• Wonder Woman — Kayla’s Welfare
  • Grow up, But Not Until You’re Ready
  • All the white roses in the world…
  • Valentine’s Day and the Meaning of Love
  • End the Diagnosis Era
  • Inside-out Christmas
  • Happy birthday, Ambrose
  • Deep Inside, I am Full of Wishes
  • Today is not that day though.
  • I Will Never Have Enough Eyes
  • The day the music died
  • By the end of January
  • The End of a Dysfunctional Era
  • January 2016
  • September
  • July
  • June
  • Since May
  • April
  • Sequoia’s and Diggin’ It
  • 2015 began as such
  • Let the Adventure Continue
  • Dancing Off the Track
  • “That wasn’t REAL money. You used an EBT, so we don’t owe you a refund.” (and a happy note to end on)
  • I Bought the Ticket
  • MEAT BEAT MANIFESTO {2 YEAR Plan} Beginning June, 2014~ Ending June, 2016
  • The M.B. Manifesto of Kayla [Summer of 14]
  • Different
  • Ding, turn the page!
  • My Gatsby Moment
  • Shut Up About My Shut Off
  • Time To Fake the Donuts!
  • Today is a Poem- Monsters
  • And The Award for most Dedicated Job Seeker Goes To…
  • Me and My Excuses and My Zen
  • Salvation of Me
  • All Part of My Story
  • Living the American Dream
  • Overcoming a Welfare survival existence. It can happen, and it does.
  • We are the People, aren’t we?
  • A Life in the Day of a Typical Welfare Person
  • From smart phones to self righteous phonies
  • Letter to Jen- I’m not in Love
  • Letter FROM My Brother in an Alabama Prison
  • Wynwidyn Presses On!
  • Letter to my brother in an Alabama prison
  • I Dropped the Ball on Her Head. Kayla Apologizes to Wynwidyn
  • Egg shell floors and Dixie cup walls
  • Teamwork will be the downfall of us all?
  • A Renewed American Hero- Eugene Debs
  • #334 (no title)
  • Real Mother’s of the Day
  • Welcome to Holland- What it’s like to parent a disabled child
  • It had been determined, decided.
  • All real change happens at once. | Life after Divorce & Being a Success Story using the Law of Attraction!
  • We’re better than that. We’re smarter than that. We don’t care if people like us.
  • Consumer is the new ‘C’ word- or Terrorize the Terrorist
  • Anti-Social Cab drivers United Against ME
  • Driver Responsibility F*%!@ (the word isn’t fee)
  • There’s blood in these woods
  • Mercy on me
  • To Drive, or not to Drive? Diagnose, or not Diagnosed? Those are my questions.
  • They forced me off the grid!
  • The Purpose of the Legislative Process. Anyone?
  • Truth embedded in fiesty numbers
  • Empowerment, Social Justice and Strippers (oh my!)
  • “Just because I’m crazy…
  • Happy Hour on the Highway!
  • Blame the victim, indeed! or ~Something’s Shocking~
  • Gimme a goat!
  • How Welfare Reform Has Unraveled the Mother Fiber of the American Family
  • The Gail Lane Neighborhood (or Survival of the Nicest, an Argument for Altruism)
  • Why The Poor Shall Inherit the Earth
  • Grateful, and niave
  • 5- Individual Resposibility vs Social Responsibiilty
  • 4-get this place!
  • 3 x the Lady
  • Where am I going 2?
  • I am 1

Kayla's Welfare

~ For those who don't know what it's like to live this way, but especially for those who do.

Tag Archives: American Woman

End the Diagnosis Era

12 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by Kayla's Welfare in Adventures of a Mom on Welfare, Articles

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

American Woman, anxiety, bipolar, boring jobs, cerebral palsy, chemical dependence, codependant, coma, crazy, crying, death of child, death of son, depression, diagnisis, diagnosis, empath, extrovert, grief, healthy choices, introvert, jobs, kindness, labeling, lamictal, manic depressive, narcissist, online school, paranoid, pharmaceutical, PTSD, Seroquel

Is it introvert vs. extrovert, or empath vs. narcissist?

Are you depressed, or does the oversaturation of tragedy you are exposed to everyday make you feel overwhelmed with sadness because you have a heart?

Do you have anxiety, or do you get so nervous you freak out when things get potentially weird quickly?

Are you paranoid; or are are you aware of the fact that you live in a dangerous world, and you should always be alert to protect yourself, especially if you are a female?

I rarely hear a person say, “This is my weakness. I have to try harder than most others to do this.”

I mostly hear, “I have/am (insert label or diagnosis here). I can’t do that.”

Will I make my daughter with Cerebral Palsy in her legs join a kickball team? No, that would be ludicrous. But will I ever tell her she can’t play kickball because of her CP? I definitely would not. Kickball isn’t her strength, so we focus on her horseback riding lessons instead.

My other daughter has always felt uncomfortable in large social groups. She’s not socially impaired, she’s at her best in closer settings. She has the opportunity to be enrolled in an online school and she is excelling there. I learned the bent of my child, and I worked with it.

People are over labeling themselves They are being prejudice not only against the other labels, but also categorizing themselves because of it. I know, because I was diagnosed with bipolar level II, manic depression, anxiety, and PTSD. I was in a car accident when I was 20 that left me in a coma for two weeks and I awoke with traumatic brain injuries.

Even though I healed, I didn’t realize it. Any failure, or misjudgement was because I was brain damaged. Actually, I was just being human with a lot of life challenges. I was advised to not pursue a lot of areas of interest for me because, well, I couldn’t do those things anymore. I missed my job.

My life was very chaotic for a while. I moved around a lot. I quit jobs too easily. I stayed in relationships too long. I had a temper. For all these reasons I was convinced I was emotionally unbalanced. It must be chemical. So, like a good insured American, I went through the pharmaceutical experimental cocktail nightmare.

The light turned on for me that I was mostly doing this to myself when a friend from work noticed that I had become different than when I first started. I used to be full of energy and pretty sharp when I first started a month ago. Now, I was absent minded, and sluggish. She asked if I was put on any medication recently. I was, and kinda a lot. A month before our talk, my son was killed by a hit and run driver when walking home from work. A week later my doctor doubled my dosage on all of my head prescriptions. I started sleeping 12 hours a day and I was a mush brained idiot. My friend’s observation made me do some research. Seroquel does indeed inhibit mental functioning, and that increases over time.

The day after I talked to my friend, I had unexpectedly run out of my Seroquel. The pharmacist said it would be a few days before insurance would cover a refill. Weird, I thought.

I woke up the next morning, one full day off of Seroquel, bright and early. I was awake like I hadn’t been awake in longer than I could remember. I was also in great gastric distress. Withdrawal from Seroquel is physically the same as heroin withdrawal, but it was worth it. Upstairs, I had me back. I could memorize cocktails, names, what was said a moment ago, and bartending was easy again. I was on high energy and upbeat most of the time without most of my medication.

Then I thought about things from a different perspective. What if the reason I couldn’t succeed in Administrative Support was because receptionist is a painfully BORING job? What if  it wasn’t that I couldn’t handle retail because I couldn’t handle people? People are absolutely horrible when it comes to working in retail. It’s a gig that can turn Snow White cannibal.

I’m not spineless. I’m a people pleaser. It’s not because I’m codependent. It’s because I truly enjoy people when they are happy. I’m aware of this tendency in me. I make sure to not hurt myself in the process of helping others. It’s not my job to heal everyone’s hurts, but I will help anyone I can. I will always try to be nice. It’s not as easy to be nice all the time as it is to just be a bitch. Kindness is a powerful strength. I like it that I’m kind.

I still have times where I lay awake crying for hours over everything that ever happened in my son’s life. But it’s not chemical. It is real. There are still dark places in my head that I can  get to. When I thought I would never leave the snake pit in my head, I didn’t. When I gave myself permission to be a human being and make mistakes like everyone else, then I could console myself. I still have some lingering regret, but it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with me. Regret is a there for a reason. It is a true lesson hard won. If we seek revenge on ourselves for the mistakes we’ve made then we will never heal our wounds.

Don’t get me wrong. I still believe in better living through chemistry. I drink coffee every morning. I still use a bit of lamictal to keep the edges smooth. However, using meds to avoid fixing the real problem isn’t healthy. Using diagnosis as excuses only suppresses an otherwise capable person from a self validating experiences.

I decided I definitely wasn’t crazy or brain damaged anymore. My life was crazy, and I reacted accordingly.

I talk too much. I cus too much. I love too quickly. I hate on myself. I scream. I fart. I lust. I freak out. I regret. I cry for hours. I lose sleep. I oversleep. I don’t eat enough. I eat too many sweets. I think too deeply. I care too much. I don’t care enough. I dance in place even when people are watching. I probably wear too much black on top of it all…

Diagnosis? American Woman.

 

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Recent Posts

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