psych drug support group

Today I went to a withdrawing from psych drugs support group. I found it incredibly helpful. I explained my recent experience with my therapist saying depression is not caused by a chemical imbalance. How this was honestly news to me and how this makes me question what’s the point of being on these meds and what are they doing to my body and gbrain if not balanceing chemicals?

The facilitator said I summarized things perfectly and was really impressed.

I felt heard and understood.

I plan to go back next week.

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first therapy session with Katelyn

Hi everyone,

My first therapy session with Katelyn was a success. After all that anxiety. She was a really nice person. She spent some time taking a history of my symptoms and stuff. She asked about my goals. I said to stop dissociating. She said maybe another way to put it is to integrate the different parts of my personality and to have me running the show rather than them. I agreed.

As we talked about my symptoms she kept coming back to trauma. She said people dissociate, leave their body, because of terrifying or overwhelming events in their lives at a very young age. She said if there wasn’t trauma in my history she’d be shocked. She said people don’t just don’t wake up one day and start dissociating. I just can’t think of what the trauma could be. I know my family life especially as a teenager wasn’t good with my mom drinking and lots of emotional arguments and stuff. But I don’t know about when I was really little. So it remains a mystery.

She asked about medications I’m on. I told her what I take. She said, and I haven’t heard this before, that there’s no such thing as a chemical imbalance to cause depression. That narrative is something drug companies came up with to sell their drugs and make people believe they had to take pills for the rest of their lives. She said there are two approaches in mental health treatment. The medical model that sees everything as a disease, and therapy that seeks to treat the underlying causes of things. So hey bonus, maybe she’ll help me so I won’t have to take medication anymore.

Overall I feel happy with the session. She said next time, in two weeks because my mom can’t afford weekly therapy, she wants to meet the alters. That should be interesting.

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anxious night before therapy

Hi everyone,

So I can’t sleep. I’m super anxious. Tomorrow I have my first session with Katelyn Daniels at 3 pm.I’m worried she’ll say I’m too complicated to help, or that I’m faking my alters. Or that I will forget some important detail when explaining things to her. I just hope she’s nice.

Also I’m anxious because I wrote trilogy a local mental health agency and said I’m interested in joining their group therapy program. Jess is a part of it and I see how much benefit she gets from even two groups a week. I’d probably only sign up for two groups myself too but I think it would be good for me. But I’m worried they’ll write back and say sorry we’re full. I guess if they say that I can always try Anixter Center.

Well should really try to get some sleep. Will keep everyone posted on the therapy session tomorrow.

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clayton picnic

Hi everyone,

On Saturday Clayton had their annual family picnic in the park across the street. It was really nice outside. Jess and I went. The food was really good. I had a hot dog baked beans spaghetie and a melted cool pop. They had a bouncy house which I loved. Jess got a couple good pictures of me in that!

Overall it was a good time and I was glad I came.

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update on me care plan meeting

Hi everyone,

This past week I had my three month care plan meeting with my mom and Iesha my caseworker. We got a lot accomplished. Iesha had talked to Naishali and came up with the idea to revisit applying to Friedman Place again. It’s been three months and my alters haven’t come out to staff. They only come out to Jess. So she plans on contacting Alexander the director and telling him this and my mom agreed to contact him as well and we’ll see if I’ll be given another chance. I’m not too hopeful because of his attitude towards me when I was denied. But it’s worth a try. If I’m not given another chance I’m not sure what the next step will be.

We also talked about me getting therapy to help control my alters. Doing it by zoom would be easiest. That way I don’t have to pay for paratransit and deal wsith that whole hasle. I found someone named Katelyn Daniels who sounds really good. Below is her profile.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/katelyn-elizabeth-daniels-chicago-il/81095

She does EMDR and internal family systems both really solid therapies. Mom agreed to pay for therapy. Not sure for how many sessions but I’ll take what I can get. So I contacted her and we have a session booked for this coming Thursday at 3 pm.

I’m excited but also really anxious. It’ll be hard to sum up the past five years or more to a total stranger. I’ll keep everyone posted.

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my last night of being 34 and 11 year anniversary of comming to Chicago

Hi everyone,

Well tonight’s my last night of being 34. I can’t believe it. How time flies. I would say overall it’s been an ok year. I spent most of it working on moving to Friedman, and igt’s still hugely disappointing that I can’t move there. I’m considering contacting Alexander the director again and asking him what it would take for him to reconsider me as a resident.

The other huge change for me is Jess planning on moving to Deer Path supportive living. I’m really proud of her for deciding to do this and all the hard work wshe puts into it every week. It’ll be a really tough transition whenever either she or I move but it’s bound to happen sometime.

Today marks the 11 year anniversary of my move from Massachusetts to Chicago. I can’t believe 11 years has gone by so fast. Even though I’m not at Friedman I’m grateful to be doing stable on my meds and relatively happy.

My caseworker sent my referral packet to both Abbott House and Buenna park but they didn’t reciefve it. So she has to resend everything. Hopefully she’ll do that nexgt week.

I’m looking forward gto going out to Dunkin doughnuts for my birthday outing tomorrow.

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Disappointing tour of Buena Park

Hi Everyone,

Well yesterday’s tour of Buena Park was pretty disappointing. We got there early and found that things had changed completely from 2015. There was nowhere to sit in the lobby at all. So the receptionist had us sit in the staff room, well we think it was the staff room it had a table and chairs and fridge and microwave in it.

She said Amir was on a phone call but would be with us shortly. It felt like we waited ages. He eventually came. And right away he was saying how he didn’t think that he could accommodate my needs and that we had talked about me going to skilled care. Sigh.

He did ask in all this what I was looking for. I said a smaller facility with individual therapy. He said that like at Clayton I’d get assigned a care manager, like a caseworker. And I could have breef meeetings with them and if I wanted psychotherapy they could refer to an outpatient clinic. So I guess the behavioral health specialists that came in the evenings back in 2015 are gone too. I was extremely disappointed to hear this.

I asked about groups and he mentioned only about four groups per week. I thought there would be more variety. He did say that we could have a tour. We walked around the first floor. The hallways were extremely narrow. He was good about giving me directions but after Jess said he looked uncomfortable watching me use my cane and kept saying he had talked with the clinical director and management at Mado Healthcare, and what they could offer was the skilled nursing facility a sister facility to Buena Park called Uptown. I just don’t see how I’d qualify for a skilled facility as I don’t have any physical health issues. I’m just blind. I don’t consider blindness a medical issue.

So I said yes we’d fax my referral packet over and just see what they have to say. Last night I also contacted a second facility Abbott House in Highland Park.

https://www.abbotthousenursing.com/

Justin the admissions person responded to my e-mail saying that they need a referral packet and then if they decide to move forward they’ll do an intake assessment. If they do schedule a tour they try and limit the number of visitors to the facility due to covid so Jess might not be able to come with me. So I wrote Iesha my caseworker and hopefully she’ll fax or e-mail packets today or next week.

But it was sad and disappointing to see Buena Park go downhill. No cats either sadly.

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Touring Buena Park tomorrow

Hi everyone,

So I’m taking a tour of the
Buena Park Center, formerly Margaret Manor North tomorrow at 1. I’m really excited as well as really anxious.

The admissions person, Amier was kind of a jerk about the fact that I’m blind. Apparently, he had my records from the nightmare ten years ago when I was first hospitalized and every place besides Albany Care and Clayton House said no to me because I’m blind. Well I guess Margaret Manor North got my packet then too and held on to it. Anyway this guy suggested I move to a skilled nur4sing home just because I’m blind. I was highly insulted!

He said we’d do the tour and then have Clayton fax over the referral packet and they’d consider me. That’s all he could say. Jess says that it’s about a 50 50 chance they’ll reject me like they did the last time. But we’ll see.

So I typed up all my questions and I’m ready to go. I get picked up at 12. I’ll be very curious how this place has changed since 2015 when we visited before.

Wish me luck.

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update on me

Hi everyone,

I haven’t updated this blog since 2019. I’m still living in Chicago at Clayton residential home with Jess. Over the past six months I’ve worked hard applying to Friedman Place for the blind, which if you remember is where I lived back in 2012. Unfortunately, I was denied residency. The reason is my alters. I wasn’t honest with Friedman staff about the existence of my alters/ dissociative symptoms when applying. I told my caseworker at the time that I didn’t want Friedman staff to know about my alters because I was afraid they wouldn’t accept me if they knew. Well that comment made it into my case notes that got sent right to Friedman, and was apparently the deciding factor in sealing my fate with them. They also said that I’m now living in a place that specializes in mental illness, and Friedman doesn’t. It’s the old extremely frustrating problem of the blindness centered placesw not wanting to accept mental illness and mental illness centewred places not wanting to accept the blindness. Sigh.

So now I have to decide what I want to do with my life. Jess is working very hard with Trilogy a local mental health organization to move out of Clayton to Deeer Path, a supportive Living facility about an hour away in a suburb. I could stay here, even though I’m bored out of my mind and not getting anything out of it really. I have a caseworker who’s extremely hands off and never checks in on me. I could move to a smaller SMHRF facility that offers individual therapy. I could move to a group home. I don’t have any experience with those, but hear the rent Is less than what we pay here so that’s good. My family doesn’t want me to go to Deer Path with Jess. So that’s out. I wish I could go home to MA but they don’t have room for me in their 2 bedroom condo. But I do have options.

Below are links to the places I’m looking at.

Buenna Park

https://madohealthcare.com/locations/buena-park/

Greenwood Care

http://www.greenwoodcare.com/

Anixter Center Mental Health Residential Services

https://anixter.org/mental-health-residential/

That’s all for now. If anyone has any insights on group homes please let me know.

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update elevator project a week ahead of time and speaking to new therapist tomorrow!

Hi everyone,

Wanted to give a small update. I am having a better time taking the stairs than I thought I would. Sometimes it is crowded but people are pretty good at not knocking me over LOL and Jess is always there with me.

The good news is this project seems to be running ahead of time. There are different phases and this first one was supposed to be two weeks long but only lasted a week.

Unfortunately this next one is the most intrusive and chaotic of all. Basically due to the process of moving really heavy stuff around and whatever they have to block off the whole first floor front area. So where reception, nursing, the group room and basically all main parts of the building. Staff can be in there but very limited access. So they’re gonna put the nurse’s station in the small dining room we have two. You need both to feed 200 people and so I don’t know how they’re gonna do it with just one room. So yeah. Also getting out of the building will be interesting as you’d have to go out through a back door and there’s currently no security in that area.

For this reason as I think I said in a previous post I was thinking of putting off therapy til this project was completed. But as time is going by and they’re ahead of time I decided to just stick with getting in to see her. Rob who is now assistant to Sarah, who is now in the role of director is very genuinely caring about how this will impact our lives and wanting to be supportive. I’m actually impressed at the caring shown here. He’s a pretty authentic guy, not as much as David but yeah.

Speaking of therapy will be talking with Jeane tomorrow. We’d been e-mailing back and forth about this situation and she suggested to just talk by phone on it. I will be explaining in more detail what’s going on. The stuff I’m stressed about like getting out of the building through another door and finding the pace van or them missing us if we do that. I will also explain pace in general, how we’ll likely be on time but could be late, and could have situations like when there was a lock down code called and we were stuck in the building and could not get out the door to go to therapy. She seems incredibly understanding. I guess funny enough, trilogy is having their elevator worked on around this time too! She had thought my anxiety was due to the elevator there being broken and so offered to meet in a park or coffie shop instead! Which was interesting. Would rather meet in the office but yeah it was a nice offer.

I’m hoping if all goes well, and honestly even if not I really want to start seeing her next week. Monday being a holiday I hope we can find a time that isn’t too late in the day. If so we’d hit trific and miss dinner. So we’ll see about that when it comes up. I’m anxious to know what she’s like. But really hopeful this therapy will help me continue to feel in control around not dissociating.

Will keep you updated about the construction and other issues.

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