I have decided to take this blog down.

Posted on by

goodbye

After much soul searching, I have come to the decision to take down this blog.

I simply have too many things going on at the moment to devote so much time to writing about mental health issues and realize I’m just not that interested in this subject anymore.

So, until I find a new focus, I am taking this blog down.

I apologize to my followers for this last minute decision. I know some of you visit here every day. Rest assured, I will miss you all as much as you will miss visiting here. But I have no other choice right now.
There are plenty of other blogs covering the topics of narcissism and mental health issues. Please check Info and Support in the header for some of my suggestions.

There is one last thing I have to say before I sign off for good.

wait-what-dog

APRIL FOOL!

black-guy-laughing

Gotcha!

48 thoughts on “I have decided to take this blog down.”

  6. I knew it was an April Fools joke.

    Either that, or your Avoidant-Dependent-Paranoid-Schizoid-Borderline-Antisocial disorder rearing its ugly head (heads?).

    LOL — I had to go back to your “I just took a personality disorders test’ post to get that.

    Happy April! 😀

    Liked by 2 people

      • I haven’t taken that test and I won’t be taking it, not even “just for fun.” You asked me on another comment why I said I won’t take the test, and I didn’t really answer you, because my complete answer is long and complicated. But since you really seem to want to know why I won’t take any online personality disorders tests, here is my answer.

        As I believe you already know, in 1967, when I was 14 years old, I had a post-traumatic breakdown and – because PTSD was not a known diagnosis until 1980 – I was diagnosed with Acute Schizophrenia. My dad had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 30 when he was arrested, and then hospitalized, after almost murdering my mother. So, when I was given the same diagnosis, my mother said: “You are crazy just like your father! You have inherited this from him!” Then my mother went against my doctor’s advice and put me in a state mental institution. When people asked her how she could lock her young teenage daughter in such a notoriously awful place, my mother made the excuse that I was “dangerous” – although, unlike my father, I had never been violent in any way, not even threatening violence. On the contrary, I was obedient, subservient, docile, and eager to please. BUT all that seemed to matter to my mother was my psychotic LABEL.

        I spent almost two years in that horrible inhuman warehouse, until a new psychiatrist took over the ward and decided that I was not schizophrenic. He released me, and ten weeks later I married my first husband. I was sixteen. I had three children, I took some college courses and did well there, then I went to nursing school and was elected class president, and then I wrote and published a novel. BUT – despite all of my successes, I never felt “good enough.” I felt like a “fraud.” I was frightened that if people knew the whole story about my crazy past, no one would like me or want to have anything to do with me.

        You see, no matter what I did or how much I accomplished, in my own mind I could not escape the hateful stigma of my schizophrenia diagnosis – even though numerous doctors and therapists told me over the years that there was nothing the least bit schizophrenic about me, I still doubted my sanity. Why? Because I knew how truly “crazy” I had been when I was 14, during my “nervous breakdown.”

        In 2003, a few months before my 50th birthday, I took the settlement money from my last divorce and – instead of paying cash for a nice little townhouse that I had already picked out – I decided to check myself into a renowned mental health clinic. I made this decision because I was in so much emotional pain that I absolutely could not stand my life any longer. No house was going to make me feel OK about me, you know? So, because I had lost my health insurance and also my monthly support in the divorce, I had to pay my way through that clinic with cash and lots of it, with the result that I went broke shortly after I was discharged from the clinic. OH but it was SO WORTH IT!

        First, I was given a full battery of psychological and physical tests. Paul Meier, MD, author or coauthor of over eighty books, many of them best sellers, and co-founder of that clinic, told me that the tests he was giving me were the most accurate tests available, so accurate that even if I were trying to trick them, they would be able to pick up on that and still give me an accurate diagnosis. (But God knows I was not trying to trick them at all, I wanted help too badly for that. In fact, I had made up my mind when I went there that if I did not feel significantly better by the time I left the clinic, I was going to commit suicide.)

        After all my test results were in, my diagnosis was: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. That, plus depression and anxiety, which the doctor told me typically goes along with severe PTSD. When Dr. Meier told me my diagnosis, this is what he said: “Although PTSD is listed as a psychiatric illness for insurance purposes, in reality it is NOT a true mental illness, it is, instead, a psychiatric injury. PTSD is a normal reaction to extreme trauma, just as it is normal to bleed if you are stabbed.”

        Dr. Meier explained that, not only am I NOT inherently mentally ill, he said I am actually very sane and strong, as evidenced by the fact that I have survived such horrible traumas, with my mind (mostly) intact. I have survived things like my dad trying to sexually abuse me when I was a little girl, and his horrible rages, and the time that he came so close to killing my mom that I had thought she was dead. Then my depressed and traumatized mom tried to gas us all to death, plus a lot of other horrible things happened in my childhood hat I survived, not the least of which was surviving nearly two years in a loony bin. To go through all of that, and still manage to graduate from nursing school with perfect 4.0 grades, and then to write a novel, and then to write an email that got me on the Oprah Show in June 2000 – Dr. Meier told me that my ability to function so well, despite such a horrible trauma history, meant that I am very strong and sane NOT weak and crazy like my abusers had made me believe.

        Thanks to Dr. Paul Meier of Richardson, Texas, I felt GOOD about being ME for the first time in almost forty years. After living with deep SHAME for most of my life, finding out that I am really OK, made all the difference in my outlook on life. Today I can hold my head up, even when I am feeling PTSD-triggered, and know that I am good enough, I am not “crazy” and I am not “bad.” I am in fact NORMAL for what I have been through. What a tremendous RELIEF!

        I believe that most people are also “normal for what they have been through.” I also believe that online “personality disorder tests,” even IF they are “legitimate,” can do much more harm than good, without having someone like Dr. Meier to interpret and explain them. What good does it do anyone to take a test that tells them they have five of six personality disorders? To me, those tests are dangerous and abusive.

        After living most of my life feeling like I am “less than” most people, thanks to the terrible stigma our society has against anyone with a mental illness label – there is no way that I will take a online “what’s wrong with me” test. Even if I didn’t believe the results, I know that getting bad results would trigger my old “I’M CRAZY” fears, and I have learned to care about myself too much to do that to myself.

        Liked by 1 person

        • Alaina, I am sorry I asked you about taking that test again. In all honesty, I had forgotten I already asked on the other thread. I do understand your reticence, even if it’s just in “fun.” The label of schizophrenia is extremely stigmatizing and its one of those conditions where if people know you have it, they back away slowly–until they get to know you and realize that you are definitely not schizophrenic! Most mental dx’s are somewaht stigmatizing, but “schizophrenia” = “batshit crazy.” You are anything but. You seem like a strong and independent woman in spite of the horrors you had to go through, both in your FOO, personal life and in that hellhole of a mental hospital that kept you a virtual prisoner! You have survived all that and come out much stronger, even with your PTSD. A lot of stuff, like personality tests, I’m sure can be very triggering.

          You were fortunate and blessed to find such a great doctor who was able to find out what your real problem is, and that you were not crazy at all, but reacting in a normal way to the craziness all around you. I’m proud of you! Keep standing tall.

          Liked by 1 person

          • Thanks!! But here’s the kicker: in researching schizophrenia for the memoir I’m writing, I have come to the conclusion that I really DID have schizophrenia in 1967-1968, AND THEN I HEALED FROM IT! I have also come to the conclusion that schizophrenia (in many cases, if not in all cases) is an extreme form of Complex PTSD!

            Like

            • That’s really interesting! You may be onto smething. Severe PTSD can present with schizophrenic like symptoms–seeing things, hearing voices, disconnected thoughts, etc. It’s a way to retreat into yourself after severe abuse. Shutting out reality can be a form of self protection and the ONLY place where “they” can’t get to you. I believe schizophrenia can spontaneously heal itself, and I also heard it often goes away by itself after midlife. Maybe the hormones are somehow involved?

              Liked by 1 person

            • You are exactly right, IMO. Also, in my case, I made the voices go away through self-hypnosis. How that came about will be in my GOING CRAZY, from Horror to Healing memoir, which is still a work in progress.

              OK, this is fun but I’ve got to run, we are going to church for the first time in a very long time. TTYL!

              Like

  9. Wow I believed this! Good joke.

    But I do think you might choose to slow down eventually. Blogging multiple times a day can get exhausting and isolate you from the “real” world. Just imagine how poor SV feels, being glued to the computer screen almost all day every day!
    That’s why I only blog once or twice a month at most, and apart from that enjoy watching other hardworking people slave away at their blogs.

    Liked by 2 people

    • I probably will slow down at some point, but I type fast and think fast, lol. So I’m not glued here TOO long! Hey, I LIKE being isolated from the real world. I’m Aspie, remember? 😉 Your visual of “poor SV” made me giggle. You’re so funny. 😀

      I do need to spend more time reading though, and maybe taking walks. I used to be a HUGE reader–3-4 books a week, now I’m ashamed to say I read about a book a month *runs away* Tsk tsk!

      Like

      • How fast do you type? I am at about 130 words per min right now. I’m pretty grandiosely proud of that. You could say I’m a somatic narcissist when it comes to showing off how fast these hands can type!

        Liked by 1 person

        • I type fast but I haven’t had my speed tested in years, it was about 65 wpm back in the 80’s when they always gave you typing tests on those old selectric typewriters (those things are built like tanks–I still have one that works!) — now I think I type a lot faster than that but I make a ton of mistakes along the way and have to spend a lot of time backstpacing and correcting–and I still miss a lot of typos. In comments I don’t bother correcting some of them. lol

          Like

Comments are closed.