Bruticus
Posts: 8
Joined: 1/5/2006
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I haven't seen much here in this thread about depression or mental illness. I know you're a PhD student and you probably have a lot to read and research as it stands, but I think it would do you both some good if you did some reading on the subject. By no means will reading a book or two make you an expert or qualify you to offer her therapy, of course. Now, I am not an expert in the subject per se - I'm chronically ill myself, though, so I do know a thing or two. If you already knew this stuff, I apologize in advance for wasting your time.
Here's some things you need to know:
A. Her thought processes are (to use a medical term) screwed up. When you're depressed, it's difficult to think rationally. Something that makes perfect sense to you may not make any sense to her - at all.
B. People with mood disorders tend to think in all-or-nothing terms - the shades of grey that life so often presents don't register correctly. For example, I recently got my grade on my midterm for one of my classes (I'm a graduate student) - 19/20. Normal folk would probably be pleased and move on, knowing intuitively that it's an 'A' - me, I tried to figure out what the precise letter grade was - which I can't do in my head. (It's a 95% - a solid 'A.') Now, some normal folk would do that conversion and move on. Me...no, I'm not happy with the grade. I'm not going to contest it - I just feel like I could have done better. I don't feel good about the test. You can imagine how lousy I feel when I get 'B' grades, no? (And I do get a number of them - I'm not that great a student.) So things are either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever - and they tend to be the worst.
C. You've noticed the self-isolation, but I don't think you quite understand why she does that. I can't speak for her exact thought process, but a couple of good possibilities include self-hatred (i.e. nobody likes me anyway, nobody would miss me if I died, nobody cares about me, if I died tomorrow the world wouldn't be any different - or might even be better, I don't want to bother anybody), outright despair (I can't do anything right, my life sucks and it's all my fault, I'm a failure, the world is out to get me) and anxiety (I'm probably going to fail, so why try?). And here's something I can't emphasize enough: there's not much you can do about these irrational thoughts and feelings. In fact, anything you say or do will probably be rejected out-of-hand because it doesn't mesh with her self-image. Only she (with help from a psychologist) can beat back those demons. And I promise you it isn't easy.
D. Along the same lines - it's hard to feel sexy, attractive, appealing, etc, when you're depressed out of your mind. And if you're experiencing sexual problems as a side-effect of your mood disorder or the medications you're taking, it gets even worse. When "the parts" don't work properly, you may feel like less of a man or woman. More on this later.
E. People with mood disorders don't have the emotional or thought control that normal folk enjoy. You know how you can get a song stuck in your head - or just a bit of it - and it drives you batty for hours? Well, imagine that happening all the time, but instead of it being a pop song, it's negative thoughts and feelings rolling around in your head - and it's difficult to make it stop. Imagine for a minute or two how debilitating it would be if your every failure and every misery kept replaying in your head, unbidden and unwelcome. I still have crap rolling around in my head from grade school - going as far back as first grade, when the teacher stuck my hand in my jar of paste. (I was using the applicator that was built into the cover of the paste jar, because I sure as hell didn't want to get messy - yeah, I'm a little OCD - and apparently that was too slow for her tastes, so she stuck my hand in the jar so I would use the paste just like everyone else was.) People like to tell other people to "get over" things...but what if you can't?
F. There's a lot of shame involved with mood disorders. Despite how relatively common they are and despite years of research, new medications, etc, there's still a lot of stigma attached to them. Some of that is because of continued ignorance from the public...but being mentally ill means you're crazy. It wasn't all that long ago that people with mental illnesses that we can now treat in an outpatient fashion were locked up in asylums. It doesn't really make sense - we generally don't hold other organ malfunctions and failures against people, unless they somehow brought it on themselves via abuse of tobacco, drugs, or alcohol - but people with developmental disorders and mental illnesses (i.e. their brain isn't working within normal parameters) are pariahs. I can virtually guarantee you that people treat your wife differently, if subconsciously - and she picks up on it.
I can give you a great example here - I have a bone spur on my right ankle that still needs to be repaired. (Up until recently, I had no health insurance. And now I need to make time to see a specialist and get it fixed.) Years of klutziness and twisting my ankle have brought me to the point where it sometimes acts up on its own, or after long periods of simply walking. (I recently moved, and my ankle swelled up during the move, what with all the walking, carrying, stairs, etc.) Now, as it stands I'm functionally disabled - I haven't been able to work since 2006. (And let's face it - graduate school isn't easy, but it's not the same as a full-time job - especially if it's a miserable job that makes you want to kill yourself.) But that's not an 'OK' disability. On the other hand, when my ankle acts up and I end up walking with a cane for a few days (I prefer using a cane to using crutches - it makes me feel cool like Dr. House) people treat me better - they're kind, they smile, they talk to me. If I were a less ethical person, I would always walk with a cane just to be treated like that. But I don't - and I'm reasonably certain that people avoid me - people can generally tell that you're not "right in the head." Could I be somewhat paranoid? Yes, absolutely - I acknowledge that freely. But that goes back to my earlier point about rational thought - even if I know that people aren't out to get me, I still feel like they are.
So I suspect that your wife is ashamed of herself and her condition - I'd be pleasantly surprised if she wasn't.
G. I don't know if your wife is on medication yet - but in case you weren't aware, SSRIs (i.e. Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro) and SNRIs (Effexor) - the two most common categories of anti-depressant medication - can help to stabilize you, but they also have unpleasant sexual side effects - particularly a strong decrease in sexual appetite. The only medication I'm aware of that has a lower incidence of these problems is Bupropion (brand name Wellbutrin) - in fact, my doctors added it to my cocktail in order to try to counteract the sexual side effects of my other medications.
H. Last thing: while I think that kink aware professionals are a great idea, they're not strictly necessary. Consensual BDSM was declassified as a pathology when the DSM-IV came out, and that was years ago. If a psychologist or psychiatrist gives you a hard time about kink, they're out of date. In any event, it's more important that she be in treatment with competent professionals now than waiting to find kink-aware professionals. Savvy?
I've probably taken something of a risk in "outing myself" here as mentally ill, so I hope this helps you - and maybe others.
EDIT: Oops. I wrote a damned book.
< Message edited by Bruticus -- 10/22/2009 2:12:08 PM >
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RE: The 1950s housewife I married is no longer interest... - 
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