About

I may not have a degree in anything psych related, but I have lived with mental illness since childhood. I have a lifetime of experience of getting through the day with the struggles that I have, and that is the core of this blog. I’ve always been building coping strategies, whether I was aware of it or not, in order to get through life. Things finally started to fall into place once I started educating myself about behavioral neuroscience because knowing WHY I do the things I do and why certain strategies work more than others makes all the difference. I could just regurgitate studies and statistics, but those don’t help you or me much unless it’s applied to real life. That’s why I’m here. To take the academic data that I do have access to, find a way to put it to the test in my own life, and share those results with you. We're moving from an age of knowledge to an age of curation and I'm here to start a conversation that has that balance.

My professional diagnosis (confirmed by multiple psychiatrists) is:

Generalized anxiety disorder
ADHD
PTSD
Bipolar ii with psychotic features (or possibly schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type or some product of my combined neurological problems-- we're still figuring this out as my symptoms come and go)

The mental symptoms that I struggle with the most are:

Issues with executive functioning ("time blindness", processing information, prioritizing and staying on task, etc)
Sensory processing issues (getting sensory overload easily, trouble understanding speech without a visual, etc.)
Brain fog
Dissociation in the form of derealization and sometimes depersonalization
Crippling anxiety and extremely intense panic attacks
Episodic depression, hypomania, and mixed episodes (depression + mania symptoms at the same time)
Paranoia and intrusive thoughts
Occasional hallucinations

I also live with physical health issues:

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS): a type of autonomic (nervous system) dysfunction that makes it difficult to control heart rate and blood pressure, especially when standing.
Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS): a connective tissue disorder that causes a wide variety of weird problems.
Endometriosis: an excruciatingly painful condition that binds organs together and causes immune reactions and inflammation issues. I had an excision surgery to remedy this, so thankfully, it is no longer an issue (and will hopefully stay that way).

This seems like a lot, and it is. But these disorders frequently come as a packaged deal:

About 50% of people with ADHD have a comorbid anxiety disorder.
About 80% of people with PTSD have at least one comorbid mental disorder.
Many people who have experienced some kind of psychosis first went through significant amounts of trauma that triggered the condition, along with PTSD. Unfortunately I'm part of that club.
POTS, EDS, and endometriosis very frequently go hand-in-hand, for reasons that are still unknown. Because they all cause nebulous symptoms, they can easily be misdiagnosed or dismissed. I've been lucky enough to come across the right doctors who recognized the pattern in my symptoms.
I was likely living with undiagnosed POTS for years, then all hell broke loose after having COVID (it is well recognized that there is a link between COVID and POTS but it is still being researched-- understandable considering how novel this issue is)
Many people with neurodevelopmental disorders also have EDS. This is another correlation that is recognized but still awaiting further research.
Physical and mental health affect each other more than we realize. My body started falling apart and affecting daily life in my early 20s, of course I'm anxious and depressed.

I don't experience psychosis every day. In fact, I go long stretches of time without experiencing it at all. I can get a little paranoid or experience mild hallucinations when extremely stressed or if my body is consistently pushed too hard, but these things mostly appear during mood episodes. Voices are rare but I do hear them occasionally. I mostly hallucinate music, sirens, and jumbled noises that sound similar to a TV playing in another room (I often hear it referred to as "the radio" by others). I’m very thankful that a lot of my hallucinations are mundane and not especially negative, even with the occasional creepy ones sprinkled in to keep things spicy.

I do experience other symptoms like paranoia, and in especially rough times delusional ideas, but I’m pretty good and rationalizing and compartmentalizing my thoughts, especially since the worrying ones happen pretty rarely now. It definitely causes me distress but most of the time I can find a way to distract myself from it, or at the very least, acknowledge that I may not be in the right head space to be making accurate assessments. That doesn't make the thoughts completely stop but it allows me to weather the storm until my symptoms calm down again. A few years ago I would just spiral into a ball of anxiety, but being aware of my diagnosis and knowing which thought patterns are common in psychotic disorders has helped me tremendously. I have a great support system and I’m in close communication with my psychiatrist. I know what antipsychotic medications work for me so if I notice a rise in symptoms I can switch up my medication regimen before it becomes too stressful or problematic. Psychosis can be a deeply troubling experience and I am wiling to go to great lengths to avoid and mitigate it.

Does it make me dangerous? No. At its worst, it makes me scared and sad. I'm socially anxious to my core, my first instinct is to avoid creating even the mildest inconvenience for other people and so I genuinely cannot imagine myself intentionally hurting another person. Looking back on past experiences, I don't recall any instances where a harmful accident could occur, either. See my FAQ page for more information about psychosis stigma.

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