Lack of caring can create unthinkable tragedy
I find it problematic to count all the regrets I have had throughout my life.
I find it problematic to count all the regrets I have had throughout my life.
Asking yourself: “What issues seem to pop up consistently?”
Are you complicit in using similar rhetoric to achieve your aim and hide your intentions?
“I need help,” Mcdaggot admitted.
Our evolution is not a gift bestowed by good fortune
I once understood levels of care as abstractions when sifting through a clinical grey area. I now understand each of these precious stops in the system of care as levels of hope.
I worked alongside Ruth at a mental health clinic down in the bario, 3rd Avenue.
So, I was just reading an article by Neesa Suncheuri called: How My Schizoaffective Disorder Helps Me Help Others In this article, the author likens the side effects (no pun intended) of not working and responding to the impact of paralyzing mental health symptoms as a strength. This […]
As 2020 fast approaches, I can’t help but think its necessary to reflect on what was the most ambitious, self-directed, and awe-inspiring ten years of my life. There wasn’t a moment I would re-live, so much to celebrate, and nothing I’ll ever be able to forget. The decade […]
The system is broken. We all know it. We all preach it. When reflecting upon my experiences, both personal, and professional, I remember this short exchange between myself and a big wig, a clinician-craft, in the system of care. “You’re not easy to serve” the director of care […]
“In the future, further work should deconstruct categories of medicine, psychiatry, and social work and encourage strength based approaches that will supplant new-institutionalization and create a new gold standard in treatment” (Maxwell Guttman, Mental Health Diagnosis: Axioms, Continuum, and Future Directions) 2018 “Congratulations, Jacques, on your publication!” Jonas, […]
Planning for the future means knowing what went wrong and why,?
The next step in Contesting Admission seemed rather obvious to me. Pummel the English Department into submission. In the words of President George W. Bush, this will be “shock and awe”. The plan was simple. Bombard the department with paperwork over all kinds. Inundating them with busy work […]
There is no mistaking it. The Revisionist, the third installment in the J. Peters series has run into excessive costly delays, and is now, fully stalled. This is not writers block. The story is simply unfinished. J. Peters life has not run its course yet, and the narrative […]
This article was originally published in NAMI’s the Advocate Spring 2019
When I first began writing about mental health, and topics concerning my own experience with schizophrenia, I was a bit naive. I thought since I lived through “this”, meaning, the various incidents, challenges, and pitfalls of my disorder people who struggled with similar hazards in their life could […]
My perception was shifting everyday. At first the shift was gradual, eventually dramatically altered. The community appeared different. People seemed to behave differently and have different motives. All I wanted was to connect with the changing world around me in Liberty. This was increasingly difficult to do when […]
The success of Contesting Admission hinged upon my ability to make such waves in the English department that my status as a student could no longer be ignored. The department was resisting and defending their decision at all costs. This resistance included their decision not only to reject […]
I am field instructor for graduate and undergraduate student in social work going for their bachelors and masters degrees. I am also a professor of social work in a university. As a field instructor, I am the point person in the field where social work students at the […]
There is nothing more profound than healing and recovery from extreme perilous circumstances and returning to a more normal life.
Far too many stories and firsthand accounts of recovery are terminal and end with a cure or picturesque life for the consumer of services or “sick” person. This recovery narrative is different. This is a story about struggle, ongoing collateral pushback from friends, and internalized self-doubt. Chronic illness, […]
When you carry a mental health diagnosis, you are in almost constant fear of relapsing
One of my biggest struggles as a social worker in human services is challenging learned helplessness.
his writer has a profound fascination with attention-seeking behavior(s). Also, profoundly astute at capturing the attention of peers, family, and friends, this writer is also no stranger to these histrionic red flags into a possible personality disorder.
Let us be completely honest, some of know, without too much consideration and thought, exactly how to gain our peers, friends, and family’s attention. Conversely, some of us could not get the attention they were seeking if their life depended on it. The level and intensity of attention-seeking behavior begin and ends with the ability, tenacity, and creativity of the person seeking attention. Attention seeking behaviors can be attributed to various mental health diagnoses. To correctly identify which diagnosis, the clinician will need to evaluate the behavior very carefully closed.
For most personality disorders, including, but not limited to Narcissistic Personality disorder, Histrionic, and Borderline, the clinician will need to evaluate the intentions or motives of the person seeking attention. Motives, intentions, and the general goals of anyone seeking attention should be the primary indicators that someone is seeking attention is trying to make up for, or satisfy a character-logical deficit. I am suggesting that if the motive is clear, the intention purposeful, and the aim is to gain others’ attention. Then, satisfy an individual’s thirst and make up for their shorting comings or lack of insight into an interpersonal situation gone awry then beware.
In terms of NPD, the reason or rationale for seeking attention is probably, first and foremost, to satisfy a personal deficit in self-worth or self-esteem. For people carrying a diagnosis of Histrionic personality disorder, the aim is creating hysteria to mask whatever set of bad decisions or personal choices occur or require concealing and hiding to shift the focus to something more benign and innocuous. In terms of patients carrying a borderline diagnosis, the attention-seeking behaviors are aimed at splitting and causing such chaos around them, that the ability to take ownership or accountability takes a backseat to the clinician focusing primarily on the week’s crisis.
Nevertheless, these diagnoses are not the only ones in which attention-seeking behavior is by the patients who carry the mental health disorder. Thus, patients with personality disorders are primarily attributed to enacting attention-seeking behaviors above other less performative. We, as clinicians and friends of people carrying a mental health diagnosis, need to remember why? From an epidemiological standpoint, diagnoses are merely the markers of the incidence and distribution of symptoms in patients. From a mental health perspective, we clinicians and friends need to remember all humans seek behavior at different levels, even at cross-purposes, and always to connect with other people fundamentally. While this should be a given axiom in mental health, it is not! Only when these behaviors create extreme distress, for the person exhibiting or displaying the behavior, and the people in their social world is truly diagnosable and problematic.
As stated before, mastering grabbing the attention of peers and other colleagues is simple. After going through such extreme lengths to capture attention, and experiencing the police show up at the door. Rigor, persistence, and aim were so alarming and off the mark in terms of purpose that everyone was puzzled. Again, this is when attention-seeking goes awry. Over the years, since this writer has been in mental health and learning to scale back, and generally decrease the intensity and viability of behaviors. This writer is very good at gaining a peers’ attention without making it clear as day from when I began to enter the social scene.
As a society, we have begun to truly mark, identify those seeking attention, and shame them for such behaviors. Not entirely sure this is the right path or the best way to handle such behaviors. Collectively, we need to make it clear that such behavior is unwelcome, unwarranted, and not necessarily appropriate. We give the person seeking such behavior precisely what they are looking for when displaying such untoward or visibly obnoxious scenes.
I believe people need to take a more psychologically sound and driven approach when putting the blinders up. Actively ignoring and minimizing or better yet, making it clear through our body language and words, these sorts of displays are ineffective in capturing our attention and keeping it.
Who we are now, who we were back then, and who we will become one day is a journey marked with fear, etched with courage, driven by strength, and laden with every emotion available in our affective spectrum intersecting with the multiplicity of experiences of what will hopefully […]
You must be logged in to post a comment.