Category: Laugh It Off

Are therapists to blame for narcissists?

The people who go to therapy are overwhelmingly narcissists. Maybe not before beginning therapy but definitely after months of weekly therapy.

Week after week of nothing but talking exclusively about themselves for a full one hour. Therapists are conditioning and training people to talk only of themselves, to think only of themselves, to focus only on themselves. Want to know why we have so many narcissists in our modern world?

Blame therapists.

Keep reading . . .

By the by, I’m developing a master class named “Recognizing Obvious Satire and Parody for Dummies.”

This is “lesson one.”

Providers who aren’t peers are frustrated unmagical Muggles

Providers who aren’t mental health peers telling me my humor, irreverence, and jokes about mental health are wholly inappropriate and are insulting to other peers are confused Muggles attempting and failing to conjure forth the grumpy and constipated Ghost of Liberace to prepare a brimming Dixie cup of scrumptious hasenpfeffer to feed all the world’s starving vegans and thusly save Kanye West from a hostile takeover of his essence as the Universe’s Least Bipolar Man.

You see? Providers who aren’t mental health peers can’t even get basic magic right that EVERY peer can do while still pooping and peeing in their knickers, and thank the stars for Huggies and non-peer providers who happen to be full of the same sticky stuff. How can they be expected to know what’s funny amongst peers? Where is their experiential authority to judge me and my wit?

One of my strongest beliefs:

When you can laugh at the horrible things in life it takes back the power the horrible things hold over you.

This is the core principle for STS’s Laugh It Off education program.

My Seasonal Affective Disorder is a Real Drag this Time of Year

Something needs to be done about my Seasonal Affective Disorder and how insufferably cheerful and gratingly pleasant I get during summertime. Not imposing upon my loved ones just because I’m joyful must be leaving a huge void in their heart. There must be a med to drag me into even a mild doldrum, requiring the people in my life the burden of having to be on suicide watch 24/7.

I hardly want to spend any time at all in my bed beneath my Blanket Fortress. And this unforced smile is so easy and uplifting. What a chore this is. For myself, for everone.

I’m so sorry for feeling happy and productive once again. I feel selfish to the core.

Forgive me for this and I’ll forgive you for eating the whole goddam bag of Cheetos. Those were for everyone, you realize.

Reprinted with kind permission of Steve’s Thoughtcrimes.

Love & Marriage & Niobium & The Physics (and ramifications) of Brain Broadcasting

I’ve got bipolar. It’s a fairly straightforward, mundane flavor of bipolar with the ups and the downs. Way up and I’m driving to Nova Scotia in three days from Albuquerque, whilst my kidnapped roommate scribbles a “Being Held Against My Will. Call Police. Please Help.” on the back of a Howard Johnson’s napkin, plastering it against his passenger side window for passing motorists to glance at and ignore. Who wants to help a kidnap victim jetting along at 75 mph? By the time they called the police (these are the days before cell phones where really effort needed to be made to “call the police”), the poor kidnapped roommate would be 200 miles down the road where we could have turned off anywhere going to any place. Like Nova Scotia. In three days. From Albuquerque.

Way down and I’m not getting out of bed, barely feeding myself,  and I’m debating the necessity of a bed pan as a convenience or merely an unfortunate middleman.

Something else happens when I get exceptionally depressed. I get psychotic. This is no mood disorder thing. I enter a reality no one else can see or hear or taste or understand. My brain has decided that depression is just not fun enough, like a girlfriend who decides a new apple red Miata would go great with the 20 carat diamond engagement ring you just got her by eating ramen and forgoing dental visits since your very first paper route, scrimping penny by penny just dreaming about the day you meet that ungrateful gold digger of your dreams.

This is the girl I married. Susan. Social climber, social debutante, social parasite. The majority of our relationship was spent with me being undiagnosed with bipolar. The symptoms were all there. It was the diagnosis and treatment that were missing. And the love. There wasn’t a lot of true love there. Not the type of love humans typically had for each other. My love for her was more like the love a neglected Chihuahua shows the person who occasionally throws wilted kale leaves into the garage, and lives most of his life in a mouse-chewed Adidas box in the back corner of the garage, and the single garage lightbulb burned out in 1992, and the Chihuahua was born in 1994 in that Adidas box with his seven puppy brothers and sisters, and the Chihuahua was the only one to survive birth, including his mother, and the corpses of pups and mum were never removed or noticed, and kale leaves were not on the menu for the first two months of his life and yet the Chihuahua wasn’t undernourished until his third month of life…

I grew to hate kale.

And the ex-wife, she had this to say to me during the divorce:
“I only loved you when you were successful.”

Our power couple name mash up was “SusanateluciferwholeandnowlordsoverhellSteve”. Not quite Bragelina or Bennifer in brevity or intent, but there it is.

So psychosis. I get supermega-depressed and I go psychotic. Full bore, engine in redline psychotic. Typically, this manifests as delusions and paranoia. During my divorce and the endless court dates to fight for custody of my very favorite son (my only son), my psychotic symptoms reached a new zenith, a trajectory even Icarus would envy.
The court battles sucked. The proto-ex-wife sucked worse. And she was kicking my ass in court. I couldn’t figure out how she knew so much of the strategy my excellent attorney engineered, but dude, it was like she was in my head, which I know is impossible because my skull was both lead and niobium-shielded. Yep, I was already well on the way to Disney’s Dimentialand. Every character there is named “Goofy.” Too easy. Sorry. Better joke writers for the next blog post.

So one early morning, around 2 AM-ish, I finally figured out how she was getting all the “insider information” she was using against me in court. If there was no way for her to penetrate my mind (because lead and niobium thwart pure, unfiltered evil very effectively), obviously my mind must be broadcasting my thoughts to her. Obviously. And it was the neighbor’s tree that was amplifying my thoughts and broadcasting them to the soon to be ex-wife. Obviously. Clearly. Variance denied.

I’m a solution guy. I’m all about creating my own solutions. The neighbor’s tree was broadcasting my thoughts. If my neighbor’s ham radio array was broadcasting video of me in the shower (I’m sure it was), what would I have done? I would take out that radio array. I’d topple it.  I’d kill that broadcast suddenly and definitively.
A tree is very much like a ham radio array. Only it is alive and it’s made of wood. To kill the broadcast, the tree must die. The tree was like Jenny Picket in fifth grade who gossiped a lot. Jenny needed to die, too. But that’s hyperbole. You hope. I hope. Where was I?

Right! The tree had to die. And seeing as it was made of wood, I had the perfect instrument of “arborcide.” My camping axe. So at 3 AM-ish in the morning, I chopped down my neighbor’s tree. It had to be done immediately at 3 AM, before the soon to be ex-wife could wake up and start taking notes again. Guess what? I felled the tree… and the broadcast stopped!

Funny thing happened, though. When a tree thought-broadcasting array stops transmission, the Albuquerque Police Department picks up another form of transmission I understand is termed “The Neighbor Who Owned The Tree Called 911.”

That’s a tangential story. Enough for now.

Peace out.

Ben, The Kamp Kasemen Tech

My sis rocks. One of my fave Jimmy tunes recorded just for me. You rock, Sylvia Seren (Sarah).

By the way, this tech named Ben (I call him Ben the Tech) at Kamp Kaseman used to put Sylvia Plath “inspirational” quotes on the board every morning.

I told him, “Dude, this is a psych hospital. Sylvia Plath killed herself.”

And Techben (changed his name) said, “No she didn’t.”

So I said, “Google.”

And the next morning, no Sylvia Plath quote. Instead, Ben the Fool (changed his name) posted Kurt Cobain lyrics.

The point of all of this is being inpatient can be incredibly disempowering and outright scary. And sometimes, the staff is kinda dismissive of peers while we are feeling fragile. Ben and I were never going to be friends. And this time through Kamp Kaseman, I truly needed a point in the win column. Having a tech insisting he was “right” about Ms. Plath gave an easy avenue to self-empowerment. Score. Bonus score.

I used to see Ben when I’d visit Kamp Kaseman to present education programs. I’d say “hi” to Ben. He did not say “hi” to me. He did have to set up the DVD player for me. No documentaries on Robin Williams, thank the stars.

Reprinted with kind permission of Steve’s Thoughtcrimes.

How did you find such a well-hidden scab, you Mind Sculptor?

I need a better opening line than “As a peer…”, like “As the superhero Indiana Jones” or “As a fleshy bag of mostly water…” this being a Star Trek The Next Generation quote. I did watch TNG for a while until this episode when Data said “Much like deep sea divers experience nitrogen narcosis, we are suffering from a form of temporal narcosis.” Because that makes a lot of sense. Time is supersaturated in the blood at great pressures and returning to STP (Standard Temperature Pressure . . . pretty much sea level in Huntington Beach), time begins to bubble out of solution in the blood forming painful, often lethal time bubbles in the blood vessels. TNG should have the temporal contemporary title Tool Time because the writers and actors are a collaboration of tools . . . who collectively think time dissolved in blood is a real thing. Tool Time. I’m out.

As a peer, there are a lot of horrible things that have happened in my life. Not getting my geology degree(s). Meeting my future wife who during the divorce told my mom on the phone, “I always get what I want, so you better say goodbye to your grandson because you won’t see him until he’s 18.” Getting fired from job after job, not knowing bipolar has the propensity to make it impossible to go to work as well as making me a complete tool when I did get to work. Tool Time!

Lots of this stuff gets pushed down, buried, ignored, dismissed, and hopefully forgotten with time. And then you get a therapist hired to help you work through the wreckage of your life, which includes the wreckage of your past sometimes. Only sometimes. And you get to therapy that week, and the therapist is thinking, “Damn, four garden variety anxiety peers today. I’m bored. Let’s see what I can do to spice up the next patient session!”

And that’s you. Or rather, that’s me. It’s been me. It’s been me too many times. Example: Somehow, my therapist once weaseled out of me that my ex-wife said, “I know all your triggers and I’m going to push every button until you kill yourself so I get full custody.” I don’t like that memory. And I had taken thirteen years to repress that particular memory and pain. But my, what a rich, painful, profitable vein to mine. So much for the successful repression.

I’m told, “Repression is unhealthy because you never come to terms with the pain and the situation, and this will continue to affect your mental heath if you don’t talk about it. You’ll never learn to handle the stress and you’ll never know how to handle the situation if you encounter it again.”

And I reply, “I taught myself how to handle it. I won’t marry Susan again. Problem solved. And thanks for somehow worming that to the front of my awareness again and getting me to talk about it for 50 minutes. You’re a Miracle Worker, where I never knew how to feel pain until you taught me. Water.”

What’s the harm in repressing pain, where’s the worry in not thinking about painful memories at the fore of the mind, how is it a crime pushing the wreckage into a tiny cube into the deepest hole in my heart where happy happy joy joy memories are a depleted uranium barrier keeping access to and from that repression from surfacing?

It takes a lot of work, repressing painful memories. Think about doing triple bypass surgery on yourself. And think about doing this even though you show no signs of heart disease, and you run marathons, and you swim La Manche to and fro just to get to work in Dover from St. Malo. My heart is healthy. And think about doing this because someone you pay to help you feel better says, “Today, I think we should crack open your sternum and play with your heart a bit.” You see what I did there? I got it around to “play with your heart” which in Hellenistic times was considered the receptacle of emotion. Clever boy.

Repression is the scab that need not be picked at. I’ve invested thirteen years worth of thrombocytes scabbing over my life with Susan. I let my bleedy nose drip all over my shirts for twelve of those years to dedicate as many thrombocytes as possible to scabbing over the open wound that was Susan. And now you want me to open that wound again? Where did you get your psych degree? Sending in four box tops from your Cheerios?

What would be ideal is to save those box tops, pour yourself a bowl of Cheerios, and while pouring your milk, notice that the picture of the “Missing Child” is a picture of Susan. And she’s been missing for thirteen years.

What am I getting around to? It’s a self-empowerment thing. It’s the ability to tell my Mind Sculptor, “We’re not going there. Let’s talk about my date last night, where the girl’s cumulative brain power for a year could toast a slice of raisin bread, but only lightly, and one side only. That’s a painful mistake that has not scabbed over with depleted uranium, and a mistake I don’t want to make any longer.” Current. Unscabbed. Worthwhile.

My therapist holds a dual role. Sacajawea and Mechanic. It’s important to have a guide into the unknown, although Lewis and Clark had no need for the lass to backtrack to last night’s camp site because one of them (Clark, because he was a directionless fool) forgot his  iPhone. It’s the current stuff I need help fixing, or at least the most current stuff that is like dragging an anchor through a sea of magnets. For me, that’s losing Clare. Not being married to the Queen of the Sirens thirteen years ago. Here is your tarnished crown, your Majesty.

My therapist says, “What should we talk about this week?”

And I say, “My inflamed hemorrhoidal tissues that have begun seeping puss and blood lately.”

And my therapist says , “What? I’m not a proctologist!”

And I say, “It’s a metaphor. The thoughts of Susan are a pain in my ass. I’m trying to repress, again, the memories of Susan you dredged out last week. Of course, people do say my head is full of shit. Perhaps I need a proctologist after all.”

– Dedicated to Stephanie’s puppy, Poppy.

A very funny meme from AutisticNotWeird.com

A peer presenter with Stand Up To Stigma passed along a meme for posting to our site. Rather than just post the meme, it’s better to write out the dialog, which comes courtesy of Autistic Not Weird.


Dude #1: “I’m autistic, which means everyone around me has a disorder that makes them say things they don’t mean, not care about structure, fail to hyperfocus on singular important topics, have unreliable memories, drop weird hints and creepily stare into my eyeballs.”

Dude #2: “So why do people say YOU’RE the weird one?”

Dude #1: “Because there’s more of them than me.”


Classic.

Tales from Laugh It Off: Who wants to hear a story about a bridge?

So Salty and me were presenting “Laugh It Off” at Turquoise Lodge last Friday, and the support group part of the presentation was going great, and then Jackie’s stand in (our babysitter to make sure we don’t do anything untoward or triggering) jumped in with some comment or another that totally sucked the joy out of the room. I’m going to pick on this lovely young lady to cover my own secret shame that will not be secret soon. Truth told, our handler was very professional and super great, but as Jackie noticed for the past couple of weeks, having her in the midst of the group changed the dynamic.

So there we are, Salty and me, and our handler was not part of the circle of peers by prior planning, and we were laughing and crying and laughing and offering kind words and support and everything else that happens in a peer support group. Our lovely handler jumped in with a comment, from outside the circle, and the conversation dead stopped. What did I say with the wisdom of a thousand Yodas?


“Oh, man, you are such a buzzkill.”


Aw, crap. I caught my error immediately. It wasn’t difficult to miss, like Rosie O’Donnell making her perigee-syzygy. Aw, crap. Crap!

Splendid. I just (jokingly) called someone a “buzzkill” in a room of detox and rehab patients. Thing is, that got the conversation jump started again with laughter and snickers. I made so many apologies, tried to spin it into “You see? This is how deep into our everyday language stigmas run.” Whatever. I messed up. Badly. So unprofessional. And this was the first time our handler sat through this performance.

Just splendid. I made apologies again to the group, and the consensus was it was just fine and no one was offended. Funny dynamic, support groups. Making that stupid faux pas actually made me more popular with the group. Thank the Yodas.

Buzzkill. Dang it. I’m better than this. Sigh.

Reprinted with kind permission of the author from Steve’s Thoughtcrimes.