KrakenKrunch,
Oh, woe is me. I can’t imagine a CFer or CF family that isn’t caught up in at least some self-pity. I also find it difficult to imagine how many CFers are trying to treat their own mental health when they would never consider self-treatment for physical issues. I think of a mental health counselor more like a physical therapist or a masseur/masseuse where you are pampered in the process. Someone that isn’t a family or close friend that will listen to whatever you have to say and most take a genuine interest in getting to know you and absolutely not judging you in any way, can be a valuable asset on your CF team.
Whether seeing a psychologist, psychiatrist, Priest or pastor is in one’s future has a lot to do with enlightenment. Not every place in the world nor in every home is up to admitting a mental health problem and seeing the appropriate professional for help. Everybody is vain when it comes to our mental state, or the state of our mental health. The elderly bare their teeth and fight with every tool to remain independent. Why? It isn’t pleasant to contemplate a life that more resembles the protective world we set up for infants. Most people are quite frankly embarrassed over the very idea of seeking the help of a mental health counselor. It is changing but at glacially slow rates. Fortunately the younger a person is, they are surrounded by a generation of peers and parents who find seeing a counselor more accepted and acceptable.
Catharsis is a natural and healthy process for a CFer to go through from time to time. Catharsis is an excellent word and maybe worth reading its definition in a good dictionary but it is similar to grief, self-evaluation and resetting or restarting the struggle of life, rolled up in a ball. Grieving things we’ve lost like lung function as well as being denied things that come easily to non CFers is legitimate grief. A person doesn’t have to die in order to have something to grieve or mourn over. And like death, many things will be missed even more with time. It is OK and natural to feel sadness over a multitude of things. Even then, we miss other people’s suffering if we’re watching our own too close.
Ask a fat girl out on a date. Believe me an obese co-ed peer could easily be suffering just as much if not more than you at the moment. Girls by nature are body conscious and by culture, overwhelmed with body images that were perfected in Photoshop. They know there is a time limit on certain physical assets and a problem with being heavy can feel like the world has squashed down on you. My point is two-fold, you are in a living sea of self-conscious, shy, awkward, smelly, snobby and generally normal young adults. You don’t have a particularly special bulls-eye on you T-shirt.
Feeling blue or having a catharsis isn’t necessarily depression. Anger, insomnia, irritability and other counterintuitive actions and feelings often accompany depression. Major depression is a brain disorder, not just a bad hand of cards. And they should be treated accordingly. Fold and start a new game if you’ve got a bad hand, see s psychiatrist for depression.
Anybody and in fact most everybody experiences depression without any brain disorder to blame it on. It is most often temporary and should be treated like an infection or broken bone. My bent toward a psychiatrist over a psychologist has to do with the complexity of medicines used in mental health in combination with CF and our special medications.
Specifically, many medicines such as anti-depressants, SSRI’s, mood stabilizers and neuroleptics are SALTS. An example, though an old one, Lithium salts are used in treating bipolar disorder and many practitioners subscribe to using near toxic levels of Lithium salts. Frequent blood tests are needed to keep a patient just below the toxic level.
You recognize the danger in suicidal thoughts or ideation. This isn’t always a dangerous situation. CFers aren’t given any special personality with the disease, we get the random inheritance of traits just like the rest of humanity. We do contemplate a life too short. This is natural and within reason, healthy.
Something to be aware of is the potential of a mental illness, a brain disorder in fact. A number of mental illnesses like bipolarity, major depression and schizophrenia most often develops between ages 18-26. Within a margin of a couple years on either side of this range, the vast majority of mental illness develops. In other words, it is very unlikely for a person to develop one of these illnesses in their forties or such. Perfectly at the wrong time in life, if there is any time more vulnerable, I don’t know of it. At the exact age young adults are testing their long flight feathers, the periods of independence can coincide with the onset of mental illness and can easily be missed or be poorly addressed until the disease is quite advanced.
Something I believe most CFers deal with is a constant state of physical agitation, we are stuck in a permanent fight or flight response. This is established by early adrenal burnout as well as every other stress hormone producing gland/organ. This ignites most our metabolism like few other conditions which accounts for a fair amount of the enormous caloric intake we require. It isn’t just digestive inefficiency, your engine is running full tilt. For most of us our minds are racing just like our bodies are racing. Being stressed by infection, pain and inefficiencies in our GI tract and pulmonary system puts us in a panic, literally. We have all the physical symptoms of an anxiety attack, panic attack, shot at and missed, s--- at and hit, full blown reaction of terror. And it is there 24/7. It is simply amazing that most CFers are fairly well balanced. Every so often those physical symptoms get the better of us and we experience the mental side of the panic our bodies are in.
You aren’t alone, and it will get better,
LL
