Caring4Corny

Hey @Corny ..... good to see you ❣️

I have been super busy, but “around”.

My studies are totally therapeutic for me, as you say. I have multiples of the same mindset here atm with visiting family from interstate ..... all sorta on the same page-ish with my hubby ..... supporting his behaviours with complimentary comments about “will-power” and “self-control”.

I hope things are coming along the recovery path okay for you .... thinking of you often.

Hey @Faith-and-Hope that's hard to read that extended family are unknowingly encouraging an ED.

From this fish bowl that I am in and seeing where it can end up, with major mental illness, I really don't know what the solution is as a society. I guess not everyone develops an eating disorder but we are all exposed to the constant pressure to be thin and gorgeous, but it seems to affect people that were vulnerable to MH to begin with and this is just the form their MI takes .......there are some patients in the hospital that are so weak, so frail and so malnourished that they have to be pushed around in wheel chairs. Of course everyone here is suffering immensely and there are heartbreaking scenes, some of the patients with severe SH I will never forget for the rest of my life, it is so confronting and upsetting. I guess everyone is doing their best and it takes a lot of courage to come here and be exposed.

I hope at least you are getting some enjoyment out of the family being around and having some laughs along the way and getting some sunshine. Maybe you have even sat in the garden.....I haven't been to the art gallery in ages and was thinking I must go soon.....

take care

Corny xx

I can sit in public gardens sometimes @Corny, but we are in “condensed living” here with not even a balcony space for pitted plants. I have to avoid the sun - melanoma survivor here 👋.

My in-law family have a focus on the sort of appearance and behaviours and ideals that are known to promote the development of ED’s if there is any pre-disposition to them at all, and there are recent studies to suggest genetic pre-disposition. It must be traumatic for you to witness the level of treatment-dependent sufferers. I still hold hope that our slide won’t go that far, but of course I can’t be sure of anything here. While we have a fair share of MI history, ED’s were not a part of that, so it’s been a massive learning curve along with all the upheaval. I just remember counsellor after counselling advising me to learn as much as I can, so I could understand what was going on, and what I can and can’t do about it .....

On the “can” side is taking care of my own health, and that of the kids as much as possible. Pretty much everything else belongs on the can’t side while my mr. is lacking insight and therefore “treatment non compliant”.

Have you managed any creative activities yet ? You sound like a good writer ..,,

@Corny Yey for going home next week. 👍👍👍 Transitions are always tricky and take time. I wish there was a middle in there somewhere though. A place to prepare for the big move back home and into society.

I understand the baseline no budging CPTSD. I’ve tried dental on and off, but facing the hard facts of ongoing MI is a better, though difficult option. I can’t use accepting yet, maybe never will. I do avoidance well. 😩😩😩😩

I know you used to exercise really hard, so gently, if you can, is the way to go.

I’m stuck there, as RA is ruling my activity . If I over do things, I pay painfully, pain being a good and very reliable teacher.

Home cooked meal, yes please. 😍 What will be your first choice?🤔🤔

Take it easy @Corny . Looking forward to catch ups. ❤️❤️❤️

Lovely to hear from you @Corny . Replying on the run here. Going away for 10 days. Catch you when I return. Sounds like you'll be out by then? Best of luck, will be thinking of you. 😀

Sherry 💕

That's terrible @Faith-and-Hope , I am glad you are in recovery. You have to be really vigilant with getting your skin checked, women remember to do pap smears and breast checks but skin doesn't have the profile of the others cancers. I guess skin is another fascination our society has with equating being tanned with beauty, but it depends what culture you come from. One of the nurses was telling me that she hates summer because she goes so dark and that in Latin America they associate it with aging in a bad way and being lighter is what everyone strives for.

I don't know if knowing our MI's have a genetic component changes anything. It doesn't mean that he could have prepared for it any better, or at all, or that that knowledge opens up a tailored treatment that will cure your husband.

Is knowledge always power, for me it isn't. Looking back over the last 10 years, reading extensively and learning as much as I could about early life neglect, deprivation, abuse and maltreatment has just filled my head with more facts and at times made me feel worse. When you read all the research and findings on the importance of the first 3 years of life for a child's brain development that affects them across the life span, and the attachment/sensory/maternal deprivation stuff, or Bessel van der Kolks book, I just finished it and was like, "well I am just screwed". It doesn't help when health professionals agree with you without explicitly saying it, and keep reminding you how complex your case is, that you should be in jail and just to be alive is a miracle.......they mean well, but if they catch the patient on the wrong day at the wrong time they may give up.......I guess my point is I know that the health professionals have good intentions and you can gain insight Faith, but sometimes they don't realise that they can make a patient or family feel despairing when they get to that moment in their life when they realise more knowledge doesn't change a thing when it comes to some aspects of MI and traumatic childhoods. More knowledge about diabetes will not cure a persons diabetes, they will just learn how to manage it better, and the same is with major MI. It's a really sad fact but the higher the insight a person with schizophrenia has, the higher the suicide rate. They're not silly. They know precisely what that diagnosis means, and how society views them, which is appallingly.

I guess obsession with physical appearance and attractiveness like everything else occurs on a continuum but it sounds like your husbands family have a healthy dose of it which can't be easy for him. I wish there was an easy answer Faith but they are terrible conditions to have, we all feel useless and totally incompetent as a carer of MI. You feel so powerless and bewildered by it all, its something you have to experience first hand to know what its like.

Enjoy your morning coffee

Corny

Thanks @Maggie, I know you understand what it is like transitioning back, naturally I am nervous, and I am sure I will feel like a tourist sometimes, or at least on the periphery of life looking at other people in the middle.

I have some moments when I do accept it, but I look up to my older friends who have MI that are between 15-20 years older than me and they said they fought it and fought it until they got to their mid 40s and thats when they finally accepted it. Some days you can, and some days you can't. Life is unfair, and teaching small children that life is fair as long as you are a nice person, means that later on if anything goes wrong, they make it personal. When really, life was never fair to begin with. I look around and I see absolutely no evidence of karma, I don't believe in it, but maybe some people find that sort of magical thinking comforting and gives them a sense they can control the uncontrollable.

If I disappear off the forums it is because I am adjusting and trying to find myself!

Take gentle care of your gentle self Maggie, get some sunshine.

Corny

I will reply to you later @Former-Member , I've been summoned down to concierge, maybe the warscally wittle wesbian is in trouble again.

Later,

Corny

Hearing you @Corny ..... 🌷💜. It must be hard to balance out empathy and understanding with acknowledgement of things that have happened, and it seems to me that many doctors are big on the acknowledgement of factual material, but often unable to engage with the empathy and understanding that shines a light on a path forward, with a focus on achievements and successes.

Have uou you set some small goals for yourself in the coming weeks @Corny ? I know our circumstances are very different, but I am using small goals as a way of moving forward. They are achievements in and of themselves, with no set-in-stone timeframe, and the option to keep taking them on, again and again, until I feel okay with them.

Is art therapy an option for you ? There is such a creative force in it, and creativity has healing, restorative power, even at a small trickle ......

I am interested in art produced from advertising flyers and other junk mail, or discarded magazines. I have posted some in the art thread before, and can post some more if it interests you ?

Its an unhealthy obsession with physical appearance and attractiveness in our wider family. My hubby is a more extreme presentation of something that is a deeply embedded dynamic. Have tried to steer my kids clear of it, without going the other way.

You're right @Faith-and-Hope I think being a psychiatrist would be such a hard job and even a clinical psychologist would be difficult. They can only do so much and it has taken years of experiences and environment mixing with genetics for patients to get where they are, and to expect them to be able to reverse or fix that is a big ask to say the least. I hope that in Victoria the RC into MH brings about some change, but really we need changes in all sections of society to improve MH, employment, housing, social connection....it has to be a whole person, whole of society shift, and psychiatry can't possibly fix it all.

There are empathetic health professionals out there it is just so tough to find them, and if you have a bad experience it can be a real turn off. My doctor is very empathetic I am so lucky to have him, but I will need someone else eventually he could retire anytime, the job is so draining, and I couldn't blame him if he did.

I do love art therapy, and I really want to do more arty stuff when I discharge. My grandfather painted and one of parents friends was an artist and their works are in galleries in Australia. Their studio was in this really old house up on a hill over looking the district and I have very fond childhood memories of it. It was magical and had a secret entrance over a little bridge behind some huge weeping trees, there was an open fire place, and the room had wonderful north facing sun light, I think of that place often. I used to write a lot but haven't written in ages, I lost the drive for it, but maybe I will start writing again.

I don't have goals as such, but I do have things I need to focus on in therapy that I haven't been able to go near because I have had to focus on stabilising. Now that I have stabilised my Doctor and I will get down to business and talk about all the feelings and emotions that I have been avoiding. My fitness has really dropped so I want to get back into that gradually because it really gives me a break from the anxiety even if it is only short lived and I really want to catch up with friends once I get used to life on the outside.

I think if doctors see patients obtain desired goals that they want for themselves, such as financial/career success and attractiveness they don't think to consider that anything unhealthy could be driving it, and tipping the scales into MH condition. Your husband probably flies under a lot of people's radar and all they see is success.

As for the obsession with looks that's a really tough one to budge it is so ingrained. Social media and the media in general brainwash people into believing that if they just lose this much weight or gain that much muscle that they will look like the model in the picture, when clearly we are not all models, some people are, and they are incredibly good looking, but the rest of us are average good looks. Its no different to intelligence, not everyone is an Einstein so why would everyone be beautiful.

I don't have any friends or family that are obsessed with looks, of course we are all vain in our own way but I don't hang around anyone that is at that extreme end where it is unhealthy and all consuming, judgemental and unrealistic.

When your body fails you and serves you up a mental illness it changes the way you think about your body, well, it has for me. I can't relate to the beauty pressure, when so many people's bodies and brains are breaking around me or were broken from day 1 in the case of my parents. It feels so shallow, empty and disrespectful towards life.

People take their health for granted I guess, and for some it is actually a mental illness to be obsessed with looks in that way and they can't help it, its not their fault. I don't like the nastiness and competitiveness that can come out though and I worry my sibs kids will be bullied and brainwashed to a whole new level that didn't exist in my childhood pre-internet and pre social media....

I am so glad you are able to concentrate and take your mind to another place with the art. You have inspired me @Faith-and-Hope

Corny