Posted by Phillip Marx on December 31, 1999, at 19:50:18
In reply to Re: Marplan and insomnia and tolerance, posted by Scott L. Schofield on December 31, 1999, at 10:08:58
OK, Elizabeth, Scott, jamie and all. I'll take this bait. Get your thoughts together, and so will I. The following will give you a head start.
I'll respond soon, point by point, to what is already written, in a separate post I have already begun composition of. I will come short of full compliance to the APA Publications Guidelines. Resort to such expense of time and backup editor proof-reading “would” uncontestably look manic and psychotic here (no offense intended to the APA, maybe I should micro-debate-proof for this community too). Quit comparing what I write to what the APA can afford to write. My present aversion to such now unprofitable detail is financially responsible ($=time: net + net , or red time plus red money feels like red squared dot product time&money). Such exposition perfection would require a couple of weeks’ displacement of priorities I can't justify, classes restart soon, and nothing here would justify slipping a semester. I know structure will be debated more than the sub-contents of the overall content (medicinally forgivable, all of you are in some kind of treatment too). I shouldn’t be embarrassed by that, nor you. I’m sure already that my next discourse length will bait some brevity-compression-compromises appreciation from you. Since I detect opposition due to pre-bias “fog” I will resort to massive repetition, using multiple perspectives to dislodge foregone (really gone) conclusions and pry open some open-forum-mindedness. I think all institutes of learning grant that repetition is “the” best lowest common denominator teaching method. Calling that manic too, well…. that’s a disorder in and of itself.
I'll use the DSM-IV, Fourth edition (paperback) for objectivity control. I wish to point out that “the” Note, the “only” note to manic episode criteria, points out the criteria for exceptions to a manic episode diagnosis (p. 332). The exact term to consider is it's first one: "Manic-like" to which I have referred from my first post. Manic-like means NOT actually manic, it concedes similarity only, while conceding not really manic. Some of the semantic difference of opinion may lie in the thought of manic as mania-ic. Pun-ishly, manic-like=mania-ic-ic, which would always look like a typo. It does looks like what looks like mania, fully conceded, double-talk sounding, but not double-talk meaning, just an officially acknowledged APA disorder sub-category in double-nested (embedded) disguise. Don’t be embarrassed for confusion, my frequent emphasis is only driven by frustration aversion to help you detour your own confusions you don’t yet recognize. Someday you’ll realize this is an “I told you so” situation. You don’t have to believe me, or the APA, too bad for everybody. I really, really, really told you so, over and over and over. I know only once doesn’t work from much experience, neither does thrice. Thrice is usually my limit. Do your best and let God do the rest in action. I solicit alternative constructive suggestions for a non-manic-looking description technique. "I" have always conceded mania similarity, else I’d sue somebody for malpractice. I am Atypical, which means NOT typical. I am not in denial of illness, I am on medication I can’t live without because of it. I am not failing to seek treatment. I am seeking it at a significant cost that is still an especially bargain cost compared to all the years of unfruitful treatment. I am deliberately failing to seek more false treatment, based on false ideas of what the treatment is for. I know what doesn’t work. People and doctors who think lithium will always work, if you take enough, long enough, have a reality comprehension disorder. I came here seeking any help from others better off than I, and offering help to anyone less well off than I. REAL professionals, ALL of them, have given up the diagnosis your lay intuition suspects, just as reluctantly as you might. I hope you will catch on to reality here. Don’t feel bad. Better-trained professionals didn’t get it right for a long time either. Some of them never will. However, I will correct you for impugning the only Doctor who restored functionality to me, in spite of having to overcome a presenting history of a long series of reversed (counter-indicative) medicine responses. I have very visible, massive physiological improvements to show for it. My strength is back. I am over 50-years old. I can pick up 100 pound kids with just my index finger and love proving it, so do the kids, so I can live just fine without your approval. My (dis)trust of diagnosis is not paranoid, but is educated by the school of really hard involuntary knocks. A prayer to God once asking why he let me take so much karate resulted in an impression it was so I could learn how to take punches. I had an understandable mixed good/bad impression of that. These types of knocks I don’t have a mixed good/bad feeling about. Most of you show signs of the same feelings about conventional diagnosis state-of-the-art. My Dr. and I have a way to go. I’ve never claimed complete restoration from so many derivative effects. I haven’t given him enough trials to deal properly with so many sub-problems since I am hoping for as much natural healing in the meantime as possible, all of which take their own long times. I haven’t forfeited all hope though. Several medication trials are scheduled for future, longer class breaks. I like when trial stress subsides. I’m not in a rush for more. Such procrastination may catch up with me again, but it won’t be my Doctor’s fault. Watch out, sympathy and pity can be symptoms of end-stage responsibility for thinking clearly. Treatment for typical mania is DE-generative and COUNTER-therapeutic for me, a total failure, as is such diagnosis. Anyone with intellectual bi-focals can see that. Please get that or surrender to the opinion I’ll have of you and the end-stage teachability of “your” diagnostic skills. Some of you aren’t treatment-resistant, you are really “proper diagnosis”-resistant. Your presence here indicates you are consciousness of this, maybe vividly. Historically, ME TOO. You sound like dim, ringing echoes that trigger traumatic memories of medicinally forced helplessness(es) that trigger fight or flight instinct bio-chemical response poisonings. If I were to give your recommended treatment for such a long-failed diagnosis any credence, my life and functionality would again be at stake. We are designed to learn from painful experiences to avoid unpleasant encores. Consensus, when proven wrong, needs to be abandoned. If it doesn’t work, call Sherlock Holmes, the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew if you need someone to help you decide if that might mean it is wrong. Any response not understanding that is essentially non-responsive due to deficits of diagnostic skills I should have abandoned far sooner in order to get un-bedridden sooner. But I have to dig through just such a shroud of patient turfing to find more like me. Manic treatment for manic-like symptoms is serious maltreatment. It hurts everything more than mania does. Death might have hurt less than what I went through.
Consider also the somatoforms (p. 445+) for the reasons I use some physiological evidences as criteria for de-cloaking a response from those similar to me, who likely don't know it. I expect these criteria clues will sound discombobulated and unrelated to those with non-congruent disorders, too bad. I intend to use them to rule-out similar but otherwise unrelated problems and problem genesis(es). These are who I am seeking during my only recent useful week with any time for this. My time-investment/involvement estimator needs serious re-calibration after this. PMS and many other real physiological events used to be classified as merely “psycho”-somatic and those so afflicted were thought of as psycho because of it. It’s not my fault that history repeats since history teaches so mercifully. Honest neuro-psychiatry will someday accord EMF it’s due place too (http://www.google.com/search?q=emfrapid). EMF is my main suspicion, but I concede it’s only my main suspicion. It could be something else. If I knew what else it could be whose validity hadn’t already been ruled-out, I’d look there. Mania-typical doesn’t prove out, several years of benevolent attempts to prove so failed.
I am life-long pro-instrumentation towards the end that subjectivity can get more honestly objective. Indeed, such a project did me in. If a collective of experiences can be coordinated, treatment for future relapse treatments might achieve some therapy streamlining and misery reduction. Fore-thought should be higher on my priority list in at least token form. Guinea pig has not been my voluntary career transition choice, nor do I wish to be an anecdote.
If saying that so many times in so many ways doesn’t work, too bad, more for you than for me. So much emphasis isn’t intended to penetrate bullet-proof mindsets. I intend for you to walk away intact even if you disagree with me. It’s just emphasis for “your” sake, not mania. I’m more improved with my recent treatments than you are with yours. I appreciate your compassion, patience and sympathy, though I wish such were more mutually productive than merely diplomatic. I will try to tailor my more detailed response kindly in-kind while still leaning towards objectivity. Objectivity will be supported with emphasis where known to be needed. That’s a forewarning to recalibrate your input circuits to recognize emphasis as deliberate and legitimate language use, not involuntary mania. Again. If you still don’t get it, que sera.
Maybe the medicine profession hangs on to Latin to discourage argument fluency by patients in situations like this. Instead of this I should be monitoring my stocks. They rose over $4,000 today in half a day and an under-bid for 5,000 more shares barely fell through on the early market close. Drat! I need to schedule responses to off-critical hours.
> > > Is it more compassionate to understand and avoid reacting to the behaviors and words of one whose mental state has been compromised by illness, or to be reactionary in such a way as to disregard the contribution of that illness to the resultant psyche? Is it one’s fault that they are mentally ill – regardless of diagnosis? Is it within their control to change without any help and of their own volition? Perhaps it is the honest knee-jerk reaction of others that helps one to recognize that something is not right. Would this not be the more compassionate choice, as it might lead to an improvement in their quality of life?
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> > I don't know the answer to that, Scott, and it's an interesting question. I don't know that it's particularly uncompassionate to say that one thinks someone is manic, though (unless it's being used as a way to devalue that person's opinions). As to whether it's in one's power to change, I think help is required, but practically speaking, you have to seek out that help first. And in order to do that, you have first to realize that something is wrong!
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> Perhaps this is a topic that should be started as a new thread.
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> > Several people have tried to point out to Phillip that he comes across as manic or psychotic (not just in the length and disorganization of his posts, but also in some of his odd ideas and unusual turns of phrase), but he denies that he is. Of course he might just lack insight into his condition, as many manic (or otherwise psychotic) people do.
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> It strikes me that the way you responded to Phillip’s post was constructive. I think it helps to illuminate what I feel is an important perspective. I believe we have a bit of a “catch-22” here. The fact that someone who is mentally ill fails to recognize that he has a problem and therefore does not seek help is the manifestation of the illness itself. Since this person will not be treated (because he does not recognize or accept his illness), his errant judgement regarding his illness will be perpetuated. Thus, he never receives the help he needs. Even if one recognizes that something is wrong does not guarantee that they will have the good judgement or energies to do anything about it.
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> > BTW a particular issue with this is whether a less-than-honest "therapist" might take advantage of the impaired judgment of such individuals to offer less-than-sound treatment. Not that this is necessarily happening here, but it's something that *could* happen.
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> Hmmm…
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> Wishing you a happy new year... Let's hope it's a good one.
>
> - Scott
poster:Phillip Marx
thread:16983
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991212/msgs/17746.html