Drugs and Medications

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Your Life. Your Choice. Why Are You Still Negotiating?

 

 

Self-Care Tip #102 – Take what is yours and live.  Be a friend to yourself.

Cheri came, still dressed in work scrubs, with her 2 daughters, 8 years old and 3 years old.  Having finished their dinner date, they were swinging by for her appointment before going home.  Cheri told her kids, “Get out now and go sit in the lobby!  If you don’t listen to me I’ll….”  Turning to me, she said, “It’s never enough!  I just took them to dinner and they do this to me!  No matter what I do…!”

1.  Cheri tells me she’d like to cope better with simple stressors such as redirecting her kids

2.  We talk at length about her perception of her kids abusing her.

Cheri is married.  Her husband laughs at her for “…having to take those drugs to be normal!”  “…But he just sleeps his problems away.  He doesn’t deal with them like I do.  He has no idea!”

3.  We talk more about her perception that her husband is responsible for her place in life.

Cheri believes if she doesn’t take more than 2 pills a day, she is less “dependent” on drugs.  She says, “I don’t want to go on like this!”  Her tears continue talking when her voice stops.  She is ashamed.

4.  The concepts supporting taking care of yourself as being the kick-off point to caring for anyone else comes up.

5.  We talk some more about who is “The Why” for what we do or don’t do.

Cheri feels less shame, but it’s still there.  She is willing to give a new medication a try but clearly doesn’t buy it all yet.  She’s going home with her girls to her husband with new pills.  And hope?  Yes.  It is all connected.  It all pulses together and is a living negotiation of sorts.

Disease <–> behavioral/emotional negative symptoms <–> victim role <–> self-neglect <–> greater crisis <–> seeking help <–> responsible self-care <–>  healing <–> fewer behavioral/emotional negative symptoms <–> emotional abuse from husband may continue but is no longer seen as responsible for personal choices and self-care <–> less shame <–> further healing and so on….  (Lub-dub…Lub-dub…)

 

hbofamily.com

 

Cheri is still negotiating her deal in life.  She doesn’t realize that it’s already hers for the taking.  Her life.  Her choice.

The deal is already made.  Take it or leave it.  Your life to live.

Question:  How are your negotiations?  Do you see them as still in progress or settled.  Please tell me your story.

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An Honorable Goal

“I feel things I had no capacity to feel before!  I can’t believe how much better life is for me.”  She was 2 months into medication therapy and she felt like she was back to whom she wanted to be.  Who she thought she really was.

Before medications, she was “making it.”  Although she was irritable, easily activated by simple triggers, edgy, she was mostly not acting on it. Making it to the end of the day every day was a victory.  Now she realized that if someone told her the difference before treatment began, she would have never believed them.  She hadn’t perceived how rough things were for her.  Now that she knew, she felt joy and sadness.

Getting well is never all good.  There is the daily reminder that you need help.  Every time you take a pill, you have to argue down all the reasons not to.  Sometimes that argument doesn’t last long.  Sometimes you spend more time than any one looking at you would guess.

The justifications for medication don’t only come from ourselves.  We have others “in the know” saying how much better we are.  Or what ever their opinion is.

Some of us are entirely on our own.  Hiding our pills so we don’t have to hear it.  When something goes wrong, the pills are to blame.  It reminds me of menarche and listening to the boys saying empathic things like, “She must be on the rag!” Things said about us when we behave or feel in a way others don’t think we should, can be just as humiliating.

Is there anything that draws more public opinion than behavior?  Being your own advocate may be easier said than done.  However, difficult as it is, it has to be done.  It starts with “me.”  If I don’t fight for my own self, choose for my own self, …well, it results in so many things.

What is surprising is how things look so different once we do take action.  Sticks and stones make more sense.  We have the confidence that inevitably comes when we gave our best towards an honorable worthy goal – a healthy self.

Self Care Tip #33 – Accept help.  Be a friend to yourself.

Question: What do you think?  Agree or disagree?