"Jazz," I said to myself, "do you really have mixed anxiety and depression disorder if what you've been dealing with all along, for all of these years, is this pent-up mental-emotional hoard?"
Hell if that doesn't get the cogs of the ol'brain a'workin'.
Talk about a good question.
I mean, I really thought about it in the terms of a hoard.
Like, if I cleared the hoard (expelled everything that I've been holding on to all these years), would the mixed anxiety and depression disorder evaporate too?
This is a tough one to get into, but shit ... I've been touching on tough topics all week long. LOL
Here goes everything.
First thing is first, I don't have an answer to this question. I honestly don't. I will, however, take some time to consider it and delineate my thoughts on here.
Many year ago I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression.
Back then it was called "Clinical Anxiety and Depression". Some years later this was changed to "Mixed Anxiety and Depression Disorder", and nowadays we know that that too has its subcategories. One of them, I've learned very, very recently is called Dysthymia. Which I am like, one million percent sure, is a better fit for my mental-emotional state, but since I have not been officially diagnosed with that I will leave it out of my personal equation. Nevertheless, since it doesn't hurt to learn something new, here you go.
To learn more about Dysthymia and other mental health issues, here is a link to one of my favorite YouTube informative Physiatrists, Dr. Tracey Marks.
She's great at breaking down all of those tedious threads of mental illness.
Here is the thing about Depression ....
And here is the thing about Anxiety ....
Then there was the element of PSTD.
I was also diagnosed with that.
Not the, "I joined the military and the government screwed me" kind, which is what most people think about when PTSD is mentioned. But the more general, "my life was a fucking shit-fest, stuffed into a chaos tornado, tossed into a what-the-fuck volcano" sort which is the lesser known of the two.
This is a little visual on what PTSD feels like.
Now to get into answering my question from before.
The Mixed Anxiety and Depression Disorder as it pertains to myself, is something genetic. Mental health issues is something that runs in my family, therefore it was very likely that I too would develop them, whether early on or later on.
As it pertains to the PTSD; that was caused by the innumerable amounts of mental and physical trauma I endured from an early age all through to my adult years. I believe that I could have missed that ship had I not gone through all of the stuff I went through. But, such is life and here I am.
Here are my own thoughts ....
My mental-emotional hoarding came from a place not knowing how to deal. Thus I tucked the pain in the reservoirs of my mind.
I am convinced that the anxiety and depression compounded the PTDS, making it much worse that it might have been in the first place, had the anxiety and depression been addressed many years before.
So, in the end, do I think that cleaning out the hoard of my pain will cure my mental illness. The short answer; no. But I do think it's the best step into the correct direction of healing to the best of my abilities.
Okay, that's all I got for today. Stay tuned for more posts about my personal Shadow Work and healing.
No comments:
Post a Comment