when mental problems become physical
Have you ever felt betrayed? Alone? While in church?
I did.
One too many times.
Having "mental problems" while being involved in church is okay until you become "too much" for people to handle. This is the hard lesson I learned. Over and over again. Until I got to the point where I wanted nothing to do with church or God.
What's the problem? I'm a strong-willed, tenacious, and logical woman with NES (non-epileptic seizures). My seizures are a result of PTSD from a lifetime of trauma, including being told I had mental problems without having had them. At least, there is no evidence that my "problems" were legitimately mental disorders. Yes, I experienced depression and was suicidal after the psychiatrists and medication and pressure. Who wouldn't be? When you are expected to be suicidal, how can you not be?
These phantom problems followed me to every school, every college, every job. Before I knew it was NES or how to deal with it, I was experiencing episodes I legitimately thought would kill me. Episodes of paralysis, muscle spasms, muscle weakness, mental confusion, disorientation, and, my least favorite, dizziness. The worst part is that getting a cold or simply being on my period magnifies my symptoms against my will. They started when I was in high school and escalated to epic proportions when I was 19, in college.
Humiliating is the word.
One minute you are talking to a schoolmate and the next you're laying on the floor trying to remember how to breathe because your body isn't breathing anymore. When you discover that coughing is easier than breathing, the full-body convulsions begin. True story: one of my fellow classmates became an EMT because of this particularly epic episode in the middle of my college hallway. One hour into convulsions the paramedics showed up and shot me up with muscle relaxer. Everyone said it was just a "panic attack" because I'd been diagnosed with them as a child. But it lasted over an hour!
Have you ever felt like someone was pulling your muscles from your toes and fingers to your chest like they were guitar strings? Tuning them tighter and tighter? It hurts. A lot. It is not a panic attack. Some seizures were just floppy legs or hand tremors or paralysis from the neck down. Much less dramatic, but just as scary.
When mental problems become physical problems and can't be explained, no one knows what to do.
So they don't do anything.
I must give a shout out to a wonderful woman who worked at my college. Her daughter was a nurse and she was the only person I'd met who disagreed with my "panic attack" diagnosis and took my physical condition seriously. It was to her credit that we all discovered that being put on my side made it possible for me to breathe during a convulsive seizure.
She was my first sign of hope from the imminent death I thought I was facing.
But the bad really does outweigh the good, doesn't it? Eventually.
I will tell you more in my next post. For now, I'm signing off.
Till next time,
Kelly Ann.
Till next time,
Kelly Ann.
Comments
You have always been a person that I admire. Your patience, understanding, experiences in life, and view of the world always challenge me to be a better person.
Here for you always - all my love.
The dream struck me weird, it left this irritating feeling of incompleteness in my brain that I couldn’t shake. So in an attempt to break the spell, I went to your Facebook page and found this, posted just two days ago. So like I said, I don’t know what to say, just that I feel like I’m meant to say something. Maybe just sharing this is enough, maybe you’ll take this as validation that the Spirit is with you. Maybe you’ll think that I’m just some random creep anonymously stalking your blog, I hope not though.
I’m sorry I didn’t do more to help you. I knew you were hurting deep and felt more shame than you deserved to feel, but I didn’t know how to help you. Even though I tried to show you that you were accepted and that you didn’t have to feel so ashamed, when I realized that your hurt went deeper than I had the authority to speak to in your life, I took the easy way out. I’m sorry that you suffered, and I’m so, so sorry that I called you friend and yet still allowed you to feel like you were suffering alone.
I know what it’s like to feel shame and to be in a church that feeds your feelings of guilt and shame instead of freeing you from them. It sucks, it’s wrong, it’s evil, it’s not what a body of believers is supposed to do. I quit church for 7 years because I couldn’t trust church goers. My shame had turned to anger that burned against the church. I thought I could sustain my faith alone, just me and God lone-wolfing it together. I slowly backslid for years, God became quiet, then became distant, then left a hole that begged for an intimacy I just couldn’t find. He never really left me, I see that know, but you couldn’t have convinced me of that just a few years ago. He knew that if I could hide my shame, I would, and by hiding it I could never allow myself to be truly known, and in never being known, I would never find that I could be wholly loved and accepted. So He allowed me to become so lost that, by the consequences of my lost-ness, I can no longer hide my shame. Then He lead me (tricked me, manipulated me, cornered me) to enter into a body of believers that would know my shame, accept me in spite of my shame, and in accepting me and facing it head on with me, heal my shame and rob it of it’s power.
That’s my testimony. There, I feel completion now. I hope this blesses you.
Anonymous, I hope you continue to read my blog posts so you know the whole story. I don't even know if you will see this reply...
I need you to know that I have no ill will toward anyone from those years in college. I didn't know any more than y'all did at the time. I didn't know the effects it had that my mom, with good intentions, sabotaged me everywhere I went by telling staff that I was anorexic and had a panic disorder. Lies, she didn't know were lies. But when people have a diagnosis that is all mental, they tend to ignore you until the "panic" is over. That may help some people who actually have a panic disorder, depending on their personality but at the time, I honestly thought I'd just die during one of those episodes.
It was after college that I left the church and found God (yes, found not lost). One of my hopes in writing my story down piece by piece is to help people know what to do for others like me. To give a voice to others like me that they can't express while they are in the middle of it.
Thank you for sharing. I am in awe that God would speak to someone else about me and affirm this blog that I started back up on a whim. Thank you.