14. Chapter 10: Is This an Emergency?

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Transcript

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Chapter 10. Is this an emergency? At the time I was beginning to question whether I had a mood disorder, at age 18, my parents had a tense relationship and were on the brink of divorce. The anchor I had in my sister was not very present as we were leading different lives. We were very far apart physically at this point. She was in University in Guelph, which is an hour west of the city of Toronto, and I was in Kingston, which was three hours east of Toronto. My parents were both still based in Toronto, living together in the house I grew up in, and I traveled back often to visit them. During the fall and winter, I was always quite depressed and I couldn't stop crying. I thought I was crying because I was homesick, and if I went home, it would make it better. But when I got home, it was always worse. On one occasion, when I got the train to go back to Toronto for the weekend, the train crashed into a truck and a man died. We ended up being stuck on the train for about 10 hours as the coroner came, declared the man dead, moved him, and transferred us passengers to a bus to complete the journey. I was in shock, and my way of coping was to joke about it. I posted a joke on Facebook making light of the incident, and one of my Facebook friends messaged me to tell me that they thought it was insensitive. I interpreted this as a character flaw. I had a panic attack and was in a destructive thought spiral or riti. By the time I was home, I could not stop hyperventilating or crying, thinking that all 1,000 of my Facebook friends hated me and I was a bad person. I sat down on the couch in tears with my mom. Telling anyone I thought I had bipolar was terrifying, let alone someone in my family. We as a family did not talk about our feelings very often. This avoidance of emotions was not something unique to my parents. It was part of their generation and culture. Mental health was widely stigmatized, misunderstood, and swept under the rug. I was so used to being shut down and invalidated that I didn't even share about the accident or the joke I made on Facebook about the death of the man, which was really what was upsetting me so much. I was convinced I was a bad person. As we sat on the couch, me choking back tears, I finally found the courage to tell my mom, you know how bipolar is in dad's family? I think I have it too. My mom said, Honey, just because bipolar runs in your family doesn't mean you have it as well. That was the end of that conversation. I understand now that my mom was doing the best she could to support me with no communication or coaching training on how to do that. But rather than validating my emotions or concerns, she swept them away. She never asked me why I was worried about having bipolar. I do have compassion for my mom in these moments, and I do think she was doing the best she could to support me. At that point in my life, I saw every misstep I made as a character flaw. My ego was unable to own up to my mistakes. I didn't understand that if I made a mistake like writing an insensitive Facebook post, it didn't mean that I was a bad person. I am a human being and human beings make mistakes. I just had to make peace with my mistake and consider how I'd do better in the future. But no one had shown me how to do this. The problem in the public Canadian medical system is that while it is excellent public health care that is universally provided to all, there are long wait lists, and you must have a referral from a general practitioner to see a specialist for anything. Waiting for weeks or months to see a doctor is a common experience in the Canadian healthcare system, as reported by the Frasier Institute, who documented that wait times in 2018 could be as long as 40 weeks in Prince Edward Island and as short as 16 weeks in Ontario. The system is so bureaucratic. If I had done something dangerous like jump off a building, then I'd be taken to an emergency room and seen immediately by someone in the psychiatric system without having to go through the process. But in this in-between, high-functioning but struggling state, I had to leap through several hoops to get there. At this point, I didn't see any other solution than to see a psychiatrist. But I needed someone to attest to that need by giving me a referral. And so when I was in my second year at university and beginning to question if I had bipolar disorder, I thought the right person to give me a referral would be a counselor at the University Mental Health Clinic. Since the university strongly articulated and emphasized that students should go to the mental health clinic for mental health concerns and the medical services clinic for physical health concerns, I became stuck in the mindset that mental health and physical health were two separate, unrelated issues. Consequently, when I went in for annual checkups and told my physician I was feeling anxious and depressed, she suggested solutions like going for walks and eating healthier. It led me to believe that she wasn't the person to go to for mental health concerns and that the mental health clinic was where I should go. I didn't see how interrelated, connected, and holistic mental and physical health are, the way I recognize them to be now. I also didn't understand that I needed to undergo trauma healing and make necessary holistic lifestyle changes, necessary beyond Western medication. My problem was my mental health. So I thought the right place to go was the mental health clinic. I see now that the mental health clinic really wasn't the place I should have gone. Ten years later, when I visit the website, the mental health clinic is clearly described as offering a short-term mental health model geared towards dealing with personal difficulties and daily stressors. And it is noted that more severe cases are dealt with by physicians and psychiatrists. That distinction was not communicated to me in 2011 when I was in the system. I thought that the counselors at the mental health clinic would be trained to identify illnesses such as bipolar disorder. However, after going there to present my symptoms and receive a diagnosis, I eventually learned that this assumption was incorrect. After several sessions in my second, third, and fourth years with various counselors, one counselor in that department finally explained to me that she and her colleagues were not trained to recognize conditions like bipolar disorder, and they didn't have the authority to grant the referral I needed. She explained to me that the right person to give me a referral was a general physician in the medical services clinic. That same counselor, years later, would eventually direct me to a physician who referred me to a psychiatrist and it changed my life. But in the beginning, I didn't know all of this. It caused me years of pain and struggle. And because they weren't trained to diagnose or treat mental illness, it felt as though counselors were constantly downplaying and disregarding my mental health symptoms. This treatment led me to questioning the validity of my symptoms after every session. Was I just being over-dramatic and overreacting? Was I actually normal and healthier than I thought I was? Sometimes it felt that way. The way the system failed me was not purposeful by any means. I simply was in the wrong place for the support that I needed. On top of all this, because of the high demand on the university counseling system at the time, students were rationed to four counseling sessions per year. That meant I could see a counselor for talk therapy for one session once every three months, if I was trying to evenly space the sessions out. That was not nearly enough sessions to give me the tools that I needed. Additionally, unless I described it as an emergency, there was a two-week wait time minimum to see a counselor at all. Now, 10 years later, when looking at the website, I see they've solved this issue and now do a same-day appointment for students. But at the time I was there, in 2011 to 2015, this was not the case. If I could go back in time, Google it, go straight to a physician, and ask to be referred to a psychiatrist, I truly think I would have had a different experience. Making the decision to go to a counseling office for the first time at age 19 was terrifying, but I had to do it. I couldn't survive any longer without help. I had been waiting for someone to see my suffering and take me to a counselor. I eventually realized that I would have to be brave enough to go by myself. I finally got the courage to call the university mental health services in the midst of a breakdown in the fall of my second year. They asked me on the phone, is this an emergency? What was a mental health emergency? I didn't know. When I grew up, I was taught that the word emergency was only used for calling 911. My mom and nanny continuously ingrained in my head, do not call 911 unless it's an emergency. Never ever call 911 unless it's an emergency. Emergencies are for when your house is on fire or someone has broken into your house. Neither of those things had happened to me, so I said no. I didn't want to be the girl who cried wolf and said something was an emergency when it wasn't. Okay, it'll be a two-week waiting time then. When I finally got to my appointment that I waited 14 days for, whatever was urgently on my mind from two weeks before had already passed. But I didn't want to give up my spot on the list. So the day came and I walked across the campus to the clinic. Walking in the door and up the stairs for the first time was anxiety-inducing. I didn't want to see anyone I knew, and due to that, of course, I ran into a childhood friend from summer camp. Alex, she said with a big hug and a smile, it's so nice to see you. I'm having trouble sleeping, so I came to see a counselor. Why are you here? I was completely mortified and taken aback by how openly she was talking about her mental health struggles and asking about mine. I couldn't imagine telling her the truth, so I said nothing. Several years later, I don't remember the experience of my first counseling session at all. While I'm sure it was helpful in some regard, in reality, an hour-long counseling session probably wouldn't do much in the long run. I needed much more support than could be given in a 60-minute window. I didn't want to use up my limit of four sessions from the university counseling services all at once. So after the first session, I waited a few weeks to book another. By then, I was at the back of a wait list again, and it was a brand new counselor who spoke to me. I never saw the same counselor more than once. They scheduled me with whomever had room on the schedule. Every time I went to a session, I had to spend the whole hour acquainting the counselor with my life story, giving each counselor no opportunity to follow my progress. The pattern was ongoing like this: see a new counselor every few months, tell her my struggles, and then never see her again. It felt like the university was failing me over and over. I look back and knowing what I know now about mental health, it is unsurprising to me that the services I was receiving failed. I wasn't giving any holistic living advice, and I wasn't seeing one counselor consistently. I needed long-term work with one individual counselor, not one-off sessions here and there. I also needed holistic lifestyle changes, shifts in my diet and my sleep. I needed to be removed from stressful environments to heal my nervous system. I needed space to heal my trauma, and I needed to quit drinking alcohol. Instead, it was just an ongoing loop of counselors seeing me on occasion and putting band-aids over my problems without treating the gaping wounds unresolved beneath it all. I also did a disservice to myself with the way that I downplayed my issues to the counselors. I believed this came out of fear. I didn't want to admit how much chaos was happening inside my brain. I didn't want to tell them it was an emergency. I didn't want them to know how much I was suffering because there was stigma around it. There was also a part of me that was scared to face it. What if I did finally get a referral to a psychiatrist and it came true? What if I did have bipolar? Then what? Would I be unemployable? Would anyone ever want to date me? Chaos in my life had become the norm, and I was used to living my life this way. I couldn't imagine life any differently. Yoga series, Yoga for Bipolar Disorder. As a child, teenager, and young adult, I experienced symptoms of a mood disorder, anxiety, and chronic stress. I lacked holistic solutions for my mental health struggles, so I managed them with alcohol and yoga. I began teaching yoga at age 21. And although I knew it was my life purpose, my self-doubt and my drinking problems held me back. Once I got sober, I no longer had booze to help me regulate my nervous system, leading me to get more and more passionate, serious about mindfulness, yoga, and meditation to manage my moods. And this is why I've created these three yoga practices for those of you who are struggling with your mental health. They are perfect for you if you are experiencing extreme mind body states and need to anchor, reconnect, and regulate yourself.