Month: August 2021

DEREK’S DISCLAIMER:  I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals.  These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance.  Thanking you in advance!

Welcome back, my dearest Mind Benders!

Today I am going to address something that has been truly weighing on my mind – no pun intended. And that is returning to work during this pandemic. Oy!

My own personal work-from-home history

Let me start with my own work-from-home history.

I have been working from home off and on for over 20 years. Yes, I discovered the joy of working from home wayyyyyy back in 1999 when I began studying to become a medical transcriptionist. When I was told that I could do this from the comfort of my own home and in my pajamas if I wanted (or less LOLOLOL), I was like THIS is the job for me. After going full-time to school for about a year and then dropping out for a while, I finally graduated in 2003. By that time, though, I had already begun working from home doing medical transcription.

That transitioned into simple, nonmedical transcription. And eventually I was working full-time from home, which lasted for about five years! Then later on down the road I did it again for two years!

It was an off and on thing for me, because I ended up taking other jobs outside my home, acting jobs mostly. But I LOVED the idea of working from home where I could start work whenever I wanted, finish whenever I wanted, with no one looking over my shoulder. The refrigerator was right there and, again, I could wear whatever the hell I wanted! No dressing up! Heck, I could even work to music and/or the TV!!!

I began my current outside-the-home job back in late 2017. Then the pandemic hit, and for a lot of lucky devils, including myself, we were fortunate enough to be able to transition to working remotely or from home. (I guess we weren’t essential enough LOL) And that was such a GODSEND!

But in coming back we are asking ourselves some questions:

You mean I can do this from home? And I could have all along??

Why haven’t we been doing this before?

What is the point of even going into an office to work anymore????

What We Have Returned To

We have returned to packing a lunch and/or finding something to bring to work to eat or snack on during the day. And where I work, we are strongly prohibited from using the refrigerator and microwave due to COVID. So, even with returning to work, there are new challenges we have never encountered before. And of course, the biggest is wearing a MASK ALL DAY!! UGH! Side note: Yes, I am fully vaccinated, and I do believe in wearing my mask. But all day????????

We have returned to wearing CLOTHES!!!!! And clothes that hopefully fit!! (I definitely gained during this pandemic!!!)

We have returned to heavy traffic!!!

And I swear to God when I leave my house now to go to work, I feel like I am packing for an overnight trip! THE STRUGGLE IS REAL!

Not Having to be Around People and Zoom, Zoom, Zoom!!!

Working from home is definitely great for stay-at-home moms. But it is also great for people who don’t wish to be around a lot of people. I’m one of THOSE people LOL Let’s face it, the pandemic has made us rethink a lot of things, as it should. And one of them is working and the ability to actually do our jobs from home.

Heck, even teachers had to adjust to working from home and doing their extremely important jobs on Zoom. (And let’s not forget the potential danger of teachers and students returning to the classroom with COVID still out there, this Delta Variant, and unvaccinated people!!! There is DEFINITE anxiety there!!!)

Speaking of Zoom, Zoom has become our friend. Mine anyway. It was quite an adjustment for a lot of us, but I would gather we adapted rather quickly. I know I did. And on my job, which is working in the medical field, it was very much an adjustment with going into private breakout rooms and learning how to share documents via share screen and sharing sound, speaking to others in the room, making sure you are muted and screen blanked/video stopped when appropriate, etc. Eventually, I was able to become Zoom host where I set up the breakout rooms and was able to broadcast messages! So, yeah. I love me some Zoom, baby!!!

However, I also know that there are those individuals who NEED to be around others. And for mental health reasons, i.e. not to feel isolated as we have during the pandemic. But I am not one of those people LOL! But I digress. It is understandable that this work thing that has been around wayyyyyy too long mostly involves working with and around other people. That is what we have been socialized to expect in our worklife, working with others. Gee, I guess it started in that other thing called school. 🙂

And now for many work-from-home people going back into the office or wherever, it is quite difficult to get us out of the house.

This is why it has become very difficult for me to return to the actual space where I work. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE my job and the people I work with. But I also LOVE working from home.

I am also VERY grateful to have a job! Because so many people lost theirs during this unfortunate time that we are STILL going through. But I also realized hmmmm I miss this working remote thingy.

But times have definitely changed. We realize that we no longer need to go into an office or wherever to work. We can do it from the comfort of our homes. And yes, in our pajamas or in the – whatever.

And I am not surprised that people feel a bit depressed over returning. Again, the struggle is REAL!! And please take care of YOU!!!

That is it for today. And I look forward to discussing this further as we go along.

Until then, please be mentally well!!!

DEREK’S DISCLAIMER:  I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals.  These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance.  Thanking you in advance!

Welcome back, bent minders!

In my very last blog post, I tackled complex PTSD or c-PTSD (complex posttraumatic disorder). I talked about what it is and some of the symptoms. I even delved into my story. See link to last blog post below:

Am I Actually Suffering from Complex PTSD? – PART 1

Now on with the rest of the show.

So, some of the behaviors or symptoms resulting from c-PTSD are depersonalization, derealization, and dissociation. At this point, I am going to dive into something EXTREMELY personal about me. For many years, I called myself different names. I oftentimes felt that I was not a part of myself or that I was not myself. I did a lot of acting out back in those days, starting in 1989, which is the year I came out.

According to what I’ve read thus far, dissociation is when you feel disconnected from yourself, your own body, and the world around you. And there are numerous ways one can dissociate:

1. Travelling to a new location and taking on a new identity (dissociative fugue).
2. Having difficulty remembering your personal information (dissociative amnesia).
3. Looking at yourself from the outside (depersonalization).
4. Experiencing life as if the world around you is not real (derealization).
5. Feeling your identity shift and change (identity alteration).
6. Having difficulty defining the kind of person you are (identity confusion).

Now, let me connect the dots from the previous post on this subject and the dissociation part. Remember when I told you how I learned from my grandmother that my grandfather had cheated on her and sired two other children? Well, that was in 1987. And that is when I left that cult, and I started drinking and partying. That was a two-year culmination leading up to me finally acknowledging my true sexual identity as being gay and coming out in 1989. It was quite a ride wild. And not the easiest, but rather quite bumpy indeed.

And make no mistake about it, I dissociated starting in 1989. I personally think it was because of all the horror I had endured during childhood up to this point. And coming out was just a springboard, a catalyst. Not to mention the fact that I was still dealing with the religious garbage of saying it was not okay to be gay, that I was an abomination. But just like the Eurythmics’ song says “I Did It Just The Same.” Ha!

So, according to the list above, I suffered from “identity alteration.” (Not to be confused with DID or dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as split or multiple personality). Starting in 1989, I began calling myself other names and going by different personas. Although I was not suffering from true DID and blacking out and having memory loss, I would experience a near blackout as if the room was spinning slightly.

Let’s do a breakdown of the other names/personas I adopted during this time and their characteristics:

Daryl Lord

I considered this person to be the part of myself that was the loud partyer, the drinker, the life of the party. He was very brash and obnoxious and normally talked with a New Jersey accent. He was sort of patterned after actress Erika Slezak’s Niki Smith from “One Life to Live,” except she wore a red wig. Daryl did not wear a red wig, but instead wore a sleeveless cutout, black denim jacket and tight blue jeans and cowboy boots, but not always. When I look back on it, I think he was the part of me that rebelled against all that religion that had been shoved down my throat all my life, and particularly my first two years in college.

Oh God, he was horrible. So, loud and brash and bold. He was able to do and say the things I couldn’t.

Nick Montraire

He was the promiscous personality. Okay. You can say it. He was the slut. He was always at the gay bars picking up strange men. It wasn’t that he dressed differently than me. He was just trashier in a sexy sense, more open with his sexuality. He went off with all sorts of men and yes, he called himself Nick. And that is how the other men knew him/me.

Guillaume Radcliffe (William Ratliff)

This guy was the snooty more studious side of me. He spoke with a British accent, but with a French name LOL. He was ALL business. Very, very smart and highly intelligent. He did not care about sex or partying. Guillaume wanted to see me succeed. He was EXTREMELY ambitious, and he did not like my friends at all.

“Dissociation is one way the mind copes with too much stress, such as during a traumatic event.” (ME!!!)

I look at it as detaching from reality, detaching from whatever it is I couldn’t face.

Over time, it grew worse, because I would dissociate whenever I felt under stress or there was something I felt I could not handle as Derek. But that one of the others could. As a matter of fact over time, I splintered into more than just Daryl, Nick and Guillaume. After I moved to Atlanta and over time, there were as many as 13 other me’s!!!!

And needless to say, I met others just like me. They shall remain nameless. But there were others who had alternate identities. So, I wasn’t alone. Ha ha!

In summation and to make it abundantly clear, my identity alteration was my way of coping with years and years of mental abuse – the c-PTSD. It’s like Derek died and these “monsters” took over my life. Fortunately, I do not feel a need to do that anymore. As a matter of fact, I think the last time I truly succumbed to my “illness” was back in 2002 over an extremely stressful period in my life.

Believe me, there will be more to the story as we go along. But for now, I want all of you to be mentally well!

Sources:

Complex PTSD and Dissociation: Understanding Detachment and the Healing Process

DEREK’S DISCLAIMER:  I am not a medical professional, neither am I giving any medical or legal advice. If you are seeking help from a doctor or an attorney, please consult said professionals.  These are my personal thoughts and feelings on the subjects discussed, and my blog is my own personal experiences and journey with mental imbalance.  Thanking you in advance!

Welcome back, fellow mindbenders!

I am going to start off by saying again and again and again – I AM NOT A DOCTOR OF ANY KIND! I am not offering medical advice whatsoever. Rather, I am shining a light on what, I perceive to be, is wrong with ME. And I have no business self-diagnosing. So, I will be following up with a professional about this. But If you happen to see things in my posts that resemble you, then all right. Let’s talk about it. My blog is intended to be interactive, but not for medical advice. But that is where it ends. I want to make that very abundantly clear. I am not here to diagnose people, but to shine a light on some things that we may connect on.

With that said, I feel compelled to talk about something that is fairly new to me: complex PTSD. What is complex PTSD? Everyone, of course, has heard of just PTSD – posttraumatic stress disorder – which has typically been referred to or about people who have gone to war and who have returned traumatized. (Think Vietnam. Hell, think Afghanistan.) OR anyone who has experienced any sort of traumatic event. But there is another kind.

And again, I have no business self-diagnosing myself. But I first came across the topic of complex PTSD on YouTube. YES, YOUTUBE. However, after clicking on it and listening to what they had to say, I felt I needed to do some more research.

So, let’s a take a deeper dive into the world of complex PTSD.

What is complex PTSD?

Complex PTSD or c-PTSD (complex posttraumatic stress disorder) is what happens to a person who has undergone months or even years of repeated trauma or abuse, as opposed to PTSD which is over a shorter period of time. Sufferers are people who have endured extended periods of:

• Physical abuse or violence.
• People who are prisoners of war.
• Ongoing childhood abuse or neglect.
• People forced to traffic themselves or forced into prostitution.

Symptoms

And the resulting behaviors or symptoms have been compared to the PTSD we know, such as flashbacks, nightmares, difficulty sleeping or concentrating, or being startled by loud noises. But there are other symptoms, such as:

• Avoiding situations (and people) that remind them of the trauma. (Me!)
• Being in a continual state of high alert, i.e. hyperarousal. (Me!)
• Belief that the world is a dangerous place. (Me!)
• A loss of trust in self or others. (Me!)
• Often consider themselves to be different from other people. (oh DEFINITELY Me!)
• Holding a negative view of the world and the people in it. (Again, DEFINITELY Me!)
• Losing faith in previously held beliefs. (Me!)
• Losing control over their emotions, such as experiencing intense anger or sadness. (Me!)
• May have thoughts of suicide. (NOT ME!!!)
• A person may dissociate, which means feeling detached from emotions or physical sensations. Some people completely forget the trauma. (DEFINITELY ME – dissociating, not forgetting)
• It is not uncommon to fixate on the abuser, the relationship with the abuser, or getting revenge for the abuse. (Me!!)

As you can see, I put “me” next to each of the above symptoms/behaviors. I am “outing” myself, because I have just described the things I do or have done to cope with my past traumas. So, we may as well dive into my personal story.

My story

There is no other way for me to say this except to say that I was emotionally and mentally abused as a child. The culprits were my paternal grandparents and aunt, the people who actually raised me. I hate to throw them under the bus, but they are exactly where my problems started. There is a LOT to this story. So, you are going to have to bear with me. I will try and give the condensed version.

I was told all sorts of horrible things from the family who raised me. My grandfather often told me that I was going to grow up to be “sorry,” which meant I was going to be lazy and not amount to much.

I was also told on more than one occasion by my grandmother that she was sick and tired of raising me, and that she wished my parents would take me back.

My aunt called me names and slapped me several times across my face, once drawing blood (this was actually in front of my parents in Washington, D.C. They did or said NOTHING about it!).

And yes, I got the belt from both my grandmother and my aunt. Funny how the belt didn’t hurt nearly as much as the words that were used to cut me down.

I also witnessed on MORE THAN ONE OCCASION them fighting amongst themselves. I actually found it amusing at times, but at the same time I was glad it wasn’t directed towards me.

Living in that house was a nightmare at times, because I never knew if and when they were going to get mad and direct their anger towards me. When I look back on it, part of me was actually walking on eggshells as a child, which is the high state of alert mentioned above.

By the way, I experienced the same in school from teachers and most definitely some of my classmates. And I was afraid of EVERYBODY!

From intense fear to intense anger

But things began to change. You see, the older I got, the angrier I got. I grew sick and tired of my family mistreating me, and there were times in which I rebelled. Big surprise. Nothing major, in my opinion; I would simply talk back. A lot. And there was the time when my grandmother tried to whip me with the belt when I was 16, and I grabbed it and basically took it away from her. Big no no. Oh boy I never heard the end of that one. They all were upset with me over that! LOL

There was also the time when my grandfather had prostate surgery, and could not drive for over a month. So, I had to take my grandmother and aunt shopping. The Saturday trips to the grocery store were all on me, driving to church, etc. And I HATED it! Which is another subject and no doubt added to what I now suspect as complex-PTSD. According to my familial passengers I was either driving too fast. Or I needed to watch out for this car and that car. Slow down. Hit the brakes. And driving my grandmother was THE WORST! She always acted as if she had a set of brakes on her side!! LOL

Well, one day after school, my aunt came home and said that she needed me to take her uptown. I told her that I would do it in a minute. Let me rest first. Oh no that wasn’t good enough. She had to go NOW. So, that started an argument, which led to full Armageddon between me and the rest of the family. It was so bad that my grandfather, who had been sitting on his ass for over six weeks at this point “recovering” (he was milking it for all it was worth) drove her. But boy did I hear about it from grandmother and from him and my aunt upon their return.

Turns out my grandmother revealed to me about two years after this when I was in college, that my grandfather had had several affairs on her, one of which produced two outside children. And that I actually went to school with my own uncle and didn’t even know it!!!

This reveal rocked me to the very core of my existence. So, NONE of this was my fault. It was my grandfather’s all along. The very same man who said I was going to grow up to be “sorry.” I hated him after that. And my anger grew more intense. (And actually, my grandmother and I grew closer and bonded. She told me afterwards that she did not see a difference between me and my aunt and my father. That I was HER child. So, that actually made up for the past between us.)

Nonetheless, the anger didn’t stop there where other people were concerned. Over the next several decades it grew and grew and grew. It got much worse. Anyone that I lived with, for example, ended up seeing – and receiving – the full brunt of my anger.

I would just blow up for no reason. It was awful!! And again, sometimes it would just come from out of left field.

I am going to stop here before this article gets too long! LOL But there is definitely more to my story and to the whole c-PTSD thing. So, stay tuned for PART 2!!

And in the meantime, as always, be mentally well!!

Sources: