now, but I could have really used a dopamine rush during my studying a few months ago. I don't wish that kind of hell on anyone.

Big fat cartoon tears

photo by Urbancitylife- http://www.flickr.com/photos/breakingsights/


Did you see Toy Story 3 this summer? Well I did and if you didn't then you missed out my friend. Boyfriend and I went in proudly with our 3D glasses and slushy (regrettable choice) braced to be surrounded by a massive crowd of 10 and unders, but we were relieved/surprised to find that there were plenty of other twenty-somethings already there. Boyfriend wasn't as surprised I don't think, but he is an unabashed cartoon lover so it hardly made a difference to him either way. Anyways, we loved the movie, and I got all choked up more times than I want to publicly admit to. Boyfriend did too, but he is also an unabashed sap so he won't care that I'm calling him out (right?).

This week we watched Le ballon rouge (The Red Balloon). It's an older French short film that I had been meaning to watch for a while and finally got around to. Basically, it's a very simple film with almost no dialogue and the main characters are a boy and his balloon. It was so heart-breakingly pure, that's the best way I could describe it. Of course it involves some imagination to get swept up in the story of a balloon loving a boy. But still, the idea that such a simple object could illicit so much emotional response was really intriguing to me.

Okay, so if you haven't seen Toy Story 3, I hope you have seen at least some Pixar movie in your lifetime a. because they are great and b. because I'm going to keep referencing them for the duration of this post.

I started thinking about the other movies they have made that surround typically inanimate objects, mainly Wall-E since that is another one we have watched again recently. How an animated robot can elicit such a strong emotional response from people, kids and adults and of course it does this because it has been given human traits for us to connect with. It's not like we are connecting with a plain aluminum box that just sits there... like a box. Anthropomorphism and the reaction it draws from a subject is really interesting to me because I don't really understand the evolutionary background behind it. I assume that it's not something that was developed as an intentional asset of its own accord, but rather is simply the brain generalizing the perception of traits we have been conditioned to pick up on in humans. We know we are looking at a robot, but what we see are emotions that have been crafted into a mechanical face, we stop seeing the machine and just register these facial cues.

Okay, so then what about the red balloon? Even without human expressions an object can display emotion through action, even when restricted to the vague actions allotted to a balloon... like floating/rising/falling/speeding up/hanging still/and SPOILER ALERT: popping (come on.. like you didn't know that would happen?). Sure, in this scenario we have the attachment of the boy to the balloon to respond to as well, and reading the attachment he displays helps convey what the balloon cannot.

Okay then, back to Pixar, the very beginning clip of the lamp jumping on the I. We connect to A LAMP people... and I tip my hat to you Pixar, for making us all a little bit crazy for having an emotional response to a desk lamp. Obviously Ikea thought this was pretty funny to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdIJOE9jNcM

I just find it interesting how easy it is for us to connect to the most subtle human cues of emotion when they are displayed on inanimate objects and yet, we seem to have such a hard time picking up on these things with other people. It's like we get distracted by all of the other aspects of connecting with another person that we are too busy processing simultaneously, that we miss the crucial points.

So after my rant on how video games and media are ruining the world, let me clarify, PIXAR is exempt from those statements.

I remember when I was little I was pretty much bored by any show that involved real people. There was too much dialogue and I just tuned out. I loved cartoons and animation and I think this speaks pretty generally for most kids these days. It's interesting to me that something simpler would be MORE captivating to children. When I did watch kids shows with real people, they would always really exaggerate their facial expressions, watch a clip of Sesame Street and you'll see what I mean. Old school cartoons, whether they involved inanimate objects, animals, or people, all involved really overly emotive characters and it makes sense that kids would latch on to that in order to learn these cues. Now however, animation is very different. Rather than being simple exaggerated subjects, they are extremely complex and over the top and I think we really lost something there (minus you Pixar).

Okay, my point is, if we have this amazing ability to generalize and perceive emotive facial cues imposed onto objects even if this is just a messy side effect from the evolution of this ability, you'd think that we would be stellar at picking up on these with other humans, right? I think the fact is that we ARE really good with this with other humans but we let other things get in the way.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. Malcolm Gladwell, think so too and he wrote a book called Blink, which you might be interested in reading. That is, unless this whole post to you was a waste of eye muscle movement aside from the funny Ikea commercial. In which case, I suggest you go watch Le ballon rouge and I DARE you not to have an emotional response.

Status: Keeping up with the Jones'

image- Le Love
Ok, so not to continue to rip on technology while.. you know... writing on a blog... on a computer... I'm a hypocrite ok, accept it and let's move forward or we're never going to get through this entry.

But seriously, I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I have a hunch that I am not the only person out there who spends a few too many hours a week on Facebook perusing... (ok stalking) her friends/acquaintances. Does this sound familiar? Raise those hands higher and repeat after me "My name is ______ and I am a Facebook-aholic." But really, why do we do this?

I started thinking about it and about how I FEEL when I look at Facebook, what it is I am looking to find and what keeps me checking in. If you read one of the articles linked in the previous post you would know one theory of how reinforcing these little internet check points are, how they might actually be re-wiring (I hate how vague that term is.. but you know what I mean) our reward systems and decreasing our patience. I don't entirely disagree with this, but I was thinking a bit more and I have perhaps a more tangible theory on some of the detriments of Facebook.

What are we looking for? Or rather, what are we putting out there? Photos of happy times with friends, of new apartments, of playful pets, of raging parties and famous concerts, of delicious food and new babies and weddings. What are we posting? Status updates of new jobs, of relationships being built, of visits with family and travel plans, of weekends well-spent and announcements of new projects.

So what AREN'T we posting? Photos of us when we wake up in the morning, when we're hungover, when we're sick, when we don't feel like going to work, when we are folding laundry or judging ourselves in the mirror. We don't announce breakups and often avoid even posting true relationship status for fear of the dreaded "____ is no longer in a relationship," newsfeed. We don't announce deaths of family and how awful they are, we don't announce being fired, we don't announce feeling depressed, feeling anxious, feeling lost.

Who is on Facebook? Mainly, people in the twenties. People who are in college, or recently out or are somewhat new to the working world. I just can't imagine that alllllllll of us on this network have it all together at this point. Yet, look at what we put out there, how would anyone know otherwise?

How do we connect to friends these days? A lot of it, is on Facebook. There are fewer phone calls and more messages sent, fewer voice mails and more texts. Do you remember what your friendships were like in middle school and high school in the pre-Facebook era (for those who remember)? Well I know at least for me, my friends were my friends because they were the people I could go to when I had a problem, when I was upset about something and needed to talk it out.

I think that Facebook has set some new norms for our friendships and for us as individuals. We don't communicate directly as often and what we do put out there is so positive positive positive, that if you feel anything but, it feels like a failure. It's hard to keep up with the Jones' when the Jones' seem to only to go on lovely trips, have adorable babies that never cry according to photo documentation, eat delicious meals, never work since there is no evidence to show otherwise and have perky put together status updates dripping from your iphone at all times.

Ok, and I know I am just as guilty of this as anyone (I'm a hypocrite, remember, you accepted it a few paragraphs back too late now!). But honestly, why WOULD we post anything else? Putting cries for help out there aren't really effective even if we had the guts to put it out there. What do you get back, a little icon that says "_____ likes this" to your "I am feeling emotionally sound for the first time all week," status? The pay off for taking the risk of putting out such a vulnerable statement into the masses, just isn't worth it.

So, do I think this is going to change? No. Am I going to start posting when I feel sad, or hopeless, or like I have no idea what I am doing with my life (and as a 23 year-old, I'm probably going to feel this way from time to time for... a while...see this New York Times article for reasons as to why- http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html- see I'm normal!...)? No. When people do put out those kinds of status updates do I think to myself, I wish they would call someone and talk about it rather than a half-hearted invitation to no one in particular to reach out? Yes. But do I reach out to them? No. Because it's so hard to tell whether people actually want those things acknowledged or if it is a way of venting semi-anonymously that is what makes it appealing. Maybe reaching out would be over-stepping the fourth wall that is put up with a screen. So the barriers of tech-communication are laid and we try to clumsily navigate them as the pioneer generation of the technological new world.

I just wanted to point it out as something to keep in the back of your head. Next time your newsfeed seems particularly sugar-coated and you're wondering why you're the only one who seems to be struggling amidst all the smiling faces just remember that you're not. If you need further proof, just read some blogs, those are always whiny and annoying right? Anyways, the Jones' were probably overcompensating train wrecks.

Once upon a time, in a land without technology...

photo by me
A couple months ago, some of my friends and I played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time. For those of you who don't know, this game is awesome, seriously. It's awesome because it is based entirely on the imaginations of the players. You can never run out of ideas, or plot lines, or moves, or missions because you make it up as you go. I then realized that the fact that this kind of game was so novel to me was kind of sad. That a game based on imagination was so revolutionary, so different and so thrilling, says a lot about my own lack of imaginary use lately.

I've also been thinking a lot about video games, and the fact that my boyfriend just got an Xbox has nothing to do with it.. I swear. Anyways, video games are also awesome. I mean, I personally don't have a lot of experience beyond N64, but just watching him play with these extremely vivid images and winding plot lines is enough for me to understand how it can consume someone's afternoon. That along with evidence that some video games produce a dopaminergic response similar to eating and having sex... explains a lot. However, my boyfriend is an actor, and he uses his imagination all the time, so the fact that he can spend hours playing those games doesn't really bother me. He already had a childhood full of creativity and imagination and I have seen the photos of him in crazy costumes to prove it.

I too had my share of imaginary play growing up (see previous posts for plenty of embarrassing examples). However, I really worry about kids today (and I KNOW I sound like I am 50 years old but bear with me) growing up who only know how to play using these devices. I feel like there should really be some mandatory imagination hour put into the schedules at school in between all of the absurd test prep that begins as early as elementary school these days. Imagination is the child's specialty. Their true mastery is the ability to be entirely unfazed by the rules of reality that limit our thought as we grow. It is not only a natural skill to develop, but imagination increases our cognitive flexibility, something that has a lot of benefits, including helping to cope with trauma later in life should it occur. Rigid inflexible play is also often a sign for a variety of mental illnesses and disorders. Of course, children vary in their play and some are more elaborate or outlandish than others, so we are talking about the extremes here. I just hope that kids now are getting the opportunities to use their brains in this way because it only becomes harder and harder to find the outlets to do it as we get older. It's no coincidence that professions in the arts are so glorified and coveted. They allow us to do what we are programmed to do from such a young age.

I don't feel like diving into my entire thesis right now (maybe another day) so if I didn't convince you I don't care... for now; but you still have to admit, if nothing else, when kids use their imaginations, it's pretty damn cute.

Exhibit A: my linking wasn't working so copy and paste below, then enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM35grvNkss

Exhibit B: for those of you not yet convinced to go turn off the computer and go play dress-up, here are some good articles on the other downsides of too much tech time.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/timestopics/series/your_brain_on_computers/index.html

Pom-poms and dryer sheets

images from Le love and Free People

My boyfriend was out of town a lot this past month and so I was forced to embrace some alone time. I'm typically a social person, so I wasn't thrilled at the prospect, but soon found myself enjoying some time to myself. Most of it consisted of doing what I had been doing already, but in my underwear. For some reason, doing mundane things in the house becomes a thrill when you're just in your skivvies. It's weird, but I felt even more like an adult. I could cook dinner, provide for myself in the apartment that I pay rent for, AND I could do it in my underwear because there were no rules but my own. Surely, the boyfriend would not object to this behavior when he is indeed home, but it's different when you're alone. It's not like you're in your underwear to be sexy or alluring, you're just comfortable and free, and I felt like a kid, and I felt like such a grown-up all at once. Being in your underwear makes everything you do more fantastically sensory. You lie on a soft blanket and it is that much better because it is soft on your back, and your shoulders and your calves, all at once. Or you go with that urge to stretch your legs while you're standing in the kitchen because you can, because you don't have the constriction of jeans. Or you hang out outside on the porch (yes I hung out on the porch in my underwear.. our backyard is fairly tree covered I promise) and the breeze is so much more potent.

At my old hospital, after we had breakfast on the unit, the kids were sent to their rooms to get dressed, brush teeth and make their beds. They were mostly encouraged to do this on their own whenever possible, and the staff would monitor the halls to make sure the toothpaste wasn't being spread on the mirror and that no one was hiding dirty bed sheets in the closet (which someone tried almost daily). Anyways, all the kids had come back to the group room and we were going to start our daily programming but one was missing, let's call him Ron. He was the youngest of the little kids group, he had just turned 5 and had these big blue eyes that would just make your heart melt, even when he was screaming at you while pouring milk all over the kid next to him... okay, he made MY heart melt anyways. So, I went to his room to go check on him. Ron had a lot of sensory sensitivities and was likely somewhere on the Autism spectrum. When he was upset, he liked to be wrapped tightly in a big blanket and he would sit there and rock himself calm and while this image of quiet rocking just screams of instability when you picture it on an adult, when you're 5, it's cool. Anyways, I went to Ron's room and he was standing on his bed in nothing but his Lightning McQueen, Cars, pull-up. He had attempted the whole, getting dressed thing, but was distracted by the dryer sheet that was left in his laundry basket. He held it to his nose and was just breathing it in. His eyes were closed and I watched him for a good 30 seconds, not wanting to interrupt what was such a blissful moment.

For all the problems that Ron had, he was able to find complete joy and serenity in a dryer sheet. It went on for about ten minutes before we finally went back and brought him to group. Before we went back to the group room, he stashed the dryer sheet under his pillow, his secret hiding space that was also inhabited by a piece of thread and a tiny red pom-pom from crafts.

Just a reminder, that no matter what larger problems you have going on -and believe me, if you're 5 and you're in an inpatient psychiatric hospital, you probably have some heavy stuff happening in your life- having some quiet time to just be alone in your underwear, enjoying the simply things around you, is the most therapeutic thing you can do.

Happy lounging.

No monsters in the closet

photo from- http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruminating_slav


sitting in bean bag chairs
eating pretend plastic meals
wrapping up in blanket cocoons
choosing breakfast cereals
playing kickball
making sand castles
riding bikes
drawing pictures on the floor (on paper... just lying on the floor.. mostly)
making endless race car tracks
reading stories
over
and
over
bed time hugs
tuck ins
checking for monsters
leaving the doors open juuuuust a little bit


A list of normal things that kids do.

Also a list of things we used to do all the time at my old hospital on the inpatient children's unit.

I think there is a lot of misconception surrounding mental health in almost every aspect, but it certainly just obscures all knowledge of fact when it comes to hospital images. It goes without saying that there is of course, a wide range in the hospital facilities in this country and even starker range around the world. Still, there is need for some clarification here and it is understandable since 'mental hospitals/psychiatric facilities' (I work in one and even I don't know what politically correct term to use now, which says a lot) are so closed off from the public to (I believe) protect the patient's privacy. Of course every patient has a right to privacy in any health related matter, be it cancer or pink eye or bulimia. However, what we may gain in the momentary protection of the patient's rights, I think we also sacrifice in perpetuating stigma and the mysterious dark imagery surrounding these places. If people had a more accurate picture of what treatment centers looked like I think it would be a big help. Unfortunately, the powers that be would disagree and I do understand that the protection of the patient comes first.

So I cry out to the media! To the arts! Those who make a living in showing us aspects of life that we can't otherwise get exposure to, because it is from another culture, another time, another city, or just someone's life whom we will never meet. Now the film industry has created a number of very popular movies surrounding mental health, and some of which I would greatly suggest you watch (I'll keep doing research and come up with a list soon), while others might as well be filed in the horror genre. The psychiatric field is certainly not some pristine branch of medicine where everyone just lies on plush couches and plays racquet ball on the grassy hillside of the hospitals for months at a time and magically wind up cured of depression... though... it seemed to be at one time. On the other hand, there was a time when hammering an icepick through someone's eye socket and scrambling the pre-frontal region of the brain was widely practiced and it might shock you to know that was continuing in the U.S. until about 50 years ago. Just like any other field, it's been through a lot of change, especially in the last century. I won't go into a full lecture, the point being, I think there have been some mixed messages out there about mental health treatment (for good reason given the checkered past) and I'd like someone to clear it up.

Then again, if there was a movie about mental health as it truly is today, it probably wouldn't attract too much of an audience (maybe that's why it hasn't been done). Where it does seem to be mainstreamed is where it's leaking out in the Hollywood culture, in the destructive relationships and drug use and self-harm that has been splashed all over the tabloids. So I would ask you, Hollywood, to try and create a really realistic movie about mental health treatment as it is today, but it seems you're sick yourself! So now I return to my first post, what is this undeniable connection between mental illness and creativity? Maybe I'm totally wrong, it could simply be that because these artists have garnered so much fame and attention, from Van Gogh to Lindsay Lohan, (and I'm sorry for referencing those two in the same sentence) that it merely seems that there is a connection because we KNOW about it in those personal cases that are exposed. What we DON'T know is that our neighbors, and the people in front of us in the grocery store or next to us in the movies are being treated, or have been. We don't know because know one talks about it in the industry itself because of confidentiality, and no one talks about it in their personal lives because of stigma. So don't you see the cycle? We can't talk about it, so no one knows what these illnesses are really like, and we can't show the treatment centers, so no one knows what they really look like, and we can't share the treatment plans etc. etc. etc. so NO ONE KNOWS ANYTHING. Since we are curious by nature, we make up ideas of what it must be like, and we buy into the dark imagery because it scares us and makes us excited, so people with these issues sure as hell won't talk about it because they know that we've already made up what it looks like, and that it's not pretty, and they don't want to be looked at like that.

It has seemed to me that children with mental illness face the toughest battle often times, for a multitude of reasons I will surely touch on later. Sometimes it's not pretty at all. Sometimes it is scary and sad but that is why they are getting help and that is beautiful. So I want you to know, that sometimes, and not always, but sometimes, it can look like:

sitting in bean bag chairs
eating pretend plastic meals
wrapping up in blanket cocoons
choosing breakfast cereals
playing kickball
making sand castles
riding bikes
drawing pictures on the floor (on paper... just lying on the floor.. mostly)
making endless race car tracks
reading stories
over
and
over
bed time hugs
tuck ins

checking for monsters

leaving the doors open juuuuust a little bit



I wish I could leave the door open wider so you could see more.

In the morning

photo by unknown + ffffound on Le Love

I came into work early today because I am weird and can't sleep so I come into work at 7:30 when I don't need to be here until 9:00.

Anyways, the campus of the hospital is gorgeous early in the morning and it's before a lot of the main campus staff show up but the patients are usually up early for one reason or another. I was coming in, wearing my work clothes which is just like a game of dress-up trying to seem professional but never feeling really comfortable. Walking up to my building a man comes down the hill of his unit and I know he's a patient because he's just wearing sweat pants and a tie-dye t-shirt and his hair is all disheveled and his face is puffy with sleep and he waves and says "hi" groggily and I wave and say "hi" back.

For a split second I'm jealous that he gets to come here and be himself and wear pajamas and let his hair stay messy and stretch on the lawn of the hospital with no shame or worry. I need to come in and pretend to be a grown-up and pretend to do important things all day long and I have to follow a dress code even though no one sees us but the other RA's in the office because if our bosses let us wear casual clothes the jig is up. They would be admitting that yes, it's true that it's all a facade and that it doesn't matter what we look like because we don't have any in-person important responsibilities. So we wear nice business-casual clothes to sit in our annexed office and pretend to do important things.

I feel like a massive fake and I envy his realness and I think how we are all the same in the morning. We all have puffy disoriented faces and messy matted hair and are cozy and relaxed in our comfy worn out loose fitting clothing and we all want to stay that way all day. But some of us get dressed and put on the act while others don't and we look at them and think "they're crazy, look at their disheveled hair," and this is said with a tinge of resentment because though we'd never admit it, they are doing what we wish we had the balls to do sometimes.

Crazy things I do that are normal.. I think?:

watch the same episodes of things over and over .. and over (Arrested Development and Sex and the City have been watched maybe 4 times each)

forget to eat dinner

eat dinner at 11:00 at night

eat icecream and call it dinner if it is between the hours of 5-7

eat organic food as much as possible but still smoke cigarettes on occasion

forget where the car is parked no matter how hard I try to remember by making up elaborate stories about the isle letter the car is parked in, like if it is isle C saying "the car is in Camelot," but then I forget what the reminder means and spend more time trying to decode it all over again wondering what the hell Camelot was code for

become irrationally angry over stupid things like:
something not fitting right
losing an earing
burning eggs even when I have a whole dozen left
not being able to find a pen ANYWHERE when I REALLY need one
not having hot water for an unknown reason even if it's only for a 5 minute shower
my camera battery dies when I want to take a picture


ask friends for second opinions over things I already know the answer to, but for some reason need an external voice to convince me I am right

do yoga stretches in random places: waiting in line for a movie, at my desk at work (I have a yoga ball for a chair so it kiiiiind of makes sense), in the kitchen while trying to cook at the same time.. always a dangerous idea

paint my nails but then nick one and take it all off to do it over

forget to drink water and then wondering why I always get headaches... realize it is because I don't drink water... drink 8 glasses of water the next day, pee a million times and then decide I'd rather get a headache... until I do... (repeat cycle)

refuse to touch the hand rails on the T with my palm but still eat things I drop on the floor

stare into my closet for up to 10 minutes trying to figure out what to wear, proclaim I have no clothes, walk around the house naked for another 10 minutes to procrastinate and then throw on the same t-shirt and jeans I always wear and go shopping.... even though, I have WAY too many clothes

assume my boyfriend/mother/friends can read my mind and while sometimes they can, this is not a logical expectation

ALWAYS fall asleep when watching a movie at home and then the next morning wonder why I can't remember the ending and get paranoid I am developing Alzheimer's

become paranoid I am getting Alzheimer's, decide I should do Sudoku to prevent this but remember I hate math too much and accept that this has therefore doomed me to an early mental deterioration

check my phone alarm clock twice before going to bed

then check it at least 2 more times

leave the windows open but always worry about locking the door (this made even less sense when I lived on ground level)

am incapable of doing anything before brushing my teeth but easily go two days without showering

impulsively make large scale life decisions like what college to go to but debate over how to cut my hair for weeks

continue to try to re-pierce my third earing hole that closed up, even though each time it ends in a bloody failure

"sing along" to songs on the radio even when I don't know the words but just make them up and pretend like I do

write sticky notes to remind me of EVERYTHING

photograph my food

clean the bathtub before I take a bath, but then become paranoid that bathing in the chemicals I cleaned the bath with are more harmful, and then debate this every time I go to take a bath to relax... which obviously just stresses me out and even though the clean-up involved in this may be terrible... this looks so pretty I may need to get some confetti and give this a shot (image from Lula mag website)-




haven't eaten red meat since I was 15 but drool over (and purchase) leather boots without a hint of guilt

refuse to chemically dye my hair because it is too permanent but got a tattoo


I'd love to hear what normal crazy things you do! Please share!!

Dangers of whistling while you work

Okay, sorry that last post became a big rant... sometimes I can't help myself.

Anyways, I'll keep this short. Today coming into work I could tell someone was behind me, probably like 20 feet away and I hadn't seen them but you know how you can feel that? When I was little, when we would drive on the highway I would always stare at other people in the cars that were slightly ahead of us so they couldn't actually see me directly. I would just stare (such a little creeper) until they would turn around. It always worked, they could always feel it and would turn around and see this weird little blonde kid staring at them. It just amazed me that they could feel it and I felt like I had special powers. But then I never knew what to do once they looked because I was actually too shy to wave or interact so I would just look away. Anyways, if this every happened to you and there was a little blonde girl in the back of a tan station wagon .. sorry for being so awkward....

Okay, anyways, so I am walking into work (I work in a major psychiatric hospital in Boston) and can feel this person behind me but don't want to be weird and turn around because just like when I was 5, I'd have nothing to do but awkwardly smile or just look away. So then the person starts whistling, not in a cute Jimminy Cricket way (does he whistle?.. he should if he doesn't) but in a creepy way. So now I am officially convinced there is some total psychopath (anti-social personality disorder for anyone who feels like being technical) behind me because I have an over-active imagination and make up these ridiculous things in my head... which is normal right.. but still can't bring myself to turn around. FINALLY he turns to go into another building and I see it is a very prominent physician and I feel like a total idiot for letting my mind get the best of me. At the same time I expect more from someone who possibly works with people who are really paranoid, I EXPECT that he would KNOW that whistling eerily while at a 20 foot distance behind a young girl walking for about 4 minutes next to the old abandoned buildings on our campus would be totally creepy.

Now, I must say, that my opinion, psychiatric hospitals are generally places where I feel extremely comfortable! I'm way more anxious walking home at night on the gorgeous and perfectly safe streets of Cambridge near where I live, than I ever was on the inpatient units at my old hospital. It's one of the few places in the world where people are encouraged to let everything out, to work through things openly, to wear their difficulties and vulnerabilities on their sleeves so they can be identified and then worked on. It's really the safest place in the world because everything is out in the open. Sometimes it can be scary when someone goes off or harms him/herself, or threatens to do one of those things, but at least they are announcing it, it's out there and then you can work with it! The rest of the world scares me a lot more. In the rest of the world dark thoughts are shunned and kept secret and so problems aren't worked out and things fester and dwell and that's just dangerous and unhealthy. Fear is so generally related to the unknown, the potential problem, the unseen danger, the monster hiding out of sight. But if everything is out in the light then it's not scary anymore. Even if the thought expressed is something scary or dark or upsetting, at least it's out, it's identified and purged and can be tackled and defeated.

But that's not how it is right now, and I hear someone whistle eerily behind me and I worry and I am creeped out because I assume he is an axe-murderer who is probably hiding things... like dead bodies... and I am a creep because that is what I think and I harbor it in my brain and that's no good and if we were on the unit I would turn around and say "Hey! Your whistling is really creeping me out and triggering some dark thoughts so please stop!" because I would have been taught to start working on expressing myself and having open communication about my fears and paranoia's. But we are in the 'real world' and so that would be weird. So I do the normal thing and say nothing, because he would think I was crazy and for some reason that is what I should worry about.

Epidemic

photo-Le Love

Validity is a weird thing. What determines what is valid?

If we perceive something to be valid is it? Is it a judgement call? If someone perceives something as invalid at the same time, how do we know who is right? Do we empirically measure validity? Science can be a way of measuring validity, how valid a certain claim is, that claim being a hypothesis, a belief based on some evidence or probable theory. But then we put that belief to the test, quantifying it until we have some statistical evidence to say that is valid or that is invalid. If a belief cannot be tested is it still valid? If someone believes their opinion is valid, is that enough? Is a belief in validity enough to make something valid or does it need a majority vote, or must a quantitative backing be provided? It seems to depend what the subject of debate is at the time.

I’m of the opinion that… I don’t know.

Sometimes I am a die hard believer of science and of empirical evidence and proof and facts. But then, I work with people, and I work with emotions and opinions and first hard accounts of hazy memories. For someone with scientific training you’d think I’d have no patience for this, because I can’t measure someone’s sadness and say definitively yes, yes you have a problem or no, no you’re dealing with a rational amount of grief that I can indisputably say you can overcome. Psych tries really hard to be a science. It is a science. I work in research, we use Microsoft Excel and SPSS… that’s science, right?( I can hear my brother, the bio-chem major, laughing in my head). Since these things are so hard to measure, but we felt the need to standardize the issues, we tried to come up with a way to measure these immeasurable feelings, thoughts, beliefs and experiences in what is called the DSM- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s a very concrete, very serious encyclopedia of diagnosis. It is usually found in hard cover with gold lettering, and if the DSM was a person it would be an old man with a white curly mustache and a monocle, in a blue uniform with gold trim, who stands behind a curtain like Oz and projects his image onto a large screen that people would step in front of to receive the bellowing declaration of “Alcoholic!” or “Anorexic!” etc. etc. At least that’s what they were going for when they made this up I think. But there’s the thing, THEY MADE THIS UP.

Okay, before you start thinking the entire world of mental health is some sham, let me elaborate.

They took their scientific knowledge gleaned from exposure over decades and decades of practice and millions of studies and to the best of their abilities compiled the criteria for diagnosis of varying disorders. Like any medical handbook, this is based in research and exposure and of course as time goes on we learn more, we change our perspectives, we are proven wrong where we were once so sure. SO, now we are on DSM IV soon to release DSM V. Unlike the hard sciences, mental health is clearly a more complex thing to try to pin down. A broken arm is a broken arm is a broken arm, the doctor can see it and feel it and the person with the arm can see it and feel it and everyone knows when it is broken and when it is fixed. I wish mental health were that simple, I wish the diagnosis criteria that we use was always fool-proof and obvious to both the clinician and the patient. I think it’s a lot easier to deal with a challenging situation if you can understand it, because otherwise it’s just scary.

Unfortunately the media doesn’t do a whole lot to de-scarify mental illness. There is this weird mess of fear, fascination and even glorification of mental illness, but very little explanation. There is even resentment, and sometimes jealousy. A girl who is anorexic becomes resented by peers because she has things like “discipline” that reward her with a “good body” and people don’t see the illness, the compulsion, the sadness, they only see the desirable figure left behind… until that desirable figure is in a wheel chair with a feeding tube through the throat.

One of my favorite movies, that despite casting the most beautiful woman in the world as a sociopath...seemed to get a fairly well-rounded picture of the varying degrees of mental illness and the pitfalls of diagnosis, without too much glorification is Girl Interrupted, with Wynona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. It takes place in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960’s, and in the movie they mockingly call a diagnosis “diagnonsense.” I have issues with diagnosis in general, the whole concept. Sometimes it can be really helpful for people to have a name and a description of what they are going through, to know that they are not alone and that they are not so beyond recognition but that they are simply in this category of other people also going through similar experiences. Then again, sometimes labels can be detrimental, “am I always an alcoholic even after I am sober?” Just like any labels, they classify and they can bring a feeling of togetherness or a feeling of isolation and everyone reacts differently. It’s even harder when the criteria for these labels is always changing, or if you don’t quuuuiiiite have the exact amount of criteria listed to make the cut then where are you? If you have 3 of the needed 4 out of 5 criteria for a given diagnosis then are you totally fine? The answer of course, is no, but people can use the strict criteria as a way of denying a need for help.

Say it another way, invalid- a sick person, someone who has a disability.

But what if your problems are not valid enough for you to be called sick… see what I’m getting at… that’s right… if your issues are not valid enough you can’t be an invalid, you’re not sick, but you’re not healthy, so what the hell are you then? Well, your arm isn’t THAT broken… not something we really hear.

To invalidate, to make invalid, to make sick, to make wrong.

One of the most common issues surrounding what is called Borderline Personality Disorder (also the diagnosis of Wynona’s character in Girl Interrupted, which I should add, is a true story). This diagnosis has become in “vogue” recently meaning that it has become very common in a very short amount of time. It generally involves teenage girls who have self-harming behaviors and significant difficulty forming healthy interactions and relationships (to give a very general summary). This can manifest very severely, where the individual is putting him/herself in extremely dangerous situations or actively self-harming or both. One of the major sensitivities of this population surrounds feeling invalidated. We have all felt this way, when you feel sad or angry over something and you are told that it’s all in your head, or that you just don’t understand what happened. Sure, sometimes these statements might be true, but are they ever therapeutic when someone is really upset… not really.

To invalidate, to make sick, to make wrong. My most difficult patients were BPD and I admit I really struggled to develop the skills to help them in the ways that they needed me to. However, just like any mental illness it is just “you or me magnified,” to quote the movie. What I had to offer, was the empathy that came from knowing how I felt when I was invalidated. You feel sick, you feel crazy, you feel wrong and it is just the worst.

People are complex and while some aspects of our experiences can be quantified and measured, mental health is not the easiest aspect to chart. My point is, a diagnosis doesn’t make you sick, it doesn't make your illness more valid or your lack of a diagnosis doesn't demean your struggle, it is a label, the issue is there before that and the issue might very well be there at least to some extent after the official diagnosis is removed. The person labeling might be misinformed or the person expressing the issue may be struggling to articulate the problem because it is so complex and so mislabeling occurs. We are almost on DSM V, and the criteria continues to change and the labels themselves change and we are doing the best we can with a very amorphous task.

However, in the mean time, there is no reason to get attached. We just need to do our best to try to make each other feel heard, feel healthy feel valid, because we can’t hold up a ruler when someone says “I’m sad” and say “umm nope, you are 2 inches away from sad actually; you don’t get to say that!” I don’t know of BPD behaviors existed to this extent before the diagnosis came about in such large numbers, we never know whether it’s just that now that we have the label that it seems to spike because we have a way to identify it, or if the glorification in the media plants some seeds for behaviors or if the awareness leads to over diagnosis, we don’t know. What I do know is that teenage girls are one of the most consistently invalidated groups in our society. If you are told you are wrong, and told you are sick, and told it is all in your head enough times you’d start to believe it. We need to stop invalidating, we need to stop making each other sick.

Make Believe

Okay... so about that whole "I'm not a crier entry," thanks to the Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice season finales I may need to edit that a bit. I don't have tv but I have followed those two shows online forever and even through some questionable seasons where they managed to put out like 8 episodes in a row when nothing happens (which is a writing feat in itself), I keep coming back. It's a good thing too because I guess the writers saved up all the drama they haven't been using and crammed it all in at the last minute.

Another one of my favorite photos from my childhood is me on the floor of my bedroom kneeling in front of a naked baby doll on her baby blanket, wearing jeans, and an arts and crafts smock. You know how grown ups made you wear old button downs backwards with the buttons up the back? Why they didn't just button them up the front, I really don't understand; it was so uncomfortable and is a little paint on the clavicle such a big deal? For accessories I have on a paper surgeons mask that I stole from the dress-up box at school. My hair is pulled back in a pony tail and I am looking down at this fragile life, ready to save it with: pasta tongs, a turkey baster and a jar of vaseline. I was super serious. Not your typical baby doll behavior, I think most girls hold them or coo at them or sing to them or something? That clearly got old really fast for me, but they made for the most dramatic imaginary surgeries because what is more intense and badass than saving babies? Nothing, ask Addison Montgomery.

That picture was taken when I was about 9 and even before that I remember some other unusual make believe scenarios. Of course there were the typical days of being a fairy-princess-queen-ballerina, that goes without saying. However, one of the other major motifs was 'playing homeless,' as one of my good friends calls it. Playing homeless usually involved pretending I was 16, that was the golden magical year when I imagined myself being super mature and beautiful and knowing everything about the world, and also anything over 17 just seemed rreeeeaaaaalllllyyyy old. So I was 16, and I had to take care of my baby sister (something I ALWAYS wished I had) because our parents had died in a car accident and we were orphans and homeless. Usually we lived in an alleyway somewhere that I kind of pictured like Agraba. There were elaborate plots in my head of me trying desperately to figure out what I would do when it became nighttime and how I had to hide from the police (usually under coffee tables or in the linen closet). The whole thing was very dramatic, and very serious.

I always thought it was so weird that I used to do that until one of my best friends in college told me she did the same thing. I was not alone. I was not the only upper-middle class white kid in America pretending to live in squalor. Which then rapidly lead to the question... WHY do kids do this? Pretending to be fairy-princess-queen-ballerinas, sure, that makes sense, but homeless orphans in alleys in someplace kind of like the Middle East, it seems to me like if you have the incredible super power of imagination that kids have, why spend it one something like that?

I've stopped playing homeless, and I've stopped creating high pressure surgical scenes on my bedroom floor, but here I am crying to my computer screen watching these medical dramas. They are upsetting, they really are! People almost die, people seem fine and then die, people are kidnapped, kids die, parents die, miscarriages happen, families are torn apart and if that wasn't enough there are layers of tangled relationship issues on top of it all. It actually stresses me out to write about it, so WHY do I spend my free time 'relaxing' in bed watching this stuff?

There are a lot of theories over why we watch what we watch. Some people think we watch scary movies as social rights of passage, to feel pride that we sustained something that gruesome and painful to endure. Some people think it is a group bonding experience, that it creates a tie between the individuals sharing this collective emotional reaction and if you ask anyone who watches Lost they'd probably agree. Some think we watch sad movies because it trains us to go through the response of grieving which helps us not only release grief in our own lives on a small unconscious level, but that it prepares us for grief in the future if we practice that reaction now. This makes the most sense to me.

I can't even count the number of times I have heard people on these shows say "I'm sorry for your loss." I had to say that for the first time the other day in a clinical setting. I've said it only a handful of times in my personal life (knocking on wood) but I have been lucky enough that even after working in a psychiatric hospital for 2 years and in a research hospital for 1, I have never had to say that to anyone until last week. The way my job works now, I talk to people all over the country, it's all over the phone so I have never met these people face to face, it's more detached which has it's pros and cons. I talked to this person exactly one week before he/she died. One week. I called a month later to do the follow-up, I asked to speak with X and the little girl who answered the phone paused and I heard her shuffle around and give the phone to an adult. I asked again to speak with X and an older woman told me X had died a month ago and asked what it was I was calling about. We are not allowed to say because it is confidential but not wanting to disturb her by letting her know her loved one was in a study for something I could not disclose I said, without even a second thought, "I'm so sorry for your loss, it's not important, don't worry about it."

After I got off the phone the shock set in a bit. I have no idea what X looked like and I had to look up his/her information to recall the details of our interview which pointed to numerous possible causes of death, but then again it could have been a car accident, it could have been anything.

I used to want to be a pediatrician but then I decided I couldn't because I couldn't bear it if a kid died. I think I want to go into medicine and I watch these shows and I think I could do that. Mental health is obviously a different can of worms but for anyone who thinks it's easier, give me a call after your psych rotation. I'm usually really good in a crisis and I've dealt with people cutting themselves in front of me, threatening to kill themselves or someone else, chewing through their lips, smearing feces on the walls, hurling furniture across rooms and just sitting there staring and refusing to do anything at all for days. I've been fine, I mean really I've been great in all of those situations and that made me feel even more confident that I could go into this field and all that it entails, until I had to say that. Saying that sucked. I don't know if he/she died from drugs or from drug complications but I hope not. They tell you if someone commits suicide it's not your fault. It's the patient's choice. That seems like an easy out to me but I get it, because otherwise it's your fault as a failed clinical case and that would make everyone quit the field. So we need a little denial, a little removal, but come on, isn't that just making it a bit too easy?

With surgery you can say "we did all we could," they say that on those shows all the time too, usually right before the "I'm sorry for your loss part." However, with mental health, if someone doesn't get better, if someone hurts themselves or someone else it's a lot blurrier. We like to think we do all we can but do we ever know? It probably gets easier to deal with that stuff the longer one is in the field, I'm sure it does, it has to. Or maybe we just keep watching these medical dramas trying to desensitize ourselves so that when it crops up in real life it's not as shocking. We don't play homeless anymore, but we keep imagining these sad and difficult scenes, well someone imagines them, and writes them down and then people act them out, and we watch, and we imagine ourselves in those roles and are we all masochists or are we just trying to prepare ourselves?

I think there should be more shows about fairy-princess-queen-ballerinas, but I don't think the ratings would be very high.

Post on Post-Its

Relating to my last post, I came across this amazing youtube video on one of my best friend's blogs http://hotchildinanothercity.blogspot.com/ check her out. Anyways, she posted this video with the caption "I think I need to take a page out of Jessica's book," and I watched it and I agree.



Kids really know how to express themselves leagues better than adults do. Whether it's screaming, because they KNOW that it is more important to let it out despite what the neighbors think. Or, having positive self-affirmation time in the bathroom mirror even when the camera is rolling.

At college I used to write reminders to myself in lipstick on the long full-length mirror on the back of my door. I kept adding them until the whole thing was covered in red smudges. I don't remember what any of them were now, but they helped me out then. I'm also a big fan of post-its. I write post-its for everything. Some people keep post-its in their office desks for work reminders or in the kitchen junk drawer for small grocery lists. I do both, and I keep them at my bedside table, on my bookcase and by my dresser. Really I think this is just because I have a terrible memory, so I know that just as quickly as an important reminder will pop into my head, it will keep on truckin out my ear before making an impression on my brain. I know most people have upgraded to the electronic post-its on their laptops, or to iphone reminders, but that is all too much for me. I still use a paper planner and I will always love me some little sticky yellow squares.

I stopped the lipstick reminders when I downsized to a small wall mirror in my 'big girl apartment' post-college land, but the post-its work just as well. Actually, I'm probably better off because when people come over, they don't see blood red scrawled notes-to-self with embarrassing fortune cookie-like wisdom when they go to adjust their hair. No one expects you to be sane and have it all together in college but in the 'real-world,' I like to keep up the facade anyways.

The point is, as grown-ups we actually need to write this stuff down to remember it and that is the crazy part! The most IMPORTANT reminders wind up on the mirror because they need to stare you in the face to get through. The most simple and basic things like 'breath,' 'relax,' 'enjoy.' Not only do these wind up on mirrors and post-its but these are also becoming popular tattoos! We need to have these things inked on our wrists for the rest of our lives because otherwise we will forget, we will forget to breath, to relax and to enjoy. The real question is what are we remembering instead? Deadlines, appointments, grad school application requirements. Important things no doubt but if you forget to breathe you won't get around to any of this stuff so I ask you, what is really the most important to remember?

Kids are smarter, they don't know how to write but they don't NEED to because they got it down. I think if I started my day with a list of positive things about my life while dancing over the bathroom sink I'd be in great mental and emotional shape. While I may still be a measly 5' 2" I don't think my crappy bathroom sink could support me and I'd probably fall and crack my skull on the bathtub so I'll leave that to the kids and stick with my post-its.

Open Ribs

I almost never cry these days. While I generally think this is a good sign of things being alright in my life, when I do cry it is BIG. Well... that's not exactly true. Thanks to my female hormones I get teary eyed at stupid things way more often then I would like to admit. But generally, I don't consider myself too emotional. But when it all builds up it's a massive, all flood gates down kind of situation. It's usually really cathartic, and for someone who can be kind of a control freak, it's nice to make my inner monologue shut the fuck up for a little while and just feel things, no matter how upsetting it may be.

I was never a big crier as a kid, so this isn't much of a surprise. I was happy and I'm grateful that aside from the every day kind of kid stuff that makes you feel like the sky is collapsing on your 4th grade head (until it's recess), generally things were good. But I did have a pretty fantastic system for giving myself a little needed release now and then. Myself and one of my best childhood friends, Jamie would have massive, I mean EPIC, screaming contests (I'm still so sorry Mom and Dad). Now in today's world I would imagine that the blood curdling cries of young children over and over would evoke at least some concern from the neighbors, but in 1995 no one seemed to care. We would go out and lie down in my driveway, open up our little ribcages as wide as we could and just let it out. I don't think we really ever cared who won, if we did I don't remember because it usually ended in a giggle fit. There is this type of therapy called Primal Therapy, and the treatment employed is basically just screaming your head off (amongst a lot of spin-off Freudian analysis and repressed memory digging). I think Jamie and I were just way ahead of our time. If I could get away with walking out onto my porch in my crowded greater Boston neighborhood and having a massive cathartic shriek I would, but I just don't think it would fly.

Still, have you ever noticed how little kids are always making noise when they are doing things? If they are skipping they are humming and skipping, or if they are jumping they are punctuating it with some vocalization or if they are running it definitely involves some kind of increasingly loud vowel. I think they're onto something. Maybe if we made more noise throughout the day it wouldn't all have to come bursting out of us when our guard is down?

I don't remember if there was anything in particular we were screaming about. My Mom said that I made up for in sound what I lacked in size and maybe as two tiny blonde little girls we just wanted to feel big and noticed and important for a minute. Or maybe it was to shake up our perfect suburban lives. I would still like to shake up my life, though now more urban and I would still like to feel bigger than my 5 foot 2 frame will allow. I'd still really like to be able to scream. One of my friend's told me that sometimes she drives around town with the windows up and just yells and yells and yells. I think this is a genius idea. Most of Massachusetts seems to be doing that anyways to some extent.

Whirling Dervishes

I've always been attracted to extremes, hence the turquoise wall paint I selected at age 7.

I was lucky enough to have parents who encouraged this. I love children (now) but I'm not sure what I would have done posed with the requests I made as a kid. Despite household decor decisions which I began to take over more and more as I grew older ( I bought my parents stained glass ceiling fan pulls when I was twelve... what twelve year old does that!?) my madness was generally contained to my own little world, my bedroom. My Mom says that ever since I was born I have been a "whirling dervish," when I was up I was spinning around at high speeds and then all of a sudden she would notice that the house had been silent and she would know that I had passed out somewhere mid-step for a cat nap.

In one of my favorite photos of myself as a child, I am in this shiny gold party dress with a big bow in my hair, all dolled up and passed out cold in a big (big enough to hold my tiny 6 year old self anyways) box with tons of my stuffed animals and dress-up clothes surrounding me stuffed in the box. Wherever I may have been going in my imagination I was certainly prepared for the voyage, clearly very practical from an early age.

Though my major life interests have changed over time I have always been concerned about aesthetics, in my home, in my closet, in my imaginary dream boat or what have you. I wanted to be a "cocktail waitress astronaut." Seriously, that is what I told my teacher in kindergarten on my 'When I Grow Up' poster. It's still in my basement, I have proof. My Mom asked me why I wanted to be a cocktail waitress in space (come on... as if it wasn't obvious) and I explained that OBVIOUSLY I wanted to go to space but I wanted to wear pretty little dresses. Where I developed the association that cocktail waitresses wear tiny dresses at the age of 5, I don't even want to know. However, if someone offered to send me to space in a couture LBD I think I'd jump at the opportunity so I really think I was quite in touch with myself. It wasn't until later that I started developing my current passions (in addition to space and fashion of course).

I used to hate people. Really, everyone, all of humanity, I was an 8 year old raging against all of mankind. Why so much hatred from a generally happy pint-sized blonde child? Ferngully. I was obsessed with that movie and if anyone has ever seen it they will recall that it is about how humans are destroying the rainforest and running the faeries out of their homes. Well as an 8 year old girl, faeries clearly trumped humanity, and I became ashamed to be a part of the enemy team. I started talking to trees in our backyard and I would listen to the birds in the woods and pretend that I could understand them. I used to think I could read my cat's mind. Delusional behavior or normal child behavior? Well I was fine with it, and I'm sure my parents were just grateful to have some peace in the house while I was outside for hours and hours cursing my species and trying to commune with nature.

I was on a big eco kick for most of my childhood and I am still obsessive about recycling and turning off lights and saving energy. I tried being vegan once. That lasted a week. But I am one of those weird non-vegetarian vegetarians who eats poultry and fish, so half the world considers you a veg, but then the rrreeeaaall veggies get all righteous and cast you out of the club.

Anyways, it really was not until much later that I started accepting my fate as a human and even more impossibly, caring about other people.

Not exactly the college essay one would expect from a Psych Major.

It will all make sense later, I promise. I've always been attracted to the extremes. I wasn't going to just fall into complacent love of my brethren as a whole. No, my compassion fell only to those I felt were truly interesting. It's all part of my life aesthetic, things in extremes, things that are entirely unique (re: stained glass ceiling fan pulls) and what is more unique and more extreme than a human being? Well.... at least all the really interesting ones, who I have generally found to be kids.

Whirling dervishes with secret boxes of gold dresses and hidden treasures and grand adventures planned. Living breathing turquoise walls.

This quote from Kerouac sums it up for me,

"'They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"'

Welcome

I heard somewhere that green is the color of geniuses. As I am writing this I am trying to resist the urge to Wikipedia for an explanation behind this random factoid that is stuck somewhere in my brain between Hollywood gossip I would rather not admit I know, and scientific facts from impressive courses that are rapidly falling out my right ear at night.

Maybe it has to do with nature. Nature has always been a source of inspiration for great thinkers. Perhaps if their study is painted sage, or pine, or moss they are reminded of that radical idea that struck them while walking through the woods behind a distant relative’s château (since we all know that every genius had distant relatives with French real estate). In reality I know being a genius is probably far less glamorous and one is typically shunned from greater society but I like to imagine Plato and Aristotle and Shakespeare and Newton and Marie Curie having a long brunch on a veranda somewhere reading the paper and doing the crossword in 15 minutes flat. If geniuses were given the kind of celebrity that we give to everyone in Us Weekly then maybe I wouldn’t have to feel so bad about my trashy magazine secret fetish. Unfortunately, I’ve never been struck by anything genius in the woods but I'm sure that’s just because mosquitoes distract me. I don’t think mosquitoes would distract geniuses though; their minds are busy envisioning imaginary physical forces or revolutionary ways of governing. However, mosquitoes have probably gotten worse with global warming, so I cut myself some slack.

Still, the woods seem too distracting. People generally tend to look up at the sky when they are pondering things, as if the answer is written there right behind that annoying cloud that won’t move out of the way, but if it did all problems would be solved. Or maybe I’m simplifying too much and the people staring up at the sky are those with beliefs in a higher being, even higher than clouds. They are waiting for the divine someone to appear and whisper that vocabulary word that is on the tip of their tongues but just out of reach. I’d like to think that people look to the divine for more complex things than that, but I don't have much experience in that arena so I really don’t know, maybe it would have helped me out on my SAT’s. My brother’s room was blue and he got a 1590 on his SAT’s but he is also an atheist, which shoots both color theories down at once.

In the theater, the room behind the stage, the actor’s dugout where they sit during performances when they are offstage, drinking water, lying on the floor trying to breathe right and saying lines under their breath over and over is called the green room. I know a lot of actors, who will argue with this description, but I’ve known it to be true at times and so for any generalizations I apologize, I am sure there are some very very sane green rooms, I just have never been in one. But generally, it looks like an old fashioned imitation of an insane asylum, people muttering, staring at the walls to 'get into their own space 'and trying to regain mastery over things like walking and standing that should be so organic they require no thought at all. But they think about it, in the green room and this makes me think too. I think maybe the color green is the color of the creative and that maybe they know something we don’t and maybe I have really been breathing all wrong. Genius takes creativity doesn’t it? Any true genius had to think outside the box, against the norm, rage against the machine or whatever. Most geniuses were thought mad in their time and when you think of how radical their thoughts must have been you really can’t blame the masses for thinking so.

I used to do theater. I sat in the green room and tried to breathe right and said my lines under my breath in hushed tones barely audible. I also used to work in a psychiatric hospital, and I saw people trying to breathe right, and repeating phrases to no one, or maybe to themselves or to someone that I just couldn't see. It should also be noted that just like my very professional actor friends who would argue with the green room image I painted, I have many friends with varying degrees of mental ‘illness’ a term I have a love/hate relationship with, who would also thank me sarcastically for perpetuating stereotypes about an already stigmatized population. So before you think every movie image of someone with mental illness is correct let me clarify, I also saw a lot of people in the hospital who were a lot more stable then a lot of the people I knew in the theater, and now that I work in psychiatric research I think damn, the DSM has it all wrong because this so called ‘real world’ is the wackiest yet. My point is really that I find it hard to see where creativity ends and something that is stigmatized and shunned from society begins and the people who have been drawing the lines I simply do not trust anymore because they have been out of the trenches in their ivory tower offices for so long they have even less of a grasp on reality as the rest of us.

Then again, maybe these lines don’t even matter in this day and age when I see my friends who are artists just as close-lipped about it to the general public as my friends with mental illnesses. At a dinner party or when meeting someone’s parents my recently graduated friends with BA’s in the arts are often hesitant to admit that yes, their degree was in art, or theater, or music, and my other friends don’t exactly ring bells every time they take their medication. I think everyone is just as scared of the creative. They see things differently and have different boundaries and this makes everyone so damn uncomfortable that they tell us to get MBA's, because that makes sense. Maybe creativity breeds instability or maybe instability breeds creativity or maybe it’s because your parents got divorced or your Dad hurt you, or your parents were artists and that inspired you (or maybe that drove you to the shrink) or maybe it’s because of your astrological sign, or maybe it's because of your serotonin or your dopamine levels, or how you came out of the womb or maybe it’s because you were born on a Monday, or a Tuesday, or maybe it’s because you were one of the doomed/chosen whose room was green.

If I do what I think I want to do, I’m going to make my office walls green and I am going to try to teach people to breathe right and to speak to people who will listen. I am going to try and be creative and inspired every day by those walls. At the same time I wonder if I deserve this privilege, to be a therapist, a counselor a psychologist, whatever title it ends up being. I feel like I should have the answers, I should be stable and grounded, and full of wisdom or some magic that could help people, but I’m 22, and anyone who says they are stable and grounded at 22 is lying. Then again, shouldn’t I also be able to relate, to understand instability and topsy turvyness, to commiserate on some level even when someone has undergone something that is practically unimaginable. Shouldn’t I be creative enough to imagine it, and to try and get it even just a little bit? Do they teach that in grad school along with stats?

People say theater isn’t therapy; I think they are right, but I think therapy can be theatrical. You sit and you tell stories and you try to connect and try to find trust and confidence in the person listening and find something of meaning, something worth while in the story to learn or grow from or hang on to, or maybe with the really avaunt garde pieces you sigh and reflect on the randomness of it all, the seeming pointless cruelty of life and you have a cigarette and say yea, that sucks and you let yourself be cynical for a little while before doing anything else. I imagine that wouldn’t be what they teach you in PhD programs, but it’s real and might more helpful then knowing what to do with a Z score. Then again, if it’s theater, is it supposed to be real? Sometimes reality is shitty, are we not allowed to say that, can we break the 4^th wall there or just keep dancing and taking down notes for someone’s file, acting, looking like we know the answer but we don’t? I don’t know the rules and it all seems like such fine lines to me, but maybe that’s because my room was turquoise.