Co-Morbidity is the Rule in Mental Health

That’s the post as they say.

Co-morbidity is the rule in mental health, not the exception mainly because it is all just bunches of symptoms grouped in the most coherent & commonly occurring fashion psychologists & psychiatrists could come up with for simplicity of categorisation. And importantly, one dysfunctional often leads to a second by dint of the trauma of living unsupported with the first.

My first awareness that someone could have both ADHD at the same time as Bipolar only occurred a couple of years back. I had disregarding ADHD completely at Bipolar dx in 2016 due to the cross over similarities. Then when the movement of Bipolar episodes stopped for long enough to see the damn hall mark inattentive symptom stand alone, I was astonished to find them to have been traumatically concurrent throughout my life until my Bipolar episodes were managed by lifestyle, nutritional & natural measures in the last few years.

Similarly, the plus BPD dx in 2019 accounted for symptoms I had also assumed to be part of Bipolar but weren’t & became resolvable mainly by my capacity to identify them, having the map as I always say.

And now the Sensory Processing Disorder type of Autism self dx, mopping up left over symptoms perfectly, like the correct jigsaw piece it is, whilst simultaneously being the uncomfortable, over sensitive core nervous system construction that caused all the other dysfunctions in its wake.

Taking Up Space - Why So Selfie

Taken from a preponderance of pondering upon my Instagram.

I was just pondering why I feel the desire to post so many selfies! And I think it’s ok, I think it’s the result of several factors including having been very ill for a very very long time & now starting to really feel better with the new information (#Audhd) especially normalising so many of my daily difficulties.

Then there is, as per the 2020 selfie post, a huge improvement in my skin & glow & skill with make-up, very much with aesthetic gains coming from #faceyoga like #Beautyshamans & #daniellecollins - so that’s something I’m proud of, that I put effort into that contributes to my feeling good in myself.

Then there is the sense of identity deficit from #BPD which while I feel is in remission still perhaps casts a shadow, understandably. And then finally, that lonesome, defuse, evasive #12housesun amplified by being in #Pisces with #Piscesrising lending even less substance to my sense of self & of being visible, “am I invisible?” Is the vibe. Am I a ghost is the vibe.

I spent a lot of time very mentally unwell on my own in this life, also a lot of time contemplating the spiritual realm of which I feel I have a exceptionally good feel for but I know staying fully embodied is healing & progressive of my nervous system trauma burden & being dissociative is not - both significantly lessening with all the wide range of nervous system tech I’m employing.

I’m so glad that being extra wordy is an Aspie/ASD1 trait 😅😂 makes sense of the urge to reach for a more elaborate descriptor all the time. 🤔😊🥰

Oh I get it - it about being willing to take up space in the world. That’s so lovely! 🥰 

I am robustly not giving a ffff & putting my noggin or whatever I see fit out there anyway, whether you want it or not. 🧑🏻‍🎤🥋 because there is space for me out there, there’s not a limit to the space nor any real valid competition about merit or worthiness.

At my worst with #anorexia I had my bed in the lounge & it was a foot too short, I am 5’5 the bed was about 4’5 & I dropped to under 7 stone several times in that decade - mad people aren’t allowed to take up space are they! I’m feeling that that was the undercurrent of #trauma #cPTSD I was stuck in. 

And then 2010-2020 I was just disappeared, socially, personally not available, bar my long 9 month bipolar high - like a ‘can you see me now’ outburst right in the middle - but mostly suffering much undx psychosis & #anxiety with seemingly no end in sight although it did end.

And so this period over-selfieing on Instagram, without much response bar a couple of friends & family is healing for me, & challenging of course because #ADHD has #RSD as a difficult component & #BPD is as sensitive to being ignored as it’s possible to be…. And I’m fine 👊🤌💜 getting no likes, occasionally it’s a bit meh but it’s definitely within the bandwidth of fine on my emotional landscape - I mean what are likes anyway - how superficial is needing that? Really? Another persons opinion of you is more valid to you than how you feel about yourself - no way, I absolutely think not. The only person I want to impress is me.

I am reproducing this over from my Instagram where it unfolded to my blog - this place where I have links to every useful natural method & tech & substance that has helped me unravel my lifelong nervous system distress. 

#audhd #bipolar1 #bipolarrecovery #bpdrecovery

The Human Garage - 15 minute plus 45 Minute Full Body Stress Reset: Self-Care Fascial Manoeuvres

This stuff is amazing - go & read the comments 😄😍💪🤩

BPD Note

 I saw my CMHT support worker on Friday & described my ‘Was I Misdiagnosed’ post a bit to her & she pointed out that my getting my BPD in remission method, that of eschewing social interaction almost without exception for best part of a decade was a rather extreme measure that many, possibly most with BPD would not easily find benefit from. The fact it worked for me, to the degree that it did, really just reflects my slightly introverted & Astrologically 12th house Sun type mediative loner predisposition. But sadly it also reflects the fact that I was extremely traumatised for decades by my missed diagnoses, being misunderstood & unable to make anything work in the real world.

The fact is that not asking for help, not being able or willing to when you need it, when you know damn well that you need help is a well know trauma response in cPTSD & PTSD & common or garden trauma that is the under pinning of almost all mental health/nervous system issues bar only the neuro-developmental, which obv can be acerbated by a burden of unhealed trauma. 

Furthermore it’s still well within the bounds of possibility that intrauterine stress/trauma is the trigger for neuro-developmental adaptations anyway 🤷‍♀️ in which case it’s ***all*** about stress/trauma just impacting at different ages & times of our development/lives - see: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scisignal.2003406 also https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-020-00876-5

The fact that I did something stupidly hard for a pwBPD & feel like I saw something that wouldn’t necessarily have been seen/experienced had I not gone the way I did is misleading. There will be many ways to manage the journey of remission of BPD & having support would have definitely made my journey easier & faster & less painful I have no doubt.

What I question though is that pwBPD kind of know that their judgement is really off when it comes to choosing companions/being adopted by others/picked up by abusive people so my choice, given the available options without any diagnoses was hugely sane, logical & kind of the easier option.

When you take that exact propensity to attract & foment interpersonal danger & mayhem & add the inevitably poor executive function, which is literally nobodies fault, is literally the brain structures responding to the relentless perceived inner crisis of unhealed trauma, then without adding in any decent healthy supportive input this dynamic explains exactly why BPD ends up being such a tragic disaster so much of the time. 

Public health money spent supporting pwBPD should be counted as very well spent when you look at the rates of recovery post dx, after some degree of education, self management skills learning & some actual one to one professional support. We are a group that responds so well that 80% of us are in remission 8 years of diagnosis (nly 40% after 2 years dx) seemingly spontaneously - I think the map of diagnosis plus the concerned support & self protectiveness a dx comes with is the healing spark the pwBPD need, it certainly sounds like it.

This is a nice article discussing some of what I’ve been saying here

https://www.verywellmind.com/is-there-a-cure-for-borderline-personality-disorder-425468

MindAmend - Jason Lewis - Isochronic Tones for ADHD & Mood Relief

 MindAmend@Youtube.com

I’ve just added a specific link to Jason of MindAmends free YouTube in my “Magic Side Bar of Harmless Healing Therapies & Things” because I’d only linked to his website before & that doesn’t instantly give you the content to try & you absolutely must.

MindAmend aka Jason Lewis’s has been my main man of the last year since discovering that beneath the emotionally stormy surface of my BPD & Bipolar, as that dissipated, beneath that churning surface lurked a cause to all the mayhem & that cause was not being able to maintain attention for more than a few seconds (plus other things but for brevity) & being endlessly agitated by the semiconscious & innately frustrating experience of that. Anyway Jason was one of my first finds on discovery of my ADHD a year ago. 

His Isochronic Tone music essentially is a gentle form of brainwave entrainment that can attenuate mood & focusability making it particularly useful for ADD/ADHD as well as for BPD/NPD, Bipolar, MDD etc. His half million subscribers on YouTube are not wrong, his content is far & away the most healing & helpful & thoroughly trustworthy I have found & that last point being incredibly important with any brain affecting content you subject yourself to.

I have been using this free half hour Wake Up without caffeine: Sunshine in Bali video daily & though I actually have my only coffee of my day during it, it is a gorgeous way to wake up on headphones, like waking up inside a marshmallow & being birthed into the day effortlessly & weightlessly without the massive Cortisol drop that I have been prone to all my life, since, I guess ‘rushing’ was instilled into my young nervous system, I guess as a pre-schooler. As a neuro-developmentally hypersensitive nervous system battered into shape by an unnatural world unsuited to nurturing it, without considerable effort my tendency is to wake up with the level of adrenaline & cortisol that would be more fitting to attending the scene of a mass shooting & then the rest of my day spent attempting to disperse this corrosive neurotransmitter cocktail by various means & in the past predominantly failing & actually, without meaning to, escalating it.

Not perfectly explained but it will do. 🙌🩷 

Thank you Jason for all that you do for us & you’ve done so much for me personally, I literally have you on Apple Music, hard to say how much but on a bad day you are there very much of the day. Your brain training material/ aka Amygdala Gym material still being a firm favourite so I’m adding one of those here too for other people to try. ♥️♥️♥️

Shilajit - Supercharged Natural Supplement inc brain/hormone health

 Here is a lovely Dr Axe article on the all round goodness of the traditional Ayurvedic supplement Shilajit - https://draxe.com/nutrition/shilajit/. I like Shilajit a lot, it’s an expensive supplement but you need the tiniest amount daily to see benefits. During my several decades of missed diagnoses I developed an eating disorder twice, for an extended period of nearly a decade the second time, Shilajit was part of my post Anorexia healing with its black tar earthy, mineral rich, pungent taste & appearance. 

It’s like a real world multi mineral supplement in tar form & you melt a bit in some hot water & drink it down in a tumbler to your own level of acceptable taste.

It’s a wonder supplement in my actual opinion & I would recommend it for all mental health conditions but especially the ones that twin with the eating disorders like BPD.