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Hashtag Shmashtag

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TRIGGER WARNING: Note that this post contains images which I feel obligated to warn may be triggering to some eating disordered individuals.  If you are currently struggling, you might want to skip this one for now! Continue reading »


Rate Me! on PsychCentral

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Hi family, friends, and readers of saltandpepperthearth.com:

 My blog has just been accepted to PsychCentral.com’s Contributor Directory.  This is exciting because the blog had to be vetted and meet certain quality standards, both in terms of writing skill and content matter.

I’m asking all readers to visit the link below and “rate” my blog so that I’m able to get a broader following from the mental health community. I’ll also make the announcement in a post, but also here is the link:

http://psychcentral.com/resources/Mental_Health/Blogs/

 

Would you do me a favor and rate the blog for me on PsychCentral?

Thanks so much!


Spin Cycle

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I’ve always been emotionally explosive.  Rather, I’m like a raw nerve.  I wasn’t diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, (Type I, Severe, Rapid Cycling), until I was 32 years old, but when I finally got the diagnosis, hot damn, did my life-long wild and erratic behavior suddenly begin to make a lot more sense to me.

It was an enormous relief to have some sort of explanation for the rampant mood swings, the overwhelming irritability, the rages, the meltdowns, the all-or-nothing approach to ABSOLUTELY EVERY ASPECT of my life.

Finally, I felt less alien, less alone.  There were others out there, just like me, bouncing off the walls, invincible; out of their head with grandiose plans to achieve this, that and the other…and then, the next week, having to cancel everything because LIFE WAS OVER and there was NOTHING LEFT IN THE WORLD.  Therefore, I could not leave my bed, much less my house.  And this isn’t hyperbolic, to be frank, this is, truly, putting it rather mildly.

I live, primarily, inside of my head; the roar and silence of my mind consumes nearly all my mental and emotional energy.  I find it difficult to emerge very often.
Although depression and mania are expressed in opposing timbers, they are equally demanding, clamorous in my mind.  Because they insist on my undivided attention, the world surrounding me is dimmed.The voices, feelings, and needs of my family, friends, anyone, everyone, are drowned out.  In order to hear, engage, converse, react appropriately (in the societal sense) I must concentrate very hard and, even then, I fear I’m not getting it right.

My mental illness makes me feel Selfish.  Immature.  Self-possessed.  Self-obsessed.  Needy and Greedy as a child– a wretched woman-child; a blight, a leech, a mistake.

A very dominant portion of my genetic make-up is the predisposition for anxiety, engendering considerable fear, self-doubt and rumination.  It presents itself most potently during mood fluctuation- usually at the height of a mixed episode when agitation becomes extreme. Then the anxiety itself promotes a depressive swing, underscores it.The hopeless, frantic ruminations press in.  I am afraid to be alone but desperately averse to the company of others.

This is social anxiety, magnified.  Overtaking me.  Engulfing me.  Controlling me.
There is the tiny cross-section of time: intermittent bouts of Hypomania, in which I am hyperverbal, creative, expressive, gregarious, enthusiastic, euphoric.  They are fantastic.

A photo posted by Kristen Polito (@) on

 And fleeting.

At various points of occurrence, the illness presents a false demeanor.  I am caught up in the play acting, the pretending.  I am fun, spontaneous, likable.
It is a farce, though, this pleasant and engaging personality, this false congeniality.  The more I learn about Bipolar Disorder, the more unbelievable it is that it took well into my 30’s to be properly diagnosed. Furthermore, I think my mood swings might be slightly more complex than I originally thought. My depressive and manic periods can last 3 to 6 months, switching back and forth, tag-teaming me mercilessly.
 
Compounding that, I’ve already been told I am rapid-cycling, which means that within a Depressive or Manic period, I have shorter, more subtle mood shifts throughout the day.
 
Read: My mind is set to spin cycle, and neither delicate nor permanent press settings are options.
 
I think the patterns in mood-switching are becoming more predictable, but I’m still taken by surprise when I suddenly find myself mired in depression, or consumed by mania.  I suppose when one is crazy and going crazier, they are probably too damn crazy to realize it.
 
The mornings are always the worst.  Regardless of whether I am in a manic or depressive period, each morning weighs me down.  My eyes open with reluctance as the anxiety kicks up into full-force.  My armpits already slick with anxiety sweat, my breath is shallow.  My heart speeds up.  The dread is overwhelming.  The dread, the anxiety, the feelings of worthlessness are almost too much to bear.
I take my medication, the pills which are supposed to make me not so unhinged.
 
But I am. Still.  So. unhinged.
..unhinged enough to know that the suicidal ideation isn’t that far behind me.  In fact, I can see it rearing its ugly head again.
My last trick of the night, folks.  The grand finale of the Crazy Kristen Show.
After waking, I lay back down.  I pull the blanket around me, over my head to block out the light from the cheerfully obnoxious sun.  

What. a. bastard.

The sunshine remains unceasingly cruel; mocking me, almost taking pleasure in my suffering.  I keep the blanket tucked around my head, even though it is getting hot and uncomfortable.  It’s hard to breathe in there.  I don’t like that.  Sometimes, I think I want to die, but I’m afraid of the suffering.  I forget that I will MOST DEFINITELY NOT want to die later in the day, post-mood shift.  The afternoons are better, and the evenings are EXCELLENT.

Every morning, I forget that now, since I am taking the pills,  I am feeling better.  For part of the day.  At least the whole day isn’t  just one long, drawn-out morning.

Even with that it mind, it takes an hour or more for me to coax myself into an upright position, to put my feet on the ground.  To slowly stand.  To look in the mirror and quickly look away, hating what I see.
I try not to obsess about my fat, the uneasy knowledge that my Body Mass Index now sits squarely in the middle of the “healthy” range.  The word healthy sounds fat to me: well-fed, over-nourished, portly.  The fact that I am no longer thin sets off the panic.

That reassurance, which would normally calm my frayed nerves, center my thinking, reassure me; the focus around being thin, concentrating on this one goal, dials down the outside world.  When I am using this unhealthy coping mechanism, everything else is muted and the complex problems in my life no longer seem so bad, so terribly urgent or troubling.  But, this is not an option…sickness, I mean…certain death, I mean.  I am in the dreaded state of eating disorder purgatory, where my weight is restored, but the mind (and often behaviors) are still very diseased.
I don’t start feeling better until about halfway through my workout when the endorphins kick in.  And then the creativity returns, the ideas come, the planning, the small glimmers of hope.  These feelings are not steady throughout, but they make enough of a dent in my misery to propel me through the rest of my workout.

Post workout, I am feeling pretty even for a while, just so long as I do not linger in front of the mirror. Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall–Mirrors seem to have magical properties, you know–they are able to transform my mood almost instantaneously.  If I can remember to keep away from mirrors and other triggers, to take my medicine on time, and to employ healthy coping strategies, I can get through the day, relatively unscathed.

A photo posted by Kristen Polito (@) on

 If I can do that, then I can actually take advantage of the fact that I’m Bipolar, because, even though each day’s most basic demands leave me completely exhausted, my Bipolar brain is the very reason I’m able to write the way that I can.  If I wasn’t unhinged, I’d not likely have a comparable grasp of the English language, of syntax.  Words are a powerful display of feelings and sometimes people, even the ones we love, don’t understand or have access to suppressed feelings locked away for one reason or the other.

MIGHTY1I’d choose rhetoric savant over boring old mainstream shmo’ any day.


POLICIES & DISCLAIMER



Dear Sir

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The Mighty, BlogHer, and The BodyisNotanApology:

To the Father of the Little Girl, Whom He Teased

Publicly About Being ‘Fat’

Dear Sir,

I’m guessing you didn’t mean intentional harm when you laughed loudly and instructed your young daughter to get on the scale at the Publix supermarket so you could see how “fat” she was. I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by your thoughtless remark. In fact, you acted quite tickled with yourself, as though what you’d said had been rather clever. You even looked around to gauge the reaction of onlookers — a goofy, expectant grin pasted on your face. You waited for those within earshot to reward your “witticism” with a hearty chuckle.

When you made eye contact with my friend who’d been there, she did not laugh. She did not smile. You may, at that point, have realized your social faux pas. You might have thought perhaps what you’d said had been in poor taste.

Maybe you felt a little sheepish, a little badly, even.

Had I been there myself, I would have stopped you in your tracks. I would have made you listen. I would have told you my story. Because I was that little girl. I am that little girl.

Every day, I relive every instance of that hateful word “fat” being directed at me. I remember every single time in hideous, gut-wrenching detail. In fact, I still suffer frequent nightmares about one boy who was particularly cruel in middle school.  I am 33 years old and have dealt with anorexia and bulimia for more than half of my life.

I have no doubt you love your daughter unconditionally and, had you realized your “playful teasing” might be doing irreparable harm, you’d have stopped yourself at once.

Yes, there were times when my own parents were guilty of something similar, an offhand remark about another person’s figure or some gentle teasing when I was going through some awkward stage.

Truly, it boggles my mind, though, how parents, in the year 2016, can still claim ignorance to the pitfalls and dangers of body image issues for both girls and boys. I am not a parent, but damn if I don’t feel fiercely maternal when it comes to this topic.

When it comes to The Absolute Necessity of Positive Body Image, how can it be, with all the efforts to educate and campaigns of awareness launched, that our society remains grossly uneducated and unaware? With glazed, unseeing eyes, we view The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ads on television, flip past the pictures of “real women” and spend more time gazing at the fantasy.

Although I readily admit to being guilty of doing this myself, I recognize it’s not the way it should be and certainly not the way I would want my own child to experience the world. There really wasn’t anything like the Dove campaigns when I was growing up. I was raised as a Barbie Girl in a Barbie World, saddled for a lifetime of body dissatisfaction. But no one knew any better! Positive Body Image wasn’t a “thing” yet.

It took the healthcare community a long time to recognize anorexia and bulimia as serious (and deadly) problems. Bulimia didn’t even make it into the DSM until 1980, and the term “bulimia nervosa” wasn’t coined until 1987. I was born in 1982, and eating disorder advocacy didn’t really begin to gain momentum until the 90’s, and even then, it wasn’t broadcast widely.

Before I became sick, the only eating disorder case of which my parents had even heard, was that of Karen Carpenter. How could they know any comments or observations, however well-intentioned or harmless,  might be 1) Misconstrued and 2) Solidly ingrained in my memory and thus have an impact on my body image well into my 30s? They didn’t know. They didn’t know I was genetically predisposed to developing an eating disorder. They didn’t know I was battling a constellation of cognitive issues including bipolar disorder. They didn’t know what they might say about my body, their own bodies or the bodies of others would be interpreted as a guide for self-evaluation.

I was (and am) hypersensitive to any and all comments and (perceived?) criticism, seeking external validation constantly. Awareness. just. wasn’t. I think it’s interesting to note the contrast in education and awareness between then and now. Although I stand by my assertion that continued societal ignorance borders on negligence, there are now more resources available resulting in an improved sensitivity within child-rearing.

Of course, eating disorders are incredibly complex, and the causes are myriad.

However, prevention can start at home if you Watch Your Mouth:

  • Foster Positive Self-Talk.
    • Be careful of disparaging your own body’s flaws in the presence of your children.
    • Be careful of disparaging other’s bodies in the presence of your children.
  • Resist the urge to comment or criticize your child’s appearance and/or how their eating habits have an impact on their appearance.
    • Healthy eating does not require motivation by shame or guilt. Instead, emphasize improved health instead of improved appearance.
  • Prioritize other qualities as having greater value than appearances such as intelligence and character attributes like kindness, generosity, honesty, i.e. fruits of the spirit.

Note: This Body Image “Prehab” applies to girls and boys.

Eating Disorders do not gender discriminate.

Protect your children and Watch Your Mouth.


POLICIES & DISCLAIMER


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Caffeine: To Mainline or Moderate?

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After one month of no caffeine, I’m back to drinking coffee, and other delightfully caffeinated beverages. 

I could not be more hysterically gleeful grateful.

Now my house totally smells like a Gloria Jean’s when I get back from running–not a Starbucks like you’d think, but an old school, Gloria Jean’s-that-they-only-have-in-malls-that-you’d-go-to-with-your-friends-when-you’re-in-high-school-for-whatever-reason.  

Do they still have Gloria Jean’s cafes?   Do they still have malls?   

Anyway.  

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Believe it or not, I’m still working on the last half bag of the above Starbucks 2015 holiday blend, but I’ll catch up quickly.  Oh, and sometimes when I want it really sweet,  I’m using this new Stevia blend called   And none of the used coffee grounds will be going to waste.  They’re destined to go straight into the garden.  That is, they’ll be worked into the soil around the tomato plants.  Right now, I have quite a few potted tomato plants raised organically from seed.  I’ve decided that I’m not going to transplant them into the ground this year; I’m experimenting with keeping them in the pots just to see how they do versus transplanting.

Actually, strike that last statement from the record, please, because today I transplanted two three rows of additional tomato seedlings.  So this season, I will be growing tomatoes using both methods.  We’ll see which works out best.  Either way, all the plants will be hooked on reaping the caffeine benefit.   

Continue reading »


Home Base

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In the (nearly) two years since I began publishing this blog, I’ve gained some valuable insight on how to write more effectively, clarify my viewpoint, and–hopefully– avoid alienating my audience.  

And while blogging has helped improve my rhetoric, its primary function has been to reestablish my identity.  That is to say, it’s solidified the answer to the question of “what’s my calling”?

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Hint: It’s not to be a Banker.

bank Continue reading »


Stigmas & Susceptibility

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Civilian or celebrity, if you have a mental illness, you can’t run away from it.  It will not be ignored.  Rather, it will track you down, wrestle you to the ground, and, potentially, even immobilize you, and steal your life. Your sickness will also wreak havoc on the lives of your very sane family.

Star Wars’ actor Jake Lloyd — who played Anakin Skywalker in Episode I, The Phantom Menace– suffers from schizophrenia.

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His demons wasted no time in tracking him down when he went off his meds early last year. On the 26th of March 2015, a police report was filed after he drove to his mother’s house and physically attacked her.  A few weeks later, he led the police on a high-speed car chase through Charleston, South Carolina, hitting speeds of 117 miles per hour before crashing into a bunch of trees.

Since that time, Lloyd has been held in jail for ten months and is only now being transferred to a psychiatric facility.  I think this demonstrates the breakdown in our criminal justice system: how did it take close to a year for the courts to determine that a schizophrenic who’d gone off his medication and had committed the criminal acts during a psychotic episode needed to be transferred?  Why was it not glaringly and immediately obvious that a psychiatric facility was the more appropriate rehabilitative place for him?  I am angry that it took so long but mollified that he is now receiving proper care. Continue reading »


Amazing Apple Cider Vinegar

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If the glass bottle of Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar from my Balanced Gut, Balanced Mind post caught your eye and you’re wondering how in the world vinegar might be beneficial to your health, then this is the post for you.¹

  And iOrganic Apple Cider Vinegar 16 oz - Click Image to Closef you’re already well aware of the benefits of using raw apple cider vinegar, then I apologize for being patronizing, but, hopefully, this post will provide you with a platform to contribute your own  unique experience using apple cider vinegar.

     The information that I’m providing is by no means exhaustive, I’m not a doctor, nutritionist or licensed health professional.²  This post is based on personal experience and I’d love to hear how it has personally helped you! So if you already use, or have used, apple cider vinegar in your daily regimen, then please comment below with your experience. Continue reading »


Balanced Gut, Balanced Mind?

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Near the end of 2014, I published a post entitled What’s in My Pantry which explained the difference between Probiotics and Prebiotics as well as how they work in synchronicity within the human digestive system to promote Gastrointestinal and Mental Health benefits.

Because April is Autism Awareness Month, I wanted to revisit this topic.   

As was stated in the original post, “there is hard evidence linking conditions such as Autism and Depression to the gut’s microbial residents…”  There is scientific proof that the GI environment and conditions like Autism are linked. 

“In humans, there is some very early evidence of a link between gut bacteria and mental health. A new study from England found that supplements that boost “good” bacteria in the gut (called “prebiotics”) may alter the way people process emotional information, suggesting that changes in gut bacteria may have anti-anxiety effects”.

Gut bacteria plays a major role in our sanity.  Incredible. 

Probiotics are the “good” bacteria (live cultures) naturally occurring in the stomach.  These active cultures help balance gut flora by reproducing more good bacteria.  A good balance helps boost immunity and overall health, particularly the aforementioned Gastrointestinal Health.  Probiotics can be used to treat stomach issues like IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), food allergies and lactose intolerance.

Prebiotics are the foods that help the Probiotics along.  They are good bacteria “promoters”.  Prebiotics and Probiotics work together to achieve Gastrointestinal Health.

Gastrointestinal Health is important for more than just happy tummies.  More and more scientific research is pointing towards intestinal bacteria playing an influential role in managing mental disorder symptoms.  Continue reading »