Adventures in Psychiatry

[Doctor Eric]

Robert asked me to post these here, so I will, hang on for the first one.

[Doctor Eric]

Adventures in Psychiatry, prologue. Part 1

To whom it may concern:


I hit rock bottom not too long ago. I'm currently being treated for acute anxiety and chronic depression. So I figured I'd write about it. Hopefully I can make this shit funny. This is a little self-indulgent, and it feels strange. I'm not used to putting this sort of thing out there, I'm used to being socially confident, life-of-the-party guy.

Day 1, the evaluation


My doc says I have PTSD. Post traumatic stress disorder. Shell shock. I have shell shock from my childhood. Great. I never exactly equated my upbringing with World War I, but apparently it is abnormal to have thoughts of suicide at 8 years old, who knew?

Apparently the fact that I moved every 6 months until I was 14 has a lot to do with it.

My doc asked me to tell him where I lived and who with, starting at age zero. I told him to get a bigger !?@#$ing piece of paper.



Here goes: My dad left when I was 6 months old, my Step-father stepped in shortly after, and I was raised thinking he was my father. I even registered in schools with his last name, I didn't know my real name, or that he wasn't my father, until I was 10.

Side note: I thought my name was "Eric Buddy Smith", I saw my real name (Thorsen, which, oddly enough, is the Norwegian form of "Smith"... what? did you REALLY think I had been BORN with a cool name like Eric Cash?) on a bank statement once, which was quickly snatched away, and some lame excuse given. Since I was only 5, and only saw it for a second, I remembered it incorrectly, as "Thortonhog". All the way through kindergarten, quite proud that I had "discovered my true name", I signed all my papers as "Eric Buddy Thortonhog Smith". I guess it's starting to make sense why I'm crazy.



My mom divorced him when I was 4. Thereafter I bounced between his house, and my mom's every six months. Neither could afford me, they were broke, and kids are expensive. I lived a bunch of different places, I lived with with step-grandmother, who drank six screwdrivers a day, and started crying at 6pm every night. At one point I lived with this lady I called "Aunt Erlene", turns out she wasn't my aunt, just a lady my mom worked with, like I said, Mama Cash couldn't afford me.

Quick side note about Aunt Erlene, her son (my "cousin", yeah, I know this is confusing, bear with me) was born without thumbs, at birth, they cut off his pinkies, and sewed them in where his thumbs should go. Dude had pinky fingers for thumbs. Weird, huh? He was a cool kid though.



My stepdad was a coke dealer/failed entrepeneur/harley davidson mechanic/!?@# up. He was always living in a different place. One week he'd come home with a new sports car, and new motorcycle, the next he'd have nothing and he'd be living in a shack on the beach that he rented by the week. At one point, him, me, and his second wife lived in this huge house designed by a mad man. The guy was an architect, he lost his mind when his wife left him, and he built two houses immediately after, one for her that was perfect, and this one. There wasn't a straight wall in the place. Seriously, each and every wall was slightly crooked. The main bathroom had an 8 foot circular marble tub. I wasn't allowed to use that, I had to use the tub/shower that was located in the !#?@$ing LIBRARY. Yeah, dude put a shower in the library. The second floor was a loft, half the size of the first, with an enclosed master bedroom, and a big ass "balcony" that looked over the living room. It had this wallpaper on the back wall, that was a giant close up photo of the moon, and the space around it. I wasn't allowed up there, but when everyone was gone, it was the coolest place you could ever find to play with your transformers.

He got clean and sober when I was ten, and divorced his second wife, who was a raging cunt. She sent me some sort of apology letter later, that I read and laughed at. Bitch.

I liked my step-dad alot more before he got sober. He beat my ass occasionally when he was drunk and on drugs, but he wasn't an apathetic self righteous prick then. He's the worst example of people in 12 step programs. Don't get me wrong, he's a great guy when he's great, but most of the time he has two speeds: "I'm right, you're an asshole", or "Why would I give a shit?"

Did I lose you yet? Trust me, it gets funnier soon.

I met my dad when I was 13. My dad is an interesting fellow. He got sent to Viet Nam in the '70s for stealing cars. Back in those days, if you racked up a felony charge, you could either serve your time in jail, or in the jungle with Charlie. He decided to gain custody of me, I went and talked to a lawyer, told him a bunch of horrible shit about my mom, and her ex-boyfriends that got put in some sort of legal document, and was out in the car when she got served. I still feel shitty about that, if you're reading this, sorry ma. Me and my dad got along fabulously for about 2 weeks. I moved to California with him, to Atascadero, which means "mud-hole" in Spanish. He started kicking my ass about the second week. That was also the year I started smoking, doing drugs, and got my first tattoo. He wouldn't let me leave the house, I had to leave straight from school, and go work in his auto shop for three hours, then go home, and try not to do anything to piss him off, which is about as effective as trying to teach latin to a ferret. He'd beat my ass a bit, then I'd sneak out at about 10, get loaded and do speed all night, come home at 6am, go to school, and ditch class all day. He caught me sneaking out eventually, tied me up with engine ties (like a big version of the plastic strips that cops use as back up handcuffs) and kicked the hell out of me. I slept like that, he woke me up in the morning, drove me to school, and I ran away. Repeatedly.

This is where things started getting really odd.

To be continued...

[Doctor Eric]

Adventures in Psychiatry, prologue, part 2

continued from part 1


In the beginning of my evaluation, the doc asks when my first thought of suicide occured. I said the earliest I could remember, I was 8 years old, wanting to leap out of this huge tree I was up in. I quickly countered with "I don't think I'd ever actually do it, I think it's just a manipulation tactic".

"Or you're trying to express something."

"Huh?"

"It sounds like you've been in quite a bit of pain, for most of your life, you're trying to express that."

"Hrm... I never really thought of it that way, but I guess you're right. I never thought of myself as being in pain, I just thought it was because I was smart. I thought all smart people were miserable, because the world is so ?#@!ed up."



Alright, I have a fresh cup of coffee, I'm blasting Siouxsie Sue ("Got to get up! And live this life!"), I haven't had a crying jag for at least 8 minutes, and I'm ready for part 2. There's some good shit in this one, like how I lost my virginity at an AA meeting.

My little runaway. Run run run run run, runaway.


Where was I? Oh yeah, the first year I ran away from home. Heh. Okay. In California, where I was living at the time, a child can refuse to go home, if they don't feel safe there. And I sure as hell didn't feel safe in that lunatic's house. But I didn't know this yet. So I ditched class, and got picked up by a cop. He took me back to the school, who called my pops, who told them to take me down to his shop. so on the way back to the squad car, I bolted down the hill. That fat cop got in his car to chase me, screamed through the parking lot, and got ahold of me as I was climbing the fence around the football field. Slammed me on the hood of the car, cuffed me, and started to drive off. He asked why I'd run from him like that. I said "Under the 5th amendment of the constitution of the United States of America, I choose not to answer that question, on the grounds that it may incriminate myself." Yeah, I was an asshole as a kid, too. Then I thought better of being a wiseass, and told him my pops had tied me up and beat the crap out of me. He told me about code 601, the code for a child that refuses to go home, and asked if that's what I wanted to do.

I said "!?$@ yeah!"

They took me to a group home in San Luis Obispo. The group home I went to was mostly for kids alot younger than me, there was one girl there my age, she was Peurto Rican, and hot, but that's all I remember about her. I was there for two days. I came in bawling, told them the story. My PO (my probation officer, I wasn't on probation, but when you're an abused kid in CA, and get in the system, they assign you a PO, I don't know why, it was weird...) talked to me on the phone, and asked if I wanted to press charges, I said hell yeah, and they took pictures of the marks on my elbows and knees.

Side note: My dad could be a really cruel bastard. He once made me stand for six hours. When he tied me up, he tied my elbows and knees together. It's a more effective way of disabling someone. But not only that, he got me right BELOW my knees. I'm knock-kneed, I can't put my feet together, my knees hit each other, but he forced me to put my feet together, then tied my legs together that way. It hurt like a bitch.



The next day, I was in my room, and the group home lady popped her head in, with this big grin on her face, and said "GOOD NEWS! You're going home! They'll pick you up in an hour, and take you back to your dad's house!"

What? I didn't say shit, just told her I needed some time alone, then bolted out the window. Unfortunately, I was in San Luis, the only way I knew to get back to Atascadero was by the freeway. So I walked to the freeway, and started hoofin' it back. That was a dumb idea. If you don't know, pedestrians aren't allowed on the freeway, especially not 15 year old ones during school hours. The cops got me in about 12 minutes.

I can't really remember what happened right after, but in a few days I was put in a group home called "601 house". That's where I gained my love for Public Enemy, the Black Panther Party, and Stokely Carmicheal, and where I lost my virginity.

So this is how 601 house worked. It was meant for abused kids, who refused to go home, and it was really only meant to be a weekend thing, I was there for three months. I RAN that joint. The only way you could smoke cigarettes was to go to an AA meeting, some sort of weird thing where when you went to AA, you were under their custody at the time, so you could get away with smoking. So within a week, I had upped the number of meetings we went to from one a week, to one every day. Hahaha. I also figured out how to get our cigarettes out of the locked closet (they had a closet where they kept your cigarettes, and some of your other stuff that you weren't allowed to have, except when you spent time with your PO, that was the other time you could smoke). It took three of us to do it, one would cause a distraction in a bedroom, I'd slip into the office and grab the key off of the wall, fling it to my friend, who would open the closet, take out a few smokes for each of us real quick, lock it back up, and flip the keys back to me, I'd hang them up, and bolt out of the office, it took about 18 seconds.

I tried to kill a kid there once. He said something, I don't know what, but it pissed me off. Everything went white, and the next thing I knew, I had him three inches off the ground, by the throat, up against the wall, and the counselors were screaming and trying to pull me off of him. He was purple, and couldn't talk for two days. Thank god.

This other kid there, Lonnie, tried to kill himself with aspirin. He was this hesher kid. When they took him in to mental health, they asked him why he overdosed on aspirin.

He said "I had a headache".

"So you took TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY aspirin for it?"

"It was a really bad headache."

One of the counselors there was really cool, his name was Mark. He bought me the Autobiography of Malcolm X, Soul On Ice, and introduced me to the California Sospamspamspamspamspamspamt Party. Chuck D was my hero back then. Chuck D and Jello Biafra. I got really politically militant. Wore a beret and everything. I wish I could find that dude somehow, he was a really positive influence in my life.

My third month in, this girl named Amy moved in. She had black hair with a blonde strak in it, on her head, and purple pubic hair. She was 17 and emancipated, she was way into Suicidal Tendencies, she was hot as hell, and she was my first love.

We used to make out in the corner constantly, fondle each other when the counselors weren't looking, and one night, at an AA meeting at a hospital, we cruised out into the courtyard and screwed. It wasn't awkward, or strange, it was just !?#@ing awesome. Other than the fact that she was sitting on a stone bench and I had to hunch-and-hump. Somebody snitched us out, and two days later, the counselors demanded that I show them my back. The long, red nail-marks covering it confirmed our guilt. They made us both go get tested for STDs. I didn't have AIDS, yet.

Damn this is getting long.

Okay. So they make me a ward of the court. I get a check for $220 from the state of CA for clothes, which can ONLY be spent at Mervyn's, because that's where the group home has a credit account. Mervyn's! I blame my need for therapy, my abusive behavior, my audio hallucinations, my schizophrenic dreams, my night terrors, my inability to hold a job, or a girlfriend, everything wrong with me, on those !?#@ing Mervyn's clothes. I was raised around a lot of black people. Black folks dress well, and give you a lot of shit if you don't. You don't !?#@ing wear clothes from MERVYN'S. That shit was traumatizing.

They force me to pick a foster family, I can't be in 601 house anymore. So I wind up picking pretty much the first family that will take me. Bad move.

It's this family that lives in a gated community in the middle of nowhere, out by Cayucos or some shit. All of the women in the family have cankles. The dad, whose name was Greg, I think, worked for California Youth Authority. Never let your kids go to juvee. There are people and advocacy groups that watch over adult prisons, but not juvee. Bad shit happens in them. Bad shit perpetuated by people like this asshole. He tells me a story about how his prison had a problem with kids sneaking weapons in in their wallet (that's prison speak for your ass, kids!). His solution was to mount two microwaves ovens at waist height, and take the doors off of them, and make each new arrival stand naked between them. Ever seen what happens when you put something metal in a microwave? This dude was a psychotic prick, and a racist, to boot. As soon as he saw my portrait of Malcom X I had drawn (which was pretty nice), he popped off with the meanest nigger joke I'd ever heard. That was my first day there.

While I lived there, I had my first, and last experience riding a horse. My foster sister had two horses, because she was a spoiled little twat (that's mean, she was actually nice, just daffy). She gave me the crazy one to ride. Did you know that when horses get hot, or frustrated, they'll just take off running as fast as they can and not stop? That's exactly what this bastard did. Full gallop, with me just barely holding on for dear life, screaming at this retarded animal, until I stood up and leapt off of him into some bushes. THEN the damned thing stopped. Like 10 feet away. Asshole.

About a month in, the abusive-rich-hillbilly family took a vacation to Reno. At some point, the wife, Jannelle, started an argument with me. She had an IQ of about six, so it wasn't too hard to piss her off. She told me that I had deserved what my dad did to me, I told her to fuck herself, she told me to get out of the car. They left me standing on the side of the road in Reno for over an hour. Morons, what the hell did they think they were gonna do? Leave me there? I was a WARD OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA. The state checks up on that shit.

I called my mom, who I hadn't talked to in 3 years, and went home. I was 16.

After that, my mom and I got along awesome/horrible. I was a total dick by then, and never really respected authority at all. I started a bunch of fights with her, called her names, all sorts of shit, even though she's the greatest woman I know. My mom rules. She's in my top 8 on myspace. You should totally add her and post gay porn all over her page. Don't worry, she's a lady, whether or not they admit it, all ladies love gay porn.

Side note about mama cash: I'm hyperactive and have ADD. When I was like 4, a doctor diagnosed me, and told her to put me on ritalin. Her response was to switch doctors. Even though for a single-mother, I was probably the most difficult kid out there. See? My mom rules. Another time, I told her I was bored. She put down the dish she was washing, and yelled "Well why don't you just take out your DONG and play with it?!" Heh. I fell off my stool laughing.



I ran away once or twice more, I ran away back to California at one point. I told you, I was a horrible kid. I ran back to Atascadero, and lived in an abandoned crack house with a guy bnamed Benji. We made money by flipping over newspaper machines and shaking the hell out of them. Atascadero is a town built entirely along I-5, it's about half a mile wide, and seven miles long. We'd walk from one end of town, to the other, flipping over paper machines and shaking the change out of them. We'd make enough for smokes, and 7-11 hot dogs, and hang out until the sun came up. One night, I was sitting at a bus stop, and this weird homeless dude walked up to me and said "Here, you need this more than I do." and handed me a book. It was the Book of the Church of the Subgenius, by J.R. Bob Dobbs. And that's when I discovered Bob.

About a month or two later, I was tripping on 4 tabs of acid, and got busted shoplifting. Shoplifting MAKEUP. I don't remember why, I was tripping, and it seemed like a good idea. The cops found the missing persons report on me, and sent me back to my mom. My uncle had to meet me for my layover in San Jose. He hadn't seen me since I was 6. I'm sure he was proud.



Okay. I'm all wrote out for the day, I think. I'll get back to this later. Up next, MY FIRST SESSION! Hahahaha, thought I'd never get there, huh?

[Doctor Eric]

Adventures in Psychiatry: Side notes.

Side Notes



Okay, I have alot of ground to cover. This one might be all over the place.

Before I get started on my first session with the doc, there are a couple things I have to get out of the way.

A couple people wrote, asking what spurred me getting therapy. I forgot I didn't exactly outline all of that. I'll tell the entire story in a later blog, but in a nutshell here it is.

I've been dark, miserable, and mean almost my whole life. I've learned to channel it into some really cool things, but it also causes me to do some really horrible shit to people.

I went really, really broke, due to all of this, just as I've done in the past. There's a pretty recognizable pattern in my life. I went broke, broker, and broker. I hurt all of the people I care about, or most of them, at least. I hurt quite a few of them really badly. I hurt myself, too.

A year and a half ago, on the night of my 30th birthday, I managed to make two people that I love dearly cry, probably hurt a few others, and demolished my right hand. Punched a hardwood floor during an argument with my girlfriend. A psychotic, abusive argument that I started. Other people punch things like drywall. They're pussies. I wanted to punch something that had no give WHATSOEVER. I broke my fifth metacarpal in three places. I went to the ER, and they forced me to take a vicodin when they set the bone. Then I went home to sleep on the roof. Drugs work backwards on me, I'm hyperactive, vicodin is just bad speed to me. So I laid on my roof, with my life and my relationship falling down around me in flames, in excrutiating pain, grinding my teeth and trying not to scratch myself bloody, from 5:30am until noon, when I finally passed out for two hours.

I tried to pursue therapy then. I wound up with a really bad therapist. He was a good example of why people won't bother with therapy. He was the most passive bastard on the face of the planet, he didn't even say things like "and how does that make you feel?", he just fucking stared at me. I'd fill conversation for an hour, and then give him 60 bucks. Total bullshit. I talk for a LIVING, man, I don't need to sit here and fill air because you're socially retarded, and don't know what you're doing. I can do that at a bar, for free, and get given drinks for it. I don't need someone to talk to, I need fucking HELP. I cry all day. Uncontrollably. I can't work. I'm self destructive. I'm terrified of... EVERYTHING. And most of all, I'm relentlessly abusive towards the people I love, the people that could help, the people so loyal, that they deal with it for WAY too long, and I still manage to push them miles away from me. Taking my money, and just staring at me like a beagle with a brain tumor is just about the lowest shit a human being could pull, when they've come to you for help.

So I gave up on him. I had gotten my shit together a tiny little bit, had managed to keep the greatest girl on the face of the planet from leaving me, so I figured I could get it together, and keep it together on my own. Typical dumb ass tough guy attitude.

Things got worse for me. Situational things, emotional things, they all piled up. I had already caused quite a bit of damage to my relationship, I was still in pain, things were getting worse, and instead of healing wounds, I poured salt on them, and gouged them open with a carpet knife. The girl tried her damndest. She moved out of the house, I kept hurting her. She left me for good in November. And she isn't the first. Although I did like her the best.

I've spent the last two and a half years crying, or flipping out, at least three times a week, sometimes daily. I'm crippled by depression and anxiety, as far as productivity goes. I've lashed out at most of the people that could be there for me, or offer me support, multiple times, that's out the window. I'm lucky for the ones that will still talk to me.

I don't count how many times a week I bawl openly, or scream now. I count how many times a day, and then I lose count.

I was always against pharmaceuticals, and always made sure I didn't self medicate with alcohol, only used it recreationally. Now I'm begging my doctor for meds, and I drink a beer, followed by a cup of coffee, then do it again, all day long, just to function. Speaking of which, cheers, I just finished my coffee.

I can't hang out with people for more than about four hours, then I start to flip out.

I want to pull off my jaw and play frisbee with it.

I've known that I do these things since I was about 17 years old. I've tried to fix the problems I have for almost 15 years. I haven't been able to do it alone. I need a little bit of help.

In a nutshell, that's what's caused me to pursue therapy. There's still a part of me, hoping against all odds that if I can get better, the love of my life will be able to take me back, and I actually hang onto that, as futile as it may be, because it helps me to get through the day. But I'm doing this for me. So that I can have lasting relationships, so that I can be productive, and mostly, to get rid of, or at least reduce, the overwhelming amount of pain I'm in.

There, I ?#$?in said it. As lame and as self pitying as it sounds, I said it. I apologize, it's hard to find a comfortable balance between acceptance, and self pity. I'm not used to admitting these things about myself yet. I think I'll get better at it.

The other thing I wanted to mention, is that the feedback I have gotten has been amazing. After all of the damage I have caused, hearing that other people have enjoyed this stuff, or even felt that reading it helped them to deal with whatever turmoil they are stuck in is very inspiring. Thank god I can pull something positive out of all of this. Cheers again.

Writing these things made me feel bizarre. Immediately after I wrote the first two, suddenly, I felt every emotion, all at once. Simultaneously, I felt incredibly ashamed, and ridiculously proud all at the same time. I wanted to sing showtunes at the top of my lungs, spin in circles and slam my head against a brick wall. I went and had a drink instead.

Shit, this one was a little heavy. ONWARD! To bigger and better things!

[Doctor Eric]

Adventures in Psychiatry: The Adventure Begins!

My First Session



Yesterday, I texted my friend, I asked him if he thought it was fine to self-medicate with nitrous hits until the doc could give me something.

He texted back "Just pull out a tooth, instant perspective."

Heh, that made me laugh, but you can only do it about 30 times, then you're out of teeth.



My first session with my doc, after the evaluation was last Wednesday.

I was excited, bounced out to Ocean Ave. on the BART, bopping my head to Ol' Dirty on my headphones.

I had already liked this guy. During the evaluation, it wasn't yet set who my therapist would be, I do this through a city program, so you go in, for two evaluations, the first one, you talk to some guys that I think are interns or something, they just take a bunch of notes, take a look a tthe sliding scale table pinned to the wall, and tell you how much it's going to cost.

By the way, City of San Francisco, you really need to update that shit.

I told them I made nine hundred dollars a month (I have no idea how much I make, it's all over the place, but I owe my landlord six grand, so 900 is fair). They told me it would cost me $110 a year, $10 a month. That's pretty sweet, until you think about this. The HOMELESS here have to make more than $900 a month, just to sleep in doorways. I read in a magazine last year that the actual poverty line in San Francisco is $53,000 a year. FIFTY THREE THOUSAND A YEAR. That's how much you need to make in San Francisco to NOT be in poverty. That's retarded. If you make over $1,100 a month, they won't give you food stamps. $1,100 covers rent on a crappy aprtment, and two packs of M&M's, if you're lucky. Seriously, adjust your low income scales, this isn't Wichita. It costs twenty five bucks to leave the house here. And twelve to stay in.

Anyway, the second evaluation, you talk to a psychologist, or a psychiatrist or a therapist, or whatever the hell they are. One of the people of the ranks of people that will eventually become your head mechanic. Heh, head mechanic.... My brain threw a rod, and my cerebellum seized, what's the labor on this gonna be?

On my second evaluation, the mechanic I talked to was the one who would later wind up being MY mechanic. I was impressed with him then. He nailed things down quickly, he got things DONE. I liked that.

It seems like he put in a request to be my guy, too. I also liked that, that, and that he has made me a bit of a priority.

So I go in, and I'm happy. The lobby of the place I go is pretty ghetto fabulous. There's this mexican dude with scabes all over his old english tattoos chatting up a woman that is responding only to herself, sitting across from me. I smile, I like !@#?ed up people.

I'm reading a travel magazine in the lobby. Wondering what the hell it's doing there. The people in this lobby are extrememly low income, mentally ill, and mostly brown. How many $8,000 cruises are getting sold here?

He comes out, and in I head. Chin up, proud that I'm about to work on myself.

Right off the bat, within minutes, he points out something interesting.

Apparently it is abnormal, and unhealthy to call yourself a fucking idiot 30-40 times a day. I never payed much conscious attention to my internal dialogue before. I don't think most of us do. Most of us are taught that people that talk to themselves are crazy, and even though we all know that everyone talks to themself, you don't exactly acknowledge the actual tone of the words you use when your head is speaking to you.

He equates the way I speak to myself as sitting at home, quietly, alone, and a crazy abusive homeless person running in a screaming at you.

He talks me through it a bit. He asks, if a REAL person were to follow me around, saying those things, what would I do? I said I'd punch him in the face until my hand, or his head, gave in.

This is good news. We got something concrete, almost immediately. The way that I speak to myself, is exactly the way that I treat people when I'm down.

Logic would tell you that if I am able to slowly, over time, change my internal dialogue to something less abusive, and more compassionate, then externally, that change will be reflected.

Awesome, still feeling good. Score one for the home team.

He makes me say something supportive to myself, out loud, and I do.

Then he asks me how that feels. I say, kinda sad, and then he catches me fighting back a crying jag.

He jumps on it. Asks why I fought it back. I tell him I'm sick of crying, I don't want to appear weak, and mostly, I'm sick of crying, because every time it starts, it doesn't seem to want to stop.

Then I laugh a little. He jumps on that, too. He tells me, as a defense mechanism, to get through life as a kid, I developed a habit of laughing it off. I always thought that laughing at your pain was a good thing. He tells me that backing away from it, and laughing it off, just shuffled it into the back room, and now it's knocking on the door, like land shark with a search warrant.

So I have to feel it. I have to let it hit, and let it do it's thing. Logically, that completely makes sense. But practically....

I seem to have an infinite amount of bad shit in me. I don't know where the end of it is. It's just wave after wave of emotional excrement, like a blocked up sewage drain.

These were the two things I left with, as well as a small breathing exercise, to help regulate my anxiety (teach it to ya, if you want).

Here's what he DIDN'T tell me. And what I'm here to tell you.

You go do this to get better, but after the first session, you leave all hopeful, with your little list of personal assignments, doe eyed, and ecstatic to pop open your homework, and become the emotional super hero you know you can be. You go home, you breathe, you "feel your pain", and then you find out that before it gets better, it gets worse. ALOT worse.

I opened up that flood gate, let myself cry, said soft, soothing, and compassionate things to myself for a whole day. Thinking I was making progress. And I'm sure I did, a little. What I wasn't expecting is that now, I can't stop it. I couldn't get anything done for four days. I just bawled as white light shot through me, waiting to see some sort of end to it... so far, there's no end, it just keeps strtching out like highway 10 across west Texas. It goes straight to the horizon.

You try your best not to use your normal defense mechanism, becuase that's your problem, but you didn't replace it with anything! Now you're just standing naked in front of a blast furnace.

And don't think that you're better, if it stops for 3 hours, either. You may have made some progress, but you ain't fixed, and you ain't ready for human consumption yet, Chucky. I went and saw a show the next night, with my brand spanking new "sanity", to get out, and have some fun. The ex was there, I knew there was a chance she would be. I played it cool for about 2 hours, maybe. Left her alone, talked to some other folks, started a fight with another friend, whatever. The ex sent me a text, apologizing for keeping her distance. Sure enough, I text her back something shitty, wind up arguing with her, she runs off to the bathroom crying, I get in two more arguments and get kicked out of the bar. By another friend. I came really close to punching him out. I'm really glad I didn't.

I'm not going to be better for a while. I need to leave most people alone, with a couple exceptions. I need to regulate myself. I can stay out for 2-4 hours, provided that there is no one there that is going to trigger anything in me, at all. If I get into any sort of conflict, even in the slightest, bad shit will start shooting out of me. And then I get to spend a week hating myself. No. That's no good. Chill out, breathe deep. It's going to be cool, eventually. Smile, nod, and go home. You may be on house arrest, but at least you didn't get the gas chamber yet, Eric. Baby steps. one second at a time, you'll make it through the hour.


to be continued....

[Doctor Eric]

the part down there that says california sosamspamspamspaam

is supposed to say s o c i a l i s t

[Rachel Peters]

I've always said about you that you're a good boy, Eric Cash.
Seriously. I actually say that to people. Weird, eh?

[theballoonman]

I think that your remark about, if your internal dialogue was someone whispering in your ear, you'd punch them....
is sage advice i'll probably remember for years...
thanks.

A humble ball of fears and insecurities hoping to be loved.
mike

[Jim]

Originally posted by Doctor Eric
the part down there that says california sosamspamspamspaam

is supposed to say s o c i a l i s t

Sorry about that Eric, I have the word "c i a l i s" on the spam list to deter the bots.


Oh and by the way... Fucking Hell. I'm pretty speechless, but really enjoying your writing. I just saw this thread for the first time today. I don't really know what to say, but I want more. Thank you, and I'm sorry, and please keep trying to get better. We miss you around here.

[theballoonman]

workers of the world with erectile dysfunction unite!!!!!

[Butterfly Man]

I don't want to make you feel better but...

I fuckin'love this thread ...

[Doctor Eric]

Yeah, I figured that out, Jim. Thank you for the kind words, by the way, there are about 9 more of these, forgot to come back and post them, I'll get on that now. Thank you, too, Robert, Rach, et all.

[Doctor Eric]

Adventures in Psychiatry: The Second Session

Anxiety, Self-Love, and Rock and Roll


I told my doc that I like a lot of things about me, all of my qualities go hand in hand with all the bad things about me.
I like being able to make people cry. I just want it to be directed, I want to be able to turn it off, so I'm not firing off random shots at innocent bystanders, and hurting the people that are closest to me because I'm acting like a rabid, wounded animal.
I want to be able to turn it off, and turn it back on again when I need it, because in all honesty, let's face it, some people need to be told to go drink bleach.
He laughed at that, he said yeah, some people do, and that's a useful skill, you won't lose that.

That's when I knew I had found the therapist for me.



"Filth Pig" by Ministry is a really amazing album, and it's a little under rated, that's today's soundtrack.

Therapy makes you very self-centered, you spend all day kicking around in your head trying to figure out why you're fucked up, and how to fix it, you have problems having normal conversations with people.

The last thing I want to do is being one of those annoying pricks that constantly says "Well, my therapist says..."

Please god don't let that happen to me.

My first session with the doc, he asked me to tell him to tell him how anxious I felt on a scale of one to ten, I just guessed (I was feeling pretty relaxed), and said two. He explained that a two for me, is probably about an eleven for someone else. When I'm up in the eight to tens, I could solve the energy crisis with a couple electrodes.



When I went back in for my second session, I explained to him my roller coaster of a week, and as I did, I realized that I had focused on emotions, just let them flow, and purged as much as I could, but didn't really work on my anxiety at all. I told him, "You know, you could have warned me that it would get worse before it got better." He apologized, he didn't realize I was going to go at it with such fervor, but when he apologized, he smiled just a little, too. Evil bastard.

We spent that session working out some strategies for dealing with anxiety mostly. The breathing exercises; there's one that I do where you breathe in real deep, while clenching your fists until your arms start to shake, then you exhale and let your arms fall, shake them a little. I do it a little violently, I call it "shooting the shit out". Doing it makes you look like Elmer Fudd having a fit. I like that. I imagine steam shooting out of my ears...

He also spent a lot of time digging at some of my core philosophy. A lot of this stuff has to do with letting yourself know that your sickness is not your identity. My therapist has spent close to half of our time together slowly, and compassionately, reassuring me that I'll still be the same person when I manage to shake off some of this, that the creativity, the productivity, all of those things that I adore about myself, will still be there, I won't lose them, as a matter of fact, hopefully, I'll be able to access them easier. I think that's probably a stumbling block for a lot of people that are considering psychiatric help or therapy. Even as open as I've been, and I have, I'm practically begging for help at this point, I still had a lot of worry deep down that this will fuck up who I am, my doc is really good at helping you think through that.


One of the things that I like the most about my doc is that he's able to talk about self love in a way that doesn't make me want to exhume the corpse of John Lennon and piss on it.



We talked about something that I guess I already knew, but really needed to hear it out loud, in simple language. My anxiety largely comes from missing something very important, a core of loving, or even liking myself. That part is empty for me. Intellectually, sure, I'm a big fan of me, for a lot of reasons. But reasons are conditional, and there are a lot of reasons to hate me, too. Trust me, I spend a lot of time hating myself as well.

What he was talking about, is down at the core, a very base emotional level of self love that is unconditonal, that is just there because you're YOU. Lacking it causes worry, constant self doubt, and causes those things to spiral out of control until I'm flipping out like Paris Hilton stuck in a season of "Survivor". That's the part I need to somehow create.

Easier said than done, I said. That's pretty fucking abstract. It's not like you can just synthesize a core emotion. I agree whole heartedly that I'd like it to be there, but seriously folks, HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DO THAT?

I'll get back to that later.

Overall, I'd made a bit of progress, I had a little bit more knowledge to keep at it, and I felt good about what I'd done so far. I agreed to see him twice a week, got an appointment with a psychiatrist who could write me a scrip (I go on the 30th), Shook his hand, and bounced out.

To be continued...

[Doctor Eric]

Adventures in Psychiatry: Movin' On Up!

Getting by with a little help from my extremely twisted, lovable friends


I kinda blew through the last one, I just wanted to get a few details down, before I focused on this one.

The anxiety.

I didn't even realize that anxiety was my problem until a couple months ago. I think I'd always viewed anxiety as weak, somehow. Depression, sure, creatives and artists are supposed to be depressed, it's what makes them the sensitive, insightful, creative douchebags they are, right? Depression has a bit of romanticism to it...


Side Note: I chatted with my friend Tracy about all this, she pointed out "Yeah, it's fine to be fucked up in your twenties, girls like that, it's cute. But a fucked up 35 year old is just a pain in the ass, the charm wears off by then."
Tracy has always been quite the insightful lady, I love her for that.



...But anxiety...? No, I never thought that was me, anxiety is for accountants and neurotic Jews. I'm tough, I drink, fight and fuck. I eat fire and walk on broken glass, listen to heavy metal, and chew through aluminum cans. I've been in Hustler Magazine for christ's sake. No way, I couldn't have anxiety...

I'm starting to think that anxiety is actually 95% of my problem. The depression, the massive mood swings, the paranoia, it all seems a lot easier to manage, rationally, once I'm calm.

I'm just starting to understand what "calm" is.

Anxiety is also a BITCH. It's a gigantic, neverending feedback loop of bad habits, self hate, and lying to yourself. Trying to manage your anxiety is like trying to unravel a 300 pound ball of exposed copper wire, with 16 volts running through it. Every little piece you get loose, tries to tangle up with something else, and while you grab ahold of that, the ends you aren't looking at start to wrap up around your hands. The first day, I almost gave up, I thought it was impossible, I spent almost every SECOND, for a good six hours, trying to calm down a little bit, and stay there.

There's a big "Don't think of a pink elephant" angle the whole time, too. You get a little bit calmer, and go "don'tgetanxiousdon'tgetanxiousdon'tgetanxiousdon' tgetanxiousdon'tgetanxiousdon'tgetanxious...", and sure enough, now you're stressed out about trying not to stress out.

In the last week, I've realized how much I've contributed to all of this, myself, by trying to fix it over the years.

I had another conversation with Ty McKenzie, about how hard it was for me to come out and say "I have a pattern of abusive behavior". I mean, why would I want to admit to that? I told her that sure, I know I've done all of those things, but I blocked them out, in a way. I didn't deny them entirely, when the ex would tell me about times that I screamed at her to get the fuck out, or when I locked her out of the house, I'd go "oh yeah...", but I was numb to it, didn't let it in, and process it. When friends would tell me about things I'd done, I'd argue around it, until everything was right in my world. There are broken windows, and marks all over my wall, but I would just look at them like "Wow... that guy sure fucked shit up... What's for breakfast?"

And why would I want to admit those things to myself? I'm sure as shit not proud of them, I didn't ever want to do them, so I just kind of... played hide and seek with them, and when they found me, I'd run like hell.

I'm really glad I admitted it, out loud. If I was still hiding from myself, I think managing the anxiety problems would be much, much harder.

I've been micro-managing my anxiety. It takes alot of effort, I spend all day doing it. I take deep breaths, calm myself down almost constantly. I still have trouble trusting myself, and I think I will, for a while.

But I'm getting better. In my last blog, I mentioned that I need to somehow create a core of self love. Deep down, so that I don't fall back into the same patterns of giving up, and self hatred.

Want to know what I came up with? Sit firmly in your seat, because you're about to laugh your ass off, at my expense.

I tell me I love me. Like I would a lover, or a dear friend. Yep. In all honesty, about 15-20 times a day, I say to myself "I love you Eric", in all sincerity, and in exactly the same tone I'd use on the girl I used to wake up to every morning. I say it in that way that makes you get butterflies in your stomach.

I know, gayer than "AIDS! The Musical! Starring Rip Taylor and Freddie Mercury!", right?

But it's working. Or it seems to be.

I used women for comfort my whole life, I figure why not use that as a strategy to love myself, to get better?

Go ahead, judge me, motherfucker, don't think the new, kinder, gentler Eric Cash won't still stab you with a ball point pen. I'll just do it while making soothing, compassionate statements.

I feel calmer, and more centered than I ever have in my life.

I popped into my third session yesterday, feeling like I'd made miles of progress, but not wanting to count my chickens before they were breaded, deep fried, and served with sauce. Heh, and sure enough, guess what we wound up talking about that day?

Self-doubt.

I HAD made all sorts of progress, he was actually really impressed, but every time I'd talk about it, there was a big "BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT..." at the end of it. I'm not good at taking compliments, and I'm REALLY not good at giving them to myself. I always add a postscript. Something shitty, to stink up the good.

We worked on that for a little while. About five or six different times, he had me say something good about myself, WITHOUT saying something to knock it back down afterward. He asked how that felt, and I said, "Like a sentence without a period at the end".

We had a big, philosophical discussion, about balance, Yin and Yang, and loss of ego.

I try to ground things out by doing that, knowing damn well what a megalomaniac I can be, without the ego being reigned in. We talked some more, and I had to agree, that kicking myself in the nuts every time I said something affirmative about myself, was probably NOT exactly creating the idealistic, zen-buddhist balance, and separation of ego that I was attempting. I'm working on that one, personal dogma takes a bit of processing, to alter, but I'm working on it.

But overall, I am making quite a bit of progress, and I do feel pretty damned good about it.

I'm still not really able to be myself, fully, because I'm still micro-managing, but I figured out how to deal with that, as well.

Every time I go out, I approach it like a small social experiment. I go out for short periods of time, and see how much I can be myself, hold a conversation, crack jokes, etc., all the while still managing my anxiety, and keeping it under 12 volts.

I told the doc I'd done pretty well. I'd gone out, and met a few people, held conversation, managed to be slightly funny, and charismatic, and then went the hell home.

The next night, I went out to an open mic, hung out, and managed to whip out the verbal switchblade on some cokehead trying to butt into conversation. Broke that fucker down in about 12 seconds, cut him up good, with two quick strokes, but I felt good about that. The guy was a douche-cicle, and no one wanted him around, I MEANT to be mean that time. And I kept the anxious monster at bay, went right back to having a nice, intelligent, boring-babble-free conversation, and stayed calm. Score one for the home team (The doc laughed his ass off at that. I'm blessed with a good therapist, who actually likes what I'm about).

The next big test was the day before yesterday. I had to go see the ex.

I was freaking out, worried as hell that I'd pop off with something mean, blameful, manipulative, or just plain shitty somehow. Worried I'd start a fight, or break down crying, or just... SOMETHING that I didn't want to do.

I took a lot of deep breaths. I walked most of the way to the house she's staying at, I practiced every little calming, centering trick in the small arsenal of self-help I've built up in the last week.

And I saw her, she gave me a hug (whoo hoo! I liked that, and I didn't lean in with my crotch AT ALL! Way to go, huh?), I told her she looked good, we shot the shit for a minute, and I got the hell out of there and left her alone.

That was good.

Last night, I went to see an old, old friend, that I haven't seen in about 6 years, Phat Man Dee. For those of you that don't know, she's an absolutely INCREDIBLE jazz singer. And a fabulously twisted one, too. She ended the show with her heart wrenching rendition of the National Anthem, that she performs whilst fisting her own mouth. It's incredible, and it will bring tears to your eyes. She claimed later that she did it just for me, she wasn't going to originally, but because I was there, it exploded, in all of it's twisted, disgusting, beautiful glory. I think she was just trying to be nice, and pick up a friend who's a little down, but even if it was a lie, I appreciate the sentiment.

I was her date for the evening, we went out the the Edwardian Ball (okay, THAT thing is way too low key for me, it's more costume and bad acting than fun. Seriously, they could at least have some fucking chairs around... and not charge 10 bucks for a drink...), I carried her shoes around in my pocket all night, managed to keep her from raping me (Mandy is a bit... affectionate), chatted up quite a few old friends, and I coped for as long as I could, about 6 hours total, my new record. I didn't leave because I was freaking, either, I left cuz that thing was more boring than watching legless dogs try to fuck, and because my damned feet hurt.... and because I had beer at home.

But Mandy was a great date, even though I wouldn't let her put out. She even sang me a song, outside, an indescribably beautiful, and touching song she'd written for a friend that died a very tragic death last year. Thanks, bumblebee, and all of the other folks that have stepped in to lend a hand these last few weeks. That was just what I needed. It's good to be loved, especially by such incredibly strange people.

Speaking of which, Ty McKenzie just booked me at StageWerx, for two shows on Friday, Feb. 13th. If you're in the bay area, come by for one, or both. I promise to be funny, I have a whole slew of new stuff I've written, and if luck prevails, I'll be booking a VERY special guest, that isn't to be missed.

I'm a bit better. I'm not out of the woods, but I got a map, and some lunchables now. Things aren't anywhere near as bleak.

Cash Out. For now.

(I'll still be writing, though)

[Doctor Eric]

Adventures in Psychiatry: Stuck in a Tiger Trap

Bumps, scrapes, fear, loathing, and paranoia.


You know what a tiger trap is, right? American soldiers would fall in them in Viet Nam.

It's a big hole in the ground, big enough for a tiger to fall in. And the bottom of the hole is lined with sharpened bamboo stakes, rubbed in human excrement. Shit is poisonous, you know?

I built one and fell in it last week.

Things were going so well. I'd managed to keep my anxiety at a somewhat normal level, I was feeling pretty good about myself, getting work done, wearing pants, eating eggs, the whole nine yards. Then, last Sunday, I had a 24-hour panic attack.

I hesitate, actually, to call my little episodes "panic attacks". I don't have the physical symptoms of a panic attack, the shortness of breath, the hyperventilating, all that. My thing is more like an obsessive, spiralling, worry fit.

It hit on Sunday evening, and it wouldn't stop.

I started worrying about the ex. See, I've been keeping hope alive on that one this whole time. Not only do I think that we just clicked in a really special way, but I've also been using that hope as motivation to work on myself. For the most part, it helps, whatever gets you through the day, right?

But I started worrying that maybe there wasn't hope, that she just hates my guts, and that that won't change. The paranoia set in, and started growing a garden. I started worrying that all of my friends (most of our friends are mutual, and she's hanging out with all of them right now, I'm cut off from them, as well as her/their neighborhood, most days) were against me in all this. I know they aren't, intellectually, but paranoia lives in your gut, and it feeds on your fucking soul.

I worried that she's not reading these things, as if that mattered. I worried that she's never going to. And she may not.

It got worse and worse. I used all of the tricks in my current anti-anxiety arsenal. I did my breathing shit. I said soothing things out loud. I shot the shit out, and looked like Elmer Fudd. I walked about 3 miles, late at night. I tried to find someone to talk to, no dice. It kept growing.

I sent the ex a text, then another, and then an email, once I walked home. I didn't really want to. I want to leave her the hell alone, give her time, and some space, but I couldn't shake this thing. The devil made me do it, I swear.

I drank myself to sleep, I woke up. Still there.

So I tried to ignore it, I got some work done, I cleaned, I had a couple different friends try to talk me down. It would recede for about 45 minutes, and come right back, full force, banshees wailing, thoughts swirling, demons cackling. I couldn't shake it. I probably should have done some writing.

Finally I went out, to my favorite dive bar comedy night, and got roped in to hosting the show. I had an awesome set, had a great time hosting, drank for free, and managed to shake off all the emotional fecal matter I'd managed to roll myself in.

But I was still down. I thought I had gotten better. But I worry, you know? I don't really trust myself. I've gone through these patterns in life before, I've gotten a little bit better, and then crashed again a few months later. I worry that I'm full of shit when I say "I'm getting better". I worry that the same thing is going to happen again. And that it will be worse, each time. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and all that.

But this time IS different. I have help. I have help that I have a lot of faith in. Sopeaking of which, the next day was another session with my therapist. And, of course, that days theme was...

Controlling obsessive behavior.

My doc's quote of the day:


"Cruising your ex-girlfriend's MySpace page? You might as well just hit yourself in the head with a hammer."



I talked to the doc about my fit.

I'm doing better day by day, but I hit stumbling blocks. Basically, I had to tear down all of my internal self-regulating habits, so that I can rebuild them with ones that aren't the emotional equivalent of poking myself in the eye with a sharp stick. So when something comes along that I don't have a new reaction set up for, I can't deal with it.
I don't trust myself right now, so I need my doc to tell me "Yes, in that situation, you can be firm with yourself, not mean, but firm".

He pointed out that when I talk about really extreme fits like that, I externalize it all. I speak from a position of helplessness. I say "it won't stop, it keeps coming."

Now, trust me, I normally don't think of myself as helpless, in the slightest, but when it comes to the rampaging, rabid elephant in my head, yes, he's right. I do act at it's mercy, and let it trample me.

Oddly enough, having him out the simple fact that it's ME doing it, empowered me. All it took was for the doc to say "It's you. You're hurting yourself. When that happens, you need to take a stance with yourself, be firm."

And it works. I say out loud "No, you're not going to do that to yourself." And I move on with my day.

I told him how I'm worrying that I'm completely full of shit. See, I have to micro manage all the time, so I can't exactly act like myself. Which means that I don't feel like I'm sane, I feel like I'm ACTING sane. I've always been able to put on a good act. Hell, most people close to me didn't even realize that I had anxiety problems.

He had me say some positive things about my progress, attempting to say them without self-doubt. That's hard. But I am doing a lot better, I have made a pretty impressive amount of progress, I'm smart enough, I'm good enough, and goddammit, people like me.

Deep thoughts, with Eric Cash.

I talk to myself all the time now. And I think that's a good thing. I look at it this way, I'm broken. If I was a car, no one would be able to fix me without opening up the hood first. So all of the things going on inside me, I bring them up, to the surface, say them out loud, so I can look at them, see where I'm sick, and broken, and get out the wrenches, and get to work.

I use a lot of analogies. But this shit is all really abstract. I told him that I wanted to write down all of the things about me that are broken. I want to see what part of me is sick, so I can look into it's wild, fevered eyes, and talk to it, so I can stroke it's hair, and let it know it can put the knife down, and stop sharpening bamboo.

To be continued.