Posted 10/9/2017 5:21 PM (GMT 0)
Thank you for your nice reply.
Sounds like things are going a lot better than they were a week or so ago, so that is a very good sign. He got good family and professional support, plus was very cooperative himself, so that all played a part.
Of course, sometimes it takes a break such as this before help is gladly sought out and agreed to. So in a way, a break is not necessarily an all bad thing, it can have its benefits by getting our attention.
For me, it took a nervous breakdown. We really do need to be thankful for our support people and the professionals who are willing to put up with us during this crisis, for without those people we could be much worse.
Friends can also be helpful in lieu of no or little family help, but in my experience many of them bail as it starts getting really tough, as perhaps can be understood. We ourselves have probably bailed when someone we know has reached out for help.
It’s good that your son will talk to a therapist in your home town. I think with talk therapy and the right meds, and a good steady home life, he will improve and get better with time. I’ve heard that nature has a way of curing itself.
After my nervous breakdown at about 28, I got treated by a psychiatrist, but I know I was on the wrong medicine. Probably after a few days or a week at my mom’s house, walking around the block was therapeutic before walking was in vogue.
I returned to my apt. 225 miles away. The med I was on, Stelazine (sp?) (an anti-psychotic), was torture, as a matter of fact, I heard it was used for torture in communist Russia. I believe it.
I could never sit still. I didn’t know if it was the medicine or if I was still in a nervous breakdown. I never could figure that out. It was the medicine. So my girlfriend was about a block away, so I got some good help there.
I don’t know how long I was in this suspended state, for an hour seemed like 3 weeks, I had no emotions, I started having panic attacks from the nervous breakdown.
My psychiatrist was 225 miles away in my mom’s hometown, and he worked with my mom, and it was my mom who I had just figured out was out to destroy me, only that wasn’t a delusion it was the truth, except that I was manic and depressed for 3 weeks.
(What was true was that she also had problems and had raised us children incorrectly, but it turned out, I had problems of my own, bipolar, and I couldn't separate those 2.)
I never thought I would get any better because it was the medicine I was taking that was making me feel so bad and emotionless.
I guess I was in that state for around 3 weeks.
Then I answered the phone one day and it’s a guy I used to work with who wants me to apply for a job. A job was the last thing I was thinking about, my mind was such.
He was a good friend, and it turned out, he really needed someone to fill in for him for 6 months at this job, and then he was going to take over. I didn’t know any of that.
So he was saying, here’s the boss’s name, and phone number, give her a call. So the next day I call her, and she’s saying, when can you come up for an interview? I was saying, “Well, uh, how about tomorrow” or something like that.
She said, great, I’ll see you tomorrow. She was in on it, also, knowing I would only be on the job for 6 months until my friend, her boyfriend as it turned out, would be taking over my job.
So, here I am trying to get myself into shape, first I had to practice crossing this long, high bridge, for I had to go over it the next day and I had been afraid for several months I was going to fly off the side of it if I had a panic attack. So I crossed that bridge.
Then I got myself up there 175 miles away the next day, did the interview, got hired, started the upcoming Monday in a few days. Still on stelazine, still having no emotions. I kept begging my psychiatrist 225 miles away if I could get off of it, and he wouldn’t.
Anyway, let’s say I worked for 4 or 5 weeks. My psychiatrist finally let me off of the med.
It was the medicine that was making me feel emotionless. I started coming back to myself. Oh happy day. I worked there 5 more months. Most enjoyable job I ever had. Then I got fired. It was preordained.
However, it was that job that saved me.
So, what am I saying? I’m saying that, once he gets tired of walking around the block at his mom’s house, like I did, he’ll strive for more, as his brain gets stronger. Maybe he’ll want to do some volunteer work, like walking a dog at a kennel, or volunteering at a senior citizens home.
Then maybe he’ll see a job opening in the want ads, and try for that. Or take a course. Maybe get his own place. His home base is where he wants to be now, which is good that he has one, but he’ll long to get out of the nest again.
One thing that helped me, years later, I was depressed, and my mother suggested I go to a mental health shop (Easter Seals), in which part of their program was putting people with problems, to work in a low level way, such as putting stickers on soap boxes.
It puts you around people and gets you undepressed, plus you get to talk to these people, one of whom told me about a job opportunity, which I applied to and held for 5 years.
So getting busy in some way is what helped me. Getting around people, working, maybe a course or two.
So it really doesn’t take long. I went from nervous breakdown to working in about 6 weeks, from fully depressed to functioning in about an hour after I arrived at that therapy workshop and got around people and was doing a job.
I’m on an anti-depressant now, so I don’t get depressed, I’m on Lithium stabilizer, so I don’t get manic or have panic attacks.
How is his half sister doing, with having a hard time taking meds? How is his brother doing?
You asked, “Is there something that I have missed?” I’m a fine one to be asked that, for it is because I couldn’t solve many of my problems that I got on this website. I realized, I need to be in contact with people, get second opinions. As a bipolar living my myself and getting up in years and much isolated, there was no assistance.
I thought, I need to reach out for help solving some of these problems, and what happened was, I saw other people on this site who were also having problems, and mine diminished. My psychic energy reversed from thinking about my problems, to thinking about others problems, and again, my difficulties lessened.
Another thing I learned along the way was a column on being positive. I didn’t know it, but I had been negative, it was probably my bipolar and upbringing combined, talk about family history.
But the column told me to have a positive frame of mind that I could solve this current problem, even before I started trying to solve it. What a novel idea.
It really helped me.