Your Health, Your Treatment

Remember, kids, the point of mental health treatment isn’t a uniform standard of “normal,” it is an individualized version of success often centered on harm reduction and risk mitigation.

Your symptoms don’t have to go away, the parts of your personality that you like but are part of your illness don’t have to go away. They just have to be managed so they can’t hurt you. (The parts you hate and that hurt you and you feel serve no good purpose can be worked against. Can be worked with. You get to define that version of success too.)

Learn to recognize the signs of mania and figure out how to still have fun, but set boundaries to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. Keep all the bubbly energy and creativity of having an adhd brain, but learn how to manage hyperfixation and keep your distractible nature from standing between you and your passions.

I feel like a lot of people struggle with “but if I get treatment, I won’t be myself anymore!” which is an absolutely understandable fear. I’ve faced it myself. But the point of treatment is not perfection or making you a zombie or even making you normal. It’s about making things not so hard, not so scary. And if you feel like your treatment is making you not yourself, and you’re unhappy with that? Talk to your dr or therapist or psych. Redefine success.

Also remember, if you ever need support asking for help, finding doctors, making that final call when you want to make an appointment, let me know. I’ll do what I can.

Medication Awareness

These are my nighttime meds. Allergy pill, pill to help my brain process dopamine correctly (no longer taking this one), mood stabilizers, sleep meds. This is a “for the foreseeable future” sort of regimen. This, plus my adhd meds in the morning, help keep me stable. They’ve made my life so much easier in the past 6 months than it has been in years. Medication is saving me grief and heartbreak and anxiety and struggle at work and hurting those close to me.

On some days I struggle with the idea that I’ll be taking these meds or some like them for, as I said earlier, the foreseeable future. But I felt the same way about glasses when I first got them. It is difficult to adjust to looking outside ourselves for something crucial to our safe and comfortable existence. It’s scary and frustrating that we can’t do these things for ourselves, but sometimes we just can’t.

If you need meds, remember that they are just something that helps. They're another aid. They're like therapy, glasses, orthopedic shoes, or vitamins. They're like wearing a coat in the winter because your body can’t create and maintain heat by itself in those conditions. It’s not a weakness, it’s not a burden. It’s just another tool.