Sucky but rational decision and mitigating harm as much as possible.

@Lissiel D:

D:

D:<<<

What a fucker, I am so sorry, that is completely unacceptable.

 

holy hell, I want that guy's head on a pike.
or at least his medical license.

What the shit.

I understand that you probably don't want to deal with another doctor right after that bullshit, but I would really suggest going to a different one, so you can at least try to minimize harm from that fucker's negligence.

 

Eh, its a lower dose of what i was on before, and we'd want to start low anyway, which is why i didnt kick up a fuss. It was just frustrating to have him act like he was humoring a whiny child instead of treating a legitimate medical condition.

Its just so. Completely typical for how doctors treat women? Like, seriously.

 

Also while I'm here, major major props for both going to get help and for advocating for yourself and being explicit about what you need.
That shit ain't easy, and I am seriously saddened and pissed on your behalf that all that effort was met with a useless fucking quacksalver with a rectocranial inversion.

 

I have a desire to force this doctor to live as a depressed woman for a year?
But that might make him dysphoric and I do not wish dysphoria on my worst enemy

 

K, my armchair diagnosis is post-natal depression. You have just had a baby, and you are thinking crazy things and really depressed.
Anecdata: one of my mum's parents was terrible, but nothing screwed my mum up more than her failed suicide attempt.

 

Update:
i started my meds last Thursday. So far no awful side effects; a little dizziness, but i think it'll go away.

My family has been helping me a lot, both with taking care of the baby and with little stuff i couldnt handle, like making and eating food. They also havent left me alone since thursday, which had been really nice. I feel bad for people having to do so much for me, but the safety net cut out a lot of work and fear for me. Went the whole morning yesterday without thinking about killing myself even once, it was such a relief.

Friday my husband had to help me up from the floor, because i got dizzy, sat down with the baby, kept falling back, and then literally didn't have the energy to sit up. I told him that my battery was at 3% and blinking red. But every day since then ive been resting and taking meds and stuff and now im at a good solid 30%, so thats nice too.

Still having thoughts, a little nervous about being alone all day today. When i start getting convinced i go back to this thread and read all the people saying how much worse dead parents are than crazy ones. It seems like proof to me that my brain is lying. So thank you all again, more than i can say.

 

So the therapist i made an appointment with called. She wanted to know "what i want out of our work together." Which was hard enough to answer on paper but now i have to call a stranger back and figure out how to say "please help me not think about wanting to die every few hours it sucks thanks"out loud on the phone without being dismissed as too difficult or written off as actually fine. I am panicking and want to cry and also just call and cancel the appointment because i keep hearing that question as "what do you want me to do about it figure your own shit out."

Please advise.

 

That's a fairly standard therapist question I think. I can't help with suckbrain distorted parsing, but I think it's generally equivalent to a body doctor going "what complaints are you having?" in a check-up. Basically "what's wrong that you want me to help fix?"

Basically, I would just straight up read this

to her aloud, verbatim. If she does respond with something like "what do you want me to do about it figure your own shit out," which I don't think she will, leave her ass in the dust and try again for an actually useful therapist. If not, you have clearly communicated the source of your distress and what you want help with.

 

Like seriously, literally just pull that up on a screen or write it down on a slip of paper and read it to her.

 

Agreed. If she responds negatively to that request, she is not the therapist you need. The therapist you need will say something along the lines of "okay, we'll make that our goal", and then maybe ask you questions about frequency and intensity.

 

@Lissiel Wiwaxia's words are right. Read exactly what you wrote here. That's what your therapist wants to understand.

Also, since you said reading this helps*:

Dead is absolutely worse than shitty. It is. This comes from someone who has a living mom who abused them horribly. I'm glad mom survived long enough to get competent treatment and start making it better. At 25, I'm finally experiencing having a mother who I'm sure loves me and who I feel I can depend on, and it's amazing.

Because as long as a parent is alive, they have the chance to try to do right. As long as you're alive, you give your child another chance to have a parent who's trying their hardest to be good (and I have NO DOUBT that you are that parent, not just from this thread but from all you've talked about yourself and your kid in other threads). As long as you're alive, even if you do mess up, you give yourself the chance to fix it.

You may feel like you can't do that and that things can't get better, but they always can. As long as you're alive, everything you can conceive of is at least a little bit possible - and if you're depressed, chances are it's a LOT more possible than it seems to you, because depression blinds one to possibility.

When you're dead, you kill every chance you had of being happy in the future, and every chance your child had of having a mom who loves him and who's present in his life. I think you and him both deserve better than that.

Hugs.

*and if it doesn't anymore and you'd rather I delete this, feel free to ask - also, you can always message me if you want

 

*hearts* placeholder thanks for when i can words again.

 

Do you still need more mentally ill parenting success stories? & Do you still need more talking you out of moon logic?

bc I can do both but it sounds like you're maybe getting better now?

 

I would love to hear it tbh; its not as immediate now since the meds are starting to help but i still go back and read what people have posted here every day or two. If its not a hassle, id be grateful.

 

Not a hassle at all!

Moon logic: like, if I just looked at the OP and not the second post and pretend that I don't know what's up with your brain rn, it seems like you're thinking about putting him up for adoption. Like. Adoption is the obvious conclusion from what you're thinking, if we accept that you're right about screwing everything up. There's no reason at all to kill yourself when you can legally give a kid to someone else.

But the fact that your brain is willing to ignore that in order to try to make you kill yourself makes it seem like your brain is probably willing to lie to you about other things, too. So you might even be wrong about the things you're worried about.

& there are levels of stepping back, too. Completely cutting yourself out of his life is one choice that you could make (without killing yourself), but you could also decide to (in order of how harsh/painful it would be, most serious to least):

1. Have an open adoption & be in contact, give Christmas (or whichever holidays you celebrate) presents, send letters sometimes and make sure he knows you love him, but not be in charge of raising him
2. Make a deal with your partner (husband? sorry I can't remember the details of your family situation) so you handle household chores & career, so they can be the one mostly in charge of raising the kid. You'd still be there & part of his life & his parent, you'd see him every day, but have less chance of screwing anything up.
3. Make a deal with your partner/husband/wife/whatever that if it starts to look like you're having a negative effect on him THEN you'll start handling all the chores & money-making, but give yourself a chance to try to be a caregiver first before you give up, in case you can do ok at this after all
4. If you have parents you trust who weren't abusive when they raised you, or if you have siblings or close friends who are good with kids, talk with them about babysitting, maybe overnight or for a few days at a time, in case something were to happen and you needed a respite.

You don't have to choose between "take all the responsibility of being the kid's main caregiver" or "cut yourself out of his life completely forever" and you can choose anything in between. What you should do depends on a lot of things & I can't tell you which choice is best. You could choose to be his main caregiver on your own, or you could choose to give him up entirely, or you could choose anything else, & I can't tell which choice would be best for you. If I were you and had to choose, I would think about things like:

• what is the most common thing you do when your mental illness gets bad? like, if I got violent and hurt other people regularly, I wouldn't ever want to be in any kind of position with kids depending on me, & in that case I'd be choosing between adoption with occasional letters & gifts, and adoption without them, & other choices would be off the table. If you just hurt yourself, that's not great either, but it's a lot less dangerous, & then other choices where you don't have to give him up for adoption are back on the table & it's possible that choice 2 or 3 or 4 would be ok, depending on lots of other factors.
• do you enjoy being a parent? being a caregiver? if you don't really like it, maybe choice 2 would be good anyway, not even for his safety but just for your own enjoyment. If you do enjoy it, then maybe choices 3 and 4 are worth thinking about if they're safe
• on a normal day how severe is your mental illness? it seems like you're having a lot of problems right now but this is as a new mom, so you're under a LOT of stress rn, right? Is it usually this bad? You might not be able to tell right now, & if it were me I'd ask someone I trust to answer this question. If it's probably going to calm down and get a lot better, & it only sometimes gets this bad, then if it were me I might make choice 3 or 4: have a way to keep him safe just in case, but expect it will probably be ok. Basically have a worst-case plan that lets you sleep at night and hope you never need to use it. But if it's always this bad, or if this is you at your best, maybe skip straight to choice 2 or 3, or even 1, depending on everything else? (But then again I could be wrong & I am only reading your forum posts, so even if this is your average if someone who knows you in real life and talks to you every day says you can probably be a parent then maybe you can, even if it's always this bad. I mean I would be surprised but maybe, & it isn't my choice to make.)

& lots of other things, but just in case you're completely lost in moon logic, that's some things to consider. If all of your answers to those questions point to choosing 3 or 4, then, I don't know everyting & I could be wrong but I would say that it's probably just fine as long as you have a backup plan or two. If your answers point more to 1 or 2, or just to 1, then you can still give him up for adoption without killing yourself, & again I don't know everything & I don't want to be the one to officially decide whether you can be a parent (& I shouldn't be, it's your choice and your partner's), but, if I did have to decide those are some of the questions I would ask to help me make the right choice.

(& you can probably ask your partner to choose for you if you can't make choices like this right now, that would be better than asking me for a final word.)
(& you can decide to keep him and go with choice 2 or 3 for now, & later have an open adoption if things are going really badly.)

There is no reason at all to kill yourself over this. It might, maybe, be right to put him up for adoption. Even if it is, that isn't a choice you need to make right now, you CAN still wait and do that later. & that isn't necessarily the right choice, bc depending on exactly what your issues are you might be able to protect him from your problems while still being his parent.

Mentally ill parent experiences: can I pm you about this one? Still thinking about what I want to say & what I want to not talk about & I might be more willing to talk in a pm but I'm not sure yet? (Edit: actually maybe I'll just post here, it's not like you're the only person who needs to hear it. But not right now. Tomorrow maybe. Or I might pm you after all? Maybe? I'll decide later.)

 

I think I've decided to just talk generalities about mental illness and parenting. I'll let you guess how I know what I know. @Lissiel it's possible I'd answer some specific questions if you pm me but I also might not. This is all tangled up in other people's stories & personal info & complicated context, and I don't want to talk about any of that.

The main points I'd like to get across in this post are:

1. It is possible to do a good job.
2. There's a difference between a good parent and a normal parent
3. Telling your kid isn't an either/or choice
4. You probably shouldn't hide everything

Other people will have told you all the ways this could go wrong already, I'm sure, and it looks like you have an unrealistically negative view of parenting with mental illness. So I will try to focus mostly on positive things. You obviously already know that it's going to be difficult and risky so let me talk about how it won't be impossible and might work out just fine.

So now I'm going to go through my main points and expand on them.

You can do a good job. You're capable of loving him, right? You're as able to read a parenting book as anyone else, right? Great. Remember, no one is always perfectly happy and rational. All parents have do protect their kids from their own irrationality and upset feelings sometimes. You have more chances than most people to model healthy ways to deal with those things. You could see it as an opportunity that most parents don't get: you have lots of experience coping with badbrains and your kid will be able to learn from you. This is totally a thing, I have seen similar things happen.

And on a slightly less hopeful note, genes are implicated in some of these issues. It might be very important for your kid to have a parent who understands these things. Remember, a normal parent might waste time on denial, confusion, or just not knowing what to do. If it turns out that your kid does have problems similar to yours, you might be in an unusually good position to help him through it with a minimum of trauma and upset. You can understand, you won't freak out at just the idea of mental illness, you have lots of coping skills you can suggest he try if he needs to, & so if it turns ut that despite your best parenting he inehrits some of your problems you might be better at helping him than a normal parent. (Remember he might do better with different coping skills than you use, though.)

All of that is stuff I know from experience, not from guessing or theoretical stuff.

There's a difference between a good parent and a normal parent. Don't think you need to measure your parenting by whether he knows you have problems. If you act unusual but manage to be loving, fair, etc., then it might be fine.

Don't think there's anything wrong with teaching your kid things yu learned that help you manage your mental illness, eiter. Best case scenario, he knows more about dealing with mental problems than he ever needs to know. Worst case scenario, it is't enough & he needs even more than you can teach.

And I can't tell from the internet if this is the case for you but there are a lot of people who have problems that make them hurt a lot bt can put up a front where they act really reasonable and calm when things are happening. Even if you have a lot of out-of-control feelings, if you know the, idk what they're called, the don't-fuck-up-your-relationships skills (things like "*calm voice* I feel very upset right now and I need to go be alone to calm down, I will be back when I can be safe" and that kind of thing, the thing where even when you're having problems you aren't making more problems), that should probably go a really long way. It's probably more important to have those skills than it is to have even slightly stable mental health, not that you want to have to choose. (Just my two cents but I think I would not want to try to be a parent without those, & for whatever it's worth I would guess that if you don't have them you need to either get them quickly or not be his primary caregiver.)

You probably should tell him at least some things abut your mental illness. I'll talk about why that is in a minute. But first my next point.

Talking about your mental illness isn't an either/or choice. If the idea that you should be honest about it freaks you out that might be because you see a choice between hiding it completely or telling all the gory details to a five-year-old. So, a few things.

First, there's a difference between admitting you have problems and making someone help you with them. I think it's probably a bad idea to treat your kid like a therapist/confidante/helper but I don't know anybody stupid enough to have tried so I can only guess.

But other than that you have lots of different choices. You should probably make sure you tell him something, at least once, so he knows that you have some kind of mental illness even if he doesn't know all the details. When he's really young, you can make it simple & short. You could say "my brain lies to me and tells me I've done lots of mean things even when I haven't. I had to learn to ask [your father/my brain doctor/someone I trust] to help me know when I really did something wrong and when it's just my brain lying." Depending on what kinds of problems you have you can different things. It's probably a lot easier if you've done enough recovery to be able to put a lot of things in past tense. You can also be honest about some of the things you do to cope. "Sometimes I feel SO BAD without knowing why. So I ask myself if I'm feeling hungry, angry, lonely or tired. Sometimes it turns out I just haven't eaten yet today and then when I eat I feel better." Make it appropriate for his age. Maybe when he's five you tell him "I have really, really strong feelings all the time and sometimes it's hard to deal with them, so I [went to a special class/saw a brain doctor/read a book] and learned some ways to deal with my feelings." Maybe when he's fifteen you can just mention your mental illness by name, maybe it'll be time to tell him about the less kid-friendly details like thinking about killing yourself (or maybe it won't, that'll depend on a lot of things). Maybe at some point you say "I see this is really hard for you. Would you like to know what I learned [in dbt skills training/from my shrink/from a self-help book/through experience] to help me with that, in case it helps you?" Worst-case scenario: "I understand feeling like you need to hurt yourself. When I [felt/feel] that way I cope[d] by [whatever yu do to cope]. I'm here if you need me."

I think, probably, I wouldn't show a kid a completed cbt or dbt worksheet, but a blank one, maybe, could be a good idea.

I think what I would aim for is not necessarily telling him your life story, but maybe aim to tell him enough that, by the time he's an adult, if he hears your whole story with all the gory details, he won't be surprised. Like. Maybe he doesn't ever need to know all the details but by the time he's an adult he should have the general idea. I think, maybe, it's best to aim for him not saying "wait, Mom has a dark past? REALLY? MOM WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME??!!!"

I think you can probably let his questions guide you once he knows the basic, shortest version. If he's like "oh that sounds bad, hey can we go to Disneyland?" then maybe you don't need to tell him a lot. If he has questions then you know what to tell him: the answers to his questions, as much as you're willing to talk about and as much as is age-appropriate.

And remember there's a huge difference between talking about soething and getting help for it. Like...
"I should just die, help me, I'm awful" = probably a very bad idea to ever say that to your kid. Save it for your partner/friends/shrink/Kintsugi.
"One of the lies my brain tells me is that I'm awful and the world would be better without me in it." = depending on lots of factors (like your kid's age, if this is the kind of thing he deals with himself, whether he'll freak out, etc. etc. etc., lots of different things), this could maybe be appropriate to say to him, or it might not.

You can choose to include as much or as little detail as you want, & you can choose to tell him different amounts about different issues (if you have multiple problems). Remember that in between "I'm totally fine and sane and never have any problems! :D" and "so I [attempted suicide/cut myself lots/hate myself and want to die] all the time, want to know all the specifics of how and when and why?" you can choose lots of different levels of honesty.

You can be pretty open and have it all work out just fine, this is something I know, I have proof. It depends on remembering to tell kids only as much as they're ready for at their age, and on remembering that you can admit your problems to someone who ISN'T going to be helping you deal with them.

(It is possible, I also know for sure, to get a tiny bit of help from your kids, but not a lot afaik. Little things like "in this kind of situation I [dissociate/panic/think distorted thoughts] a lot more than usual. Please [be patient/use short sentences and small words/let me think about this for a long time before I answer/try to bring this up at a specific time and not a specific other time] so that I can deal with this situation. You don't have to avoid the situation but I need some help to be able to do what you need me to." Or like "I have a lot of trouble with remembering [specific things]" and don't guilt them but if they start reminding you of [specific things] more often that isn't bad. Those things I know are ok to ask and don't do any harm. On the other hand, screaming at your kids or catastrophizing at them or anything like that is the kind of thing that makes some people say mentally ill people shouldn't be parents, so don't do those things. But yea, you can ask for a little bit of help, you can be honest.)

You should be honest. So this is the last thing I have to say. There's a few reasons. I know some of them from experience. Some of them I am just guessing about. No, I won't tell you exactly which ones are which. Sorry.

1. Would you rather the worst-case scenario if you have a sudden relapse be trying to figure out how to say "so I'm sorry I never told you this before but I'm crazy, also I promise I'm not suddenly making this up for an excuse to go away or anything, have fun staying with your grandparents for a while" while you're in the middle of dealing with being crazy? Or would you rather it be "you know the mental illness I told you I have? I'm sick with it right now & need you to stay with your grandparents while I get well again."
2. If you pretend you have all the same abilities as everybody else, you can never say "I love you and I do want to do what other parents can do, but I can't do it even though I want to" and then you're stuck coming up with excuses. But kids can adapt to a lot of weird situations as long as you're honest and fair and don't hurt them.
3. If, and this is awful but still, if he does have problems with mental illness himself, it'll be good for him to know that you do, too. If he kows already, before he starts having problems, that you had/have problems and have learned things to do for your problems, that's better than if he doesn't know.
4. It gives you the chance to show him or tell him how you deal iwth it. Even if he doesn't have more than normal people problems he'll still sometimes feel upset or have irrational thoughts, bc everybody does, so why not show him healthy ways for responsible adults to deal with those problems?
5. With anything that might be genetic it's best to tell your kids whether or not they get it themselves.
6. If mental illness shapes your life at all, then trying to hide it would mean hiding lots of other things, too. Met a friend at a support group/group therapy/AA meetings? You'll have to choose between not telling him how you met or admitting your mental illness. And so on. Secrets breed more secrets. Doesn't mean you can never keep secrets, but maybe choose not to keep too many.
7. Nothing Is Scarier. A big awful secret that Mom won't talk about (that he might pick up on anyway, see point 6) might scare your kid more than just admitting the truth.
8. Admit the truth and you can control how it gets phrased and what order he learns things in and you have the chance to say things like "I learned [thing] and now I'm better" or "but I can still love you and be happy sometimes" or anything else that you might want to say to make it seem less bad. If you don't tell him and he find sout, who will tell him? Will they want to make you look dangerous? Will he understand? Will he be able to ask questions if he's confused? You want him to hear it from someone who loves him, understands you, can answer questions, etc. and you want him to learn it in the appropriate order as much as is appropriate for his age, so who do you trust more than yourself to make sure he learns about it the best way possible?

Well, anyway, that's a lot of talking about how bad it could be, sorry if that's still kind of not as reassuring as you might want (but it seems like telling you what ways I know can work to deal with the problems will work better than just telling you it'll be fine), I'll just say one more thing: the best-case scenario for you is the same as the best-case scenario for any other parent. You might have more (or just different) challenges but there's no absolute rule that you have to do a worse job. You could be a great parent! You could be a bad one, but you won't necessarily be. In fact, and you probably shouldn't listen to me because I'm just on the internet and all, but from what I've seen of your posts, you are able to admit your own problems, use some not-fucking-things-up-worse skills to act reasonable a lot of the time, you love your son, you care more about what's best for him than what's convenient for you, you are able to get help reality-checking when you're stuck with moon logic, so I think you will probably be a good parent. In fact a lot of people who aren't diagnosed with any mental illnesses don't have all of those good qualities, so it's possible you could be better than a lot of normal parents would be. If I had to guess from what I've seen of you fro your posts (& luckily I don't actually have to make your choice for you) I would say you could be a great parent and you should probaly go with choice 3 or 4 and keep your son and just have a plan in place for if things do go wrong. The only thing I would really worry about is that it seems like you're really stressed rn and that might be making your issues worse, but first of all that's temporary and will get better when he's not a baby anymore, and second maybe if you have anyone you trust to babysit then you can cut back on the stress a little, in case that's what's behind this flare-up. But like I said, check with someone who knows you irl and would know you better than I do.