‘mental illness? wat’s that like?’

Here’s me de­scrib­ing what hap­pens with me dur­ing an av­er­age con­ver­sa­tion, and how I’ve tried to deal with it so-far —

                                                  This is to con­vey the effects –
                                        not the lit­er­al process.
                    I don’t lit­er­al­ly see these fig­ures or
          lit­er­al­ly hear these voices:

1.
I have my con­scious thought that guides my part of the con­ver­sa­tion, and lis­tens to the oth­er person/people. That’s just me, the big hairy they sit­ting across from you at the table.

2.
Then there’s Depression. 

Pic­ture a tiny hu­man on my shoul­der that’s al­ways telling me I’m mak­ing the point wrong. I’m con­stant­ly mis­com­mu­ni­cat­ing. I’m mak­ing en­e­mies. No­body likes or is go­ing to un­der­stand what I’m saying. 

It can’t be si­lenced, but I have learned to rec­og­nize it as it comes up and a lot of the time can dis­miss it and keep mov­ing on. But it takes a con­stant ef­fort and vig­i­lance, as De­pres­sion is al­ways talk­ing, which can be exhausting. 

Some days it’s loud­er, some days it’s soft­er, and every day I have to fig­ure out how loud it’s go­ing to be so I can pre­pare for it.

3.
PTSD is the low-key friend on the couch these days – af­ter all my self-work – but he’s still al­ways track­ing every­thing, like the loud­ness of the room, any flash­ing lights, un­ex­pect­ed move­ments, or peo­ples prox­im­i­ty to me. 

It con­stant­ly pings in with up­dates, like no­ti­fi­ca­tions on your phone, and there is no silent mode un­less I’m alone or with a small group of people. 

It only gets loud when some­thing hap­pens that it didn’t catch – like when some­one hugs me from be­hind. Then it turns up hard.

4.
ADHD is a lil col­or­ful par­rot on the back of my neck that con­stant­ly pops up over the top of my head to say 

“HEY, WHAT YOU JUST SAID OR THEY JUST SAID OR THAT THING THAT HAP­PENED IN THE COR­NER OF MY EYE – YOU KNOW WHAT THAT’S KIN­DA SIM­I­LAR TO? LET’S TALK ABOUT IT.”

It al­ways has some­thing in the cham­ber, and it con­stant­ly as­serts it­self hard.

It’s like a tod­dler pulling on its parent’s pant leg beg­ging for at­ten­tion, but (with­out med­ica­tion) I can’t ad­dress the child or get it to stop. 

I can ig­nore it, and get my­self back on track when I get pulled off, but that takes a lot of ef­fort and fo­cus be­cause the child is al­ways call­ing loud­er the more ac­ti­vat­ed in a con­ver­sa­tion I become. 

And some­times it comes up with some re­al­ly fun and good ideas. Some­times. But of­ten it’s just tangential.

5.
cPTSD is a tall, loom­ing fig­ure that stands be­hind me, telling me I’m act­ing up and none of what I’m say­ing mat­ters in the first place and has nev­er mattered. 

Why would I even think any­one cared?

Over time, through ther­a­py and self work, for 20+ years, I’ve re­al­ly mit­i­gat­ed that last voice to the point where it’s al­most nonex­is­tent and only comes up on my worst men­tal health days when I’m worn out to the point that every­thing else isn’t man­age­able. But those days are ex­treme­ly rare, es­pe­cial­ly com­pared to when I was young and the cPTSD was developing.

And all these voic­es in­flu­ence each oth­er. If my PTSD gets ac­ti­vat­ed, the rest be­come hard to man­age. If I wake up and my de­pres­sion is ac­tive, ad­dress­ing it can pull fo­cus from every­thing else – and my ADHD can make the process of pro­cess­ing de­pres­sion ex­po­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult –hence – why I am so hap­py these ADHD meds are working.

It be­comes a whole feed­back loop real fast.

 

Over the years,

be­fore I even had di­ag­noses for these,
I was de­vel­op­ing ways to try and mit­i­gate all this:

1.
I have to slow my­self down, and speak slow­ly and mea­sured or else these prover­bial “voic­es” get ex­cit­ed and my con­scious thought gets over­tak­en by all these things (which is un­help­ful to any­one, and leads to me hav­ing to take sig­nif­i­cant time and ef­fort af­ter to get my­self back to be­ing lev­eled-out … and Cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca has nev­er giv­en time for that).

For ref­er­ence: When I was younger it could take weeks. Now, I can usu­al­ly knock it out in a few hours (be­cause I know what those parts of my­self sound like, and I have a good grip on how they present themselves).

2.
For ADHD, I de­vel­oped a bunch of re­minder-tasks to get me back on track – like cross­ing my fin­gers when I get a side-thought while talk­ing, so I can re­mem­ber I had an­oth­er point to bring up (be­cause bring­ing it up would de­rail the cur­rent con­ver­sa­tion, and I’d for­get the orig­i­nal point – and if I didn’t cross my fin­gers, I’d lose the side-thought). 

The med­ica­tion so far has also been very help­ful, but I’m also un­der the usu­al start­ing dose so it’s not per­fect but sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter. My rea­son for want­i­ng a low dose is be­cause, some­times, it can be habit form­ing and ad­dic­tive, so I’m be­ing over­ly cautious. 

3.
Writ­ing it down, like this, helps me sort through what thoughts be­long to what part of my brain. And I share them be­cause these are hard lessons I learned, and if any­one I know can be helped, it’s worth it.

4.
Self-study to come to this point, with con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing is­sues in my brain vs. my mind, has been the above-and-be­yond most help­ful process I have done. As has the un­der­stand that these parts of my­self are, at the same time, not sep­a­rate from me but a piece of a very nor­mal whole.

Like, the “voic­es” are not ac­tu­al things I hear as I talk. They’re just dys­func­tion­al parts of my brain – parts that every­one has – that func­tion ab­nor­mal­ly and de­rail my thoughts in dif­fer­ent ways.

Putting them in the con­text of sep­a­rate char­ac­ters has been ex­treme­ly help­ful at rec­og­niz­ing these parts of my brain’s in­flu­ence as they start to come up, so I can be func­tion­al as a person.

And it is can be ex­haust­ing, but fol­low­ing these process­es are far bet­ter than what hap­pens when I don’t.

So, yeah!

If you read this far: I hope you are do­ing as well as you can be, and thank you for even tak­ing a minute or two to read all this and be with me on it 💖

 

—david loret de mola

Flom­mist David Loret de Mola is a Grand Slam Po­et­ry Cham­pi­on of Sacra­men­to with Sac Uni­fied Slam Team and Zero For­bid­den Goals who has rep­re­sent­ed the City of Sacra­men­to in the Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam, and 100 Thou­sand Po­ets for Change in Saler­no, Italy. Copy­right © 2024 David Loret de Mola. Im­ages: Works by Edgar De­gas (de­tail), source.

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