I don’t even know why I tried this again so soon, as I wasn’t expecting it to have changed already, but it has. My blog has moved from an R rating to an NC-17 rating. For completely ridiculous reasons, I might add.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* hell (7x)
* kill (4x)
* rape (3x)
* ass (2x)
* hurt (1x)

I have no idea why it is no longer keeping track of the amount of times I’ve used the word “drugs,” since that’s the one word from before that I remember using a bunch more times since then.

In news of things that are not fast, my brother was released from the hospital five or six days ago but no one has yet contacted him regarding follow-up treatment, although of course they were supposed to. I have no idea why this surprises me. It really shouldn’t, at this point.

Since everyone else is doing it, I might as well. Not jumping off a bridge (I think about that often enough by my own damn self), but the meme that CL Psych posted about giving film-like ratings to blogs.

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

* hell (4x)
* drugs (2x)
* rape (1x)

I never knew using the word “hell” was such a big deal. Well, I’m going to use it all I want, and we’re going to live like kings. Damn hell ass kings!

I wonder what I have to do to push it to an NC-17 rating. Talk more about rape flashbacks? Talk even more about meds, since I’ve never even mentioned illegal drugs on this blog (until now), but apparently the word “drugs” in any context is scandalous enough?

Update on my brother: nothing to report, really. He’s still in the hospital. They might let him out this weekend. Or after this weekend. Or something. They’re not telling him a whole lot. He is bored. I would be, too.

If people are going to be diagnosing Anakin Skywalker and Winnie-the-Pooh, then why not Diagnosing Lear, right? This article from The New Criterion is actually a fairly serious piece of literary criticism focusing more on things like personal responsibility and expression of emotion, but the bits at the beginning that actually are directly about psychiatric diagnosis are pretty funny:

Doctors have been trying to diagnose King Lear for more than two centuries. They haven’t succeeded, of course, for a couple of reasons that are not mutually exclusive: first, King Lear does not exist, and second he is not available for tests or examination. The latest technology, no matter how sophisticated, will never settle the matter. No imaging studies for King Lear: he was born much too soon for them, and now will never be diagnosed properly.

Not, of course, that that puts doctors off, far from it.

I know it’s not at all uncommon for people to try to diagnose fictional characters, but when a friend of mine sent me the link to this article today, I just felt like sharing it.

Psychoanalysts perceived in Lear a case of thwarted incest (they would, wouldn’t they?). A variety of diagnoses have been offered from senile dementia to manic-depressive psychosis. (No one has suggested General Paralysis of the Insane, the last stage of syphilis.) Dr. Truskinovsky, writing in the Southern Medical Journal in 2002, makes a powerful case for mania, and suggests that Lear had been suffering from bipolar affective disorder all his life.

Personally, I am against all this diagnostic effort. It is not just that, as Dr. Truskinovsky dryly remarks, it is not altogether easy to decide what constitutes the symptom of grandiosity in an absolute monarch like Lear, so few of us having either experienced or witnessed that condition of man. It is rather that the medicalization of Lear’s behavior deprives it of moral significance.

I don’t see King Lear as being manic-depressive, but then again, it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve read the play.

There’s a Wired article called Anakin Skywalker: Borderline Personality, Bipolar or Narcissist? that I found via stir-crazy, they found via Mind Hacks, and they found via Omni Brain. I’d especially recommend reading both the Wired story and the Mind Hacks post.

I only have a few comments to make:

1. Hee.
2. Hey, I’ve been told I have bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder, just like they’re saying about Anakin Skywalker. This can mean one thing, and one thing only: I AM DARTH VADER!
3. The article reminded me right away of a humorous article I’d read years ago in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, “Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne”, so I was extremely happy to see that the Wired story linked to it.

Admittedly, though, I don’t actually think I’m borderline, and I know I’m not histrionic or narcissistic.

According to the authors, who reported their findings at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in San Diego, Skywalker meets the criteria for the condition: He has difficulty controlling anger, stress-related breaks with reality (after women in his life die or leave), impulsivity (dangerous pod racing), obsession with abandonment (those women again) and a “pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of ideation and devaluation” (hello, Obi-Wan).

In another sign that he’s borderline, the authors argue that Skywalker suffers from an “identity disturbance.” After all, he did become Darth Vader after being “very unsure of who he was and what he wanted.”

I don’t have difficulty controlling anger, obsession with abandonment, an identity disturbance, or a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of ideation and devaluation. I am impulsive and have had stress-related breaks with reality. Well, I can live in hope that those two things are enough to MAKE ME DARTH VADER, can’t I?

What is the best treatment for one who has been drawn to the Dark Side of the Force? The opinions of professionals are mixed:

Study co-author Bui said psychotherapy — “long term,” he added with a laugh — would be the best treatment for Skywalker, although he might prescribe a drug to help him sleep.

Bui had mixed feelings about prescribing an antidepressant like Prozac and said he’d avoid tranquilizers like Xanax that could leave Skywalker addicted or send him into “disassociation” (a rupture with reality).

But would Skywalker even go into therapy? “Because of his narcissistic tendencies he would perceive himself as ‘above’ that,” said Sultanoff, who thinks Skywalker also suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, at least in Star Wars Episode II.

I’m going to assume that by “disassociation,” Randy Dotinga means “dissociation.”

Not that there’s much point in trying to help Anakin at this point. He’s dead, yo. Remember?

thememoryartist recently made an excellent post, A new proposal for the DSM, which “outlines and categorizes the features of Mental Health Professional Personality Disorders.” It’s funny because it’s true. Which also, of course, makes it sad. I’ve seen plenty of mental health professionals whose behaviours and attitudes are outlined very well by those criteria.

In a comment, Gianna mentioned that the post might be educational for mental health professionals. I’ve met some MHPs who would appreciate it very much… but they’re not the ones who tend to exhibit any of the listed behaviours. I think the ones who actually exhibit the “symptoms” would see that piece of writing as an example of a patient being narcissistic and overly hostile, and would never recognize themselves in the criteria.

There are also a lot of interesting comments on this post about PTSD misdiagnosed as BPD.

I am doing okay physically with the Zoloft and Epival withdrawal. I didn’t even have any of the brief dizzy spells yesterday. I was, however, staring at a word on a computer screen when I saw it suddenly jump several inches to the left, even though this did not really happen. I am hoping that this is just a regular hazard of the twenty-first century, as opposed to a withdrawal thing.

As I mentioned in a comment on my last post, medication withdrawal has made me kind of stupid lately, though. I can’t remember anything, my attention span is even worse than usual, and… um, I already forgot what I was going to write in the last part of this sentence. Oh, yeah, I’m constantly almost late for stuff. Since none of this has been interfering with my work performance, it’s not really all that important. It just bugs me.

Tomorrow I get to see my GP and I hope I’ll get my prescriptions. I have to pay forty freaking dollars for the cab ride there and back, because there’s a shortage of family doctors here, no bus service to the neighbouring town where my doctor is, and I don’t have a car.

Apparently, in this town you only deserve to see a psychiatrist if you’re in crisis. I guess there’s no such thing as seeing one every three months just to check in.

I didn’t actually get to see a psychiatrist today, but that didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that the mental health nurse I saw thought there was no reason to refer me to a psychiatrist, even though that was what my GP had requested. My GP had, in fact, requested a specific psychiatrist.

I have been completely stable for months now. I feel better than I have in years. And this is the problem. I feel fine, my medications are working for me, I finally have a GP in a nearby town, and technically I have a therapist but I only saw her twice, in January, because bus service near their office is very limited and I can’t really afford $16 for a cab there and back.

I filled out some forms and then the nurse asked me some questions for about half an hour. Mainly very basic stuff — describe my family, how is my relationship with my boyfriend, what is my level of education, what medications am I on, etc. She asked me about being assessed at the hospital in the fall, and she mentioned that the particular shrink who had seen me was going to be at the mental health centre that day. I looked at the door, kind of freaked out, as if I expected to find him walking right by, right then, because I kind of did. But he wasn’t. She clearly has a higher level of respect for him than I do, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to get my file from the hospital so she can see what he thought of me. And presumably believe him over me. Yeeha.

She asked me if there was anything about my life that I was unhappy with and wanted to change. I said there wasn’t anything, really, only that I’d like to be a bit less shy and a lot more organized, and that sometime I’d like to work on issues related to past trauma.

“What kind of trauma?” she asked.

“I was raped twice.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty and twenty-one.”

She asked me how that currently affects me. I told her that sometimes it makes me sad and scared. She asked me if it affects my relationship with my boyfriend, and I said, “Only that it makes him worried about me.”

Then she changed the subject.

I definitely didn’t want to bring up the eating disorder thing. I was afraid she would think I was overreacting.

The mental health nurse said that the only thing she was worried about was my level of anxiety. She didn’t believe me when I assured her that I was only anxious because of the appointment and that I don’t usually have anxiety problems (which was true), but she said it was to up me to decide whether I thought it was a problem I needed to do something about.

“I don’t think it is a problem,” I said, “but I’m open to other interpretations. If I did have an anxiety problem, what should I do about that?”

“Well, we have an Anxiety and Mood Disorders Group,” she said, “but they just had their last spring session. It should start up again in the fall.”

The fall? WTF? It’s a good thing I don’t have an anxiety disorder. Imagine if I actually had one and I asked what I should do and she told me to come back in the fall. I can only hope that they have other anxiety disorder treatment options and she just didn’t feel like telling me what they were.

I hate how I’m going to keep replaying this appointment in my head, over and over and over again, wondering what I did wrong and what I could have said differently so that I could have actually gotten some help. I don’t know what I should have asked for. I don’t know what I should have said that I didn’t say, or what I did say that I should have left out.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

I hate this town. Hey, last week I was looking at buttons at a record store and they had one that said “I hate this town” on it. I’m totally going to buy one and put it on. That’ll make me feel better.

When in doubt, shop.

I left the appointment thinking, I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead. Then I came home and cried for a while. It was kind of nice to cry. I’ve been so stable and so genuinely happy that I almost never cry anymore. And I’m very used to crying, so it feels kind of weird not to do it anymore.

but i’m a modern woman baby
ain’t gonna let this get me down
i’m a modern woman
ain’t gonna let this get me down
gonna take my master charge
and get everything in town
~ Nikki Giovanni, “Master Charge Blues”

Gah, even when I’m not talking about Virginia Tech, I’m still talking about Virginia Tech.

Not really “everything in town,” though. Just that little pin, and some books (which I have gift certificates for), and THE NEW TORI AMOS CD. Must. Go. Shopping. I don’t even have a MasterCard, by the way.

Haha, I was just checking my email and the web clip near the top of the screen in Gmail is Ask Yahoo! - Who invented the shower? It’s there because I went to a wedding shower the other day and a couple of my recent emails mention that, but it’s still funny.

Me + $3 T-shirt + embroidered iron-on letters + iron =

I don’t know if I’ll ever wear it outside of my apartment or my friends’ apartment, since it’s like wearing something that says “LOOK AT ME! I’M AN ATTENTION WHORE!” It was still fun to decorate the shirt, though.

P.S. I’ve wanted to make a manic depression-themed T-shirt ever since I read Jinnah’s Manic Depression: Been There! Done That! Got a T-shirt! post, but it took me over seven years to finally get around to it.