Altered Perspective

You might’ve seen a movie about mental illness or maybe read a book or two. Fight Club, for example, is one of my favorites—one that deals with the protagonist’s struggle with a seemingly undiagnosed mental illness (I’m trying really hard not to spoil anything for anyone here…)

Mental illnesses are portrayed in a variety of ways in the media, but when you experience them in your own life, they can manifest in ways you might not expect. My experience with depression is probably similar to a lot of others’ experiences, but it’s also probably different in a few ways. But that’s not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about what it’s like to experience mental illness through the lens of someone you care about.

My dad has dissociative identity disorder—more commonly known as multiple personality disorder—a disorder I couldn’t even begin to truly comprehend when my parents told me about it.

Over the last year or so, my family went through a really tough time. My dad’s behavior had altered drastically with no real explanation for it. He was at times incredibly reckless and irrational, but he had little recollection of the things that he’d been doing other than vague feelings of guilt and regret. As most people with a mental illness will tell you, admitting that you’re struggling is often the scariest and most daunting part.

Most of the time, people with DID have their own personality, but they also have other states known as “alters.” When an alter is in control, a person’s entire personality can change. Their voice, eyesight, and behaviors change in affect. Alters don’t even have to be the same gender or age as the person, which can cause much confusion for the person with the disorder, not to mention their friends and family.

My dad’s DID is a little different. As far as we know, all of his alters are the same person as my dad, but they’re stuck at different ages in his life when he experienced emotionally stressful times due to abuse, absent parents, and so on. These events caused him to compartmentalize his emotions to cope, and over the years, stress and an ongoing battle with depression caused these alters to break the surface. The main problem with this was since the alters were all still my dad, per se, it initially was not obvious what the problem was.

The pieces first started falling into place for my mom before I was aware of what was going on. One day, my mom decided to test her hunch and asked my dad–her husband of more than twenty years–how old he was. He said he was seventeen. It was the first real piece of evidence that led to my dad’s diagnosis.

When my mom told me this over the phone, I couldn’t wrap my head around what that meant. My already strained relationship with my dad became even more estranged when I talked to him on the phone. He answered the phone, but something sounded off in his voice. My father, who always called me by a nickname, now referred to me by my full name. The conversation was relatively normal, but the conversation ended abruptly after he started choking up and gave the phone to my mom.

I thought it couldn’t get any weirder at that point, but after talking to my mom for a few minutes, she told me that my dad wanted to talk to me again. We had an almost identical conversation, except this time he sounded normal. This time he called me by my nickname. When my mom came back on the phone, she tried to explain to me what had happened when I asked why I just had the same conversation with my dad twice. I started crying and hung up the phone because I couldn’t understand what I had just experienced.

I barely spoke to my dad after that. My mom would encourage me to text or call him, but I rarely did. I didn’t want to have to face another phone call like that one. I felt guilty for doing that to him, but in light of everything else going on, I wasn’t mentally strong enough to make the effort. I was battling my own depression, and I couldn’t bring myself to take on someone else’s problems in addition to my own. Writing it now, I feel extremely selfish, but I knew that I needed to be stronger to deal with the situation in the right way.

It took my great-grandmother and grandmother’s deaths the following summer to bring my dad and I a little bit closer to mending our relationship. Losing two family members that played such an important role in his life brought out the helpless little boy in him, quite literally. To be clear, the loss of his mom and grandmother evoked his two youngest alters, which are six and nine years old respectively, and as such, he was inconsolable during the funerals. Watching your dad cry uncontrollably is incredibly discomforting. All I could do was try to be supportive when I really wanted to run away.

One day, my mom decided to test her hunch and asked my dad–her husband of more than twenty years–how old he was. He said he was seventeen. It was the first real piece of evidence that led to my dad’s diagnosis.

My mom can make jokes about the situation, mostly done as a way to cope and make it seem normal. In attempt to help me understand, she used to try to throw me into conversations with his alters. After that backfired, she decided to let me pretend like things were the way they used to be on the rare occasions that I’m home. My dad and I talk much more frequently now, and if I talk to one of his alters, I usually don’t notice. I prefer to keep it this way because I’m not around my dad often enough to learn how to deal with this head on.

I honestly don’t know when or if I’ll be able to completely accept whom my dad has become. It’s difficult to say what will happen in the future, but the complete change in someone I’d known my whole life was obviously a shock. I want very much to be as strong as my mom is, and I think she’s a saint for loving him so completely even though he’s not completely the man he used to be. But right now, I can’t be that person.

Until I have my own mental illness better managed, tackling this new dynamic with my dad isn’t going to work. My dad knows that I love him, but he also knows that I have to do what’s right for me at this moment in my life. When it comes to your mental health, sometimes you have to be a little selfish in order to avoid completely destroying a relationship or yourself in the process. A wise friend once told me that you have to take care of yourself first if you’re going to take care of other people. I wholeheartedly believe in that sentiment. Just know that it’s okay to save yourself first.

-OU Alumna

Day X

11:32 p.m.

I am exhausted, having barely gotten any sleep last night, and yet my body doesn’t allow me to go to bed. Thoughts are running across my head, everything that went wrong this day and everything that might go wrong this week, and how I feel like I’m losing my best friend with many miles between us. So many thoughts. It’s like a loud television news channel, but there is no way to turn this noise off. I find my mp3 player and plug headphones in, listening to a soft song on repeat. It helps me drown out my thoughts sometimes by helping my mind focus on the lyrics until that is the only thing running through my head. Typically I can fall asleep to that. It doesn’t work tonight. The room feels stuffy. I feel trapped. I hate feeling trapped. I can’t feel trapped. I can’t. I stand and stumble towards the window, opening it up. Even though the night air is cold, it is welcome because there is a feeling of freedom with that air. I finally am able to fall asleep.

4:39 a.m.

I jolt awake, and there is this tight feeling in my chest and a bitter taste in my mouth. This is the fifth or sixth night I’ve had a bad dream. I’m losing count, and sometimes it’s more than one bad dream in a night.

9 a.m.

It’s time to get up to go to work. There was no more dreaming, thank goodness. I go to work. I feel good, I feel fine.

9:40 a.m. – 11:40 a.m.

I feel productive with small victories such as cleaning up my desktop. These little victories are something that get me through in life now. At one point the phone rings. I freeze. I haven’t been trained on phone protocol for this part time job yet. I’m terrified of picking it up, of saying the wrong things, of not knowing how to help the person on the other line. My boss comes out of his office, gives me a perplex look and answers the phone and takes care of the student. Afterwards I stammer out that I didn’t want to answer wrong. He tells me to not worry about it. I just have answer and state our office name so they know whom they are calling.

12 p.m. – 1 p.m.

I’m done with my part time for the day and now I’m at my other job, manning another office at our university for a student organization. I’m still doing fine. I’m doing fine until a friend back home messages me. Things back home have been a bit turbulent. I left. I escaped because it was full of triggers and my mental illnesses were controlling everything in my life. They are bringing things up. They need someone to talk to. I try to listen. I try to be okay, but then it gets too be too much. Back home there is this pressure that I wasn’t good enough, that they are happy I am not there anymore, that I will not be welcomed back when I come back. They want me to never come back. These are my thoughts, the ways I feel. Reading my friend’s message it brings it all back and I feel my chest tightening. I want to flee. It is my responsibility to stay in the office until 1 and then I have class at 1:30 but, but, but I want to flee. I feel like I am about to lose control. I feel like it is going to consume me.

1 p.m.

I hurry out the building. I have to hide. It is raining and people have their umbrellas out to shield them from the rain. I use my umbrella to shield my face from others. Don’t look at me. Please, don’t look at me. I’m shaking, struggling to breathe. My breath is coming out ragged, and I’m trying to swallow it down. I don’t want them to hear. I don’t want them to stare at the freak I am for not being able to control myself. I start dry heaving, but I see the dormitories. I rush inside, into the elevator. It’s not empty. There’s another girl there. I turn my back to her. I want to imagine she is not there. My right hand is clutching my left wrist tightly something I find myself doing when I cross certain lines in anxiety. I’m on my floor inside my room. I haven’t been taking medication over here again. It is too expensive. But I have some left, some I leave for dire situations like this. I take it and crawl into bed, hiding into the covers, clutching a ragged stuffed animal because holding something in my arms is something I need to do. I can dig my fingers into it instead of into myself. I cannot go to my classes. Not like this. I don’t know when the medicine will kick in. How will I explain this to my teachers? How do you tell them you cannot go to class sometimes because of things like this? I was perfectly fine this morning. My friend messages me again. I feel like the worst friend in the planet. That thought is also berating me inside my head. I tell him let’s not talk about this again, it’s a trigger, I’m sorry I cannot deal with this right now. I feel like I can’t be a proper friend, a proper student, a proper human being.

5:30 p.m.

It takes five hours before I am okay enough to leave my room. And even then, the anxiety is still there, like a small tangled mess inside my chest. It’s manageable now though. For now, it’s manageable. I have to go to my internship tonight so I’m thankful that’s at least one place I will not have to explain this sort of thing that seems to rule my life. At least not yet.

-OU Student, Human Relations Major

Growing Into Vulnerability

I’ve had a lucky life. I grew up with wonderful parents and a caring sister (though it’s taken me a while to realize that). My family hasn’t really dealt with substantial money problems, and I was lucky enough to earn an academic scholarship to the University of Oklahoma. I have great friends who are there whenever I need them, and a girlfriend that treats me better than I possibly deserve. From the outside, I live a great life. And honestly, from the inside I live a great life.

But sometimes I’m not happy. Sometimes, no matter how great things are, I can only focus on the bad. Sometimes, all I want to do is lie in bed and pretend the world around me isn’t there.

It began in middle school. In 7^th grade, my first significant relationship ended (as significant as a 7^th grade relationship can be, I know). It sucked, and for the first few weeks I felt just like anyone else who loses that first special someone. But then it didn’t stop. First it was a few weeks, then it was a few months. My friends couldn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. All I knew was that no matter how many times people said “it will get better,” it didn’t.

Finally high school started, and by the end of freshman year things actually were better. I couldn’t figure out what had changed, but I had just woken up one morning and I was okay again. I would still go through weeklong periods of sadness in reaction to one small thing or another, but never as bad as that again. And so I wrote that sadness off to just being a kid—being a high schooler still figuring everything out. Then second semester of junior year happened.

I’ve always been very good at empathizing with others. One of my best strengths has always been my ability to put myself in another’s shoes—to understand what they’re going through. My junior year of high school, a classmate of mine killed himself. It was the second suicide in less than a year, and it hit me especially hard. I kept asking myself, what more could I have done? What more could I have done to make that boy feel valued and appreciated and worth keeping alive? Would that that one day be me? So I spiraled.

Depression looks different to everyone. Some people go through episodes of mania and depression, alternating between the incredibly high and the incredibly low. Others experience a constant, but manageable level of depression. My depression is usually like that, but with deep valleys that I can’t predict. For three months, I lived in that valley. I stayed up until at least 3:00AM every morning, watching The Office and dreading waking up the next day. At school, I put in headphones between classes and just stared at the wall during classes. I had one thought that I repeated over and over:

What difference did my grades and my test scores make if there were people all around me that needed my help right then and there?

I can’t fully explain that thought process. One fairly constant thing I’ve seen in the people I speak to with depression is the desire to be part of something bigger. Depression can cause you to feel as though none of what you’re doing really matters. To counter this, you try to make a difference in the lives of others. I may not have been able to make myself happy, but at least I could make others happy. That would have to be sufficient for a time. Helping others was the medicine I self-prescribed. It would be a while before I was ready to accept my mental illness and ask for help.

As a high school kid, asking for help is hard. Being a teenager means trying desperately to fit in. Wear the right clothes. Say the right things. Watch the right shows. Being different means separating yourself from that; it means making yourself vulnerable. And as a teenager, that vulnerability is terrifying.

Acknowledging mental illness means acknowledging inherent vulnerability. It means accepting that not only are you different, but you are different in a way that very few people will be able to understand. And, in many cases, you will always be different. That stigma is both societally imposed and self-imposed. Everything I had ever heard about mental illness led me to see it as a weakness. And this false self-perception of who I was, who I should be, stopped me from getting better for a very long time. The belief that mental illness makes you inherently weak was what led to me taking so long to acknowledge I struggled with it, and to taking so long to finally ask for help. Believing I was inherently broken was what kept me from taking steps towards finally putting the pieces back together. It was only when I made it past that fear and asked for help that I was able to start getting things back in place.

-Cooper Lund, OU Class of ’16

Making the Call

Why in the world would I take the physical chemistry lab my sophomore year?

That’s the thought that came up as I trudged through another lab report at Pita Pit. Something about chemical engineering doesn’t lend itself to enjoying college. The best years of my life? Please…

BUZZ 

The percussive rattle of my phone against the table broke my concentration. Shifting along the laminated surface, the phone sounded off five more times in quick succession, probably due to lengthy text split into smaller ones.

I flipped my phone over and saw they came from Austin, an acquaintance of mine. Eager for a distraction, I unlocked my phone and opened my messages.

“…would’ve committed suicide…”

Those three words punched me in the gut with a recognizable force. I’d seen similar ones before—words that came from a tortured mind. I can’t even remember the rest of the text. I just knew that I needed to call this guy.

I stepped outside to make the call and spoke to him for about an hour. Actually, it was more that I listened to him. Triggers don’t have to be life changing; it’s what follows that becomes frightening.

He eventually asked if he could stay with me for a couple of days, and I wholeheartedly agreed. Once I okayed it with my roommate he came over, and I was relieved to see him in person. Even though I didn’t know him that well, some part of me rejoiced at this idea of welcoming back someone from the unthinkable. He was just glad to feel that someone understood. The next couple of days passed with minimal concern. Because of our incongruent schedules, I didn’t see much of him. At least I knew he was around. I felt that he was safe around me.

He eventually decided he wanted to share his story with his Bible study group on Thursday and asked if I’d come to support him. I agreed, but when Thursday rolled around, I hadn’t seen him at my house. An hour before his group was supposed to meet, I decided to give him a call. Straight to voicemail. I swallowed any assumptions and went ahead to the Bible study to see he might be there. He wasn’t, but they told me where I could find him.

“The emergency room.”

If before words had punched me in the stomach, they now shattered the earth underneath my feet. The text I received at the beginning of the week was a flag for help, and this felt like it was the beginning of an obituary. What happened? Could I have done anything more? Had I really lost him?

I could barely handle those questions alone. I needed normalcy. With a sense of urgency that nearly paralyzed me, I drove over to where friend was, and she helped me think clearly enough to figure out whom to call.

We finally had an answer. He had checked himself in. He had taken the initiative to protect himself. The relief was the type you feel after waking up from a nightmare—a nightmare that leaves you with no breath and a pounding heart.

When I visited him in the hospital, I saw how he interacted with his parents. Whatever I had felt would never compare to what they had gone through. They were now forced to discuss what had previously remained in the dark. Healing began, but it would take some time.

I continued to check in on him, but I learned to give him space. As much as I wanted to help, I needed to give him time to decide what he needed. That’s tough, and yet, it was the right thing to do. I never could put myself in his shoes like he could.

We still stay in touch, and he’s doing better now. Knowing Austin has taught me a lot about looking out for others. What strikes me about this stuff is how easily unnoticed it is. Austin’s text came with an overwhelming sense of shock. Even if I knew him better beforehand, would I have had the insight to know what was going on? Maybe not. Having that type of foresight is difficult. It’s the very reason I remind myself to ask how others are doing. However, it’s a question that seeks more than “Good. Fine. Not too bad.” It’s a question that functions as a sign of compassion rather than a salutation.

Because of Austin, I try ask how life is going for others. He reminds me some might need help but lack the way to ask for it. His experience tells me that sometimes the best we can offer each other is compassion through a simple, important question:

“How are you?”

-OU Student

Understanding Ambrose

When I was a child, Friday nights were reserved for watching Monk. Although I thought Monk was eccentric and a little bit different, I could identify to a certain extent. Everyone has his or her odd quirks. Monk just happened to have a lot more. However, one character I could not grasp was Monk’s agoraphobic brother, Ambrose. How could someone be afraid to go outside? To an eight-year-old, this was unfathomable. So many beautiful things occur outside! But now that I’m older, I wonder if Ambrose was afraid of the outside or if he was more afraid of losing composure around others.

I’ve always been slightly high-strung, so anxiety has always been a prevalent part of life. Previously, however, it had been small—little butterflies before a test or not being able to sleep the night before a big day. However, that all changed last year. My anxiety sky-rocketed. Rather than little butterflies or sleepless nights, full panic attacks were beginning to occur. I began waking up to them. It was almost like having a nightmare without the escape of waking up. All I could do was try to calm myself down before I started my day, and at times, this would take hours. It just didn’t end there. I was having panic attacks during the day, and the tiniest things would set them off. I was carrying groceries one day and dropped a jar of salsa. As the glass shattered on the pavement, so did my composure. I understood why someone like Ambrose would be afraid to go outside. For me, it was the fear of losing control of myself in a public setting. It became a cycle. I was starting to panic about having panic attacks.

There was not a moment that this cycle was more prevalent than when I prepared for midterms. At first, studying would be fine. Thirty minutes in, however, my chest would begin to tighten. A normal feeling of “Wow, I should have paid better attention in class” turned into “I can’t do this”. It was a warning sign that panic could ensue at any moment. To counteract these moments, I have to focus on something that I enjoy, something that calms me down. In most cases, I would go running or binge watch Gilmore Girls. I can say I successfully made it through the exams without panic attacks, but my test scores reflected my lack of preparedness.

Despite difficulty I found in studying, I have learned to take pleasure in the minor triumphs. Making it through a two-hour exam with no shortness of breath or tears was major for me at the time. It was something that deserved ice cream as a reward—and pair of new shoes. I once again found joy in being in control. The control was fleeting, but knowing that I could keep my composure in a high stress environment has given me the confidence to stand my ground.

I am still not at the point where I am embracing life head on, and I am not doing this alone. I’ve relied heavily on friendships and even on antidepressants. I have worked on focusing my extra energy into running and racquetball and have cut caffeine almost completely out of my diet. I do not want to be afraid of what the world has to offer or even what I have to offer the world. The way I see it, every morning is another battle, and every day completed is another accomplishment.

-OU Student