Birthday Week!

Can you believe this cutey is going to be TWO on Thursday!?!?!

I can't believe I'm going to have a 2 yr old.

No More Buying New

Katy's Earth Day Post made me think about a post I recently read about on Mormon Feminist Housewives. It's called The Mini Compact Pledge.

Since Kate's post, I've been thinking about what we do as a family to reduce our deleterious impact on our dear Mother Earth. The Mini Compact Pledge, is a pledge that this women and her family make for six months from May 1st to Nov 1st.

"Here is the basic rule: No more buying new. There is a general exception for work-related and household necessities (including, obviously, food). Each person will define “necessity” (but don’t cheat and buy yourself a new outfit a week because, hey, you can’t go to work naked). In buying a necessity, buy the most environmentally-friendly option."

"The hardest part is making the decision to do it. You might struggle for a few weeks (so stay away from the shops) but then there is the most amazing sense of freedom. At some point, something strange happens and you realise you really don’t need anything. All of those little trappings are merely wants; and the craving for more will pass. You will discover a bigger bank balance and new depths of creativity. You will probably also find that Compact Karma will kick in - if you really need something, somehow, it will come to you."

I've honestly gone through some shopping addictions in my day, and have REALLY been proud of myself to realize that I have in many ways broken it (Spending too much on the grocery shopping is still a weak point for me.).

When I first read about this woman's pledge, I thought, "How ridiculous! That's impossible." BUT Check out her account from last year on her Year of Non-Consumerism. It's really interesting.

But especially in the past few months while Steve and I have been making an even more concerted effort to keep our expenses as minimal as possible, I realized that we are doing this in a lot of ways.

Eliza has mostly 2nd hand toys, and loves them and doesn't know the difference. A lot of the clothes we buy are 2nd hand, which we can get away with mostly because Mom buys them for us... But all of our furniture except one shelf and one love seat are either 2nd hand or been gifts to us.

And we are cool with that! (actually we're really proud of ourselves when we find freakin' awesome deals like that. Our friends offered us a TV last night, since ours is a teeny 13'' one.)

My parents, Aunt Barbara, and Aunt Joan and Uncle Dean have been great examples for me, on how to live lives without the insatiable drive for MORE! and to not feel the need to "keep up with" anyone else, but be humble and prioritized in their desires and efforts to be environmentally friendly and moderate about their consumerism.

It's a freeing sort of feeling to be able to not be seeking happiness from materials or belongings. That's a never ending drain, always needing the newest and prettiest. Not that I am anywhere near perfect at this, but I am going to make a pledge to NOT BUY NEW for the next 6 months.

Anyone want to try with me?? Any other thoughts?

Slippery Possessions

I don't know what my problem is, but I'm losing everything, including my mind.

Last week, I drove off with my cell phone on the roof of the car. I've actually done this before, but I saw it slid into the rode in front of me at a red light and was able to retrieve it. This time I didn't realize until about 5 minutes down the rode. I was at the grocery store and put it on the roof while I got Eliza into her car seat.

Then I turned around and closed the passenger door while I put the cart away. Then I came back to the car on the driver's side and didn't even think about my poor little phone that was destined to be demolished somewhere on highway 29. So it's gone. If you want to reach me, I can check messages on my voicemail, but otherwise just call Steve's number 8063428.

Soooo, YESTERDAY!! Even worse. Eliza and I were leaving the gym. I was carrying the diaper bag and my gym bag. I set the diaper bag into the car and put my gym back down on the ground, while I strapped Eliza in. Then closed the door to go around to the driver's side (see the theme?) and must have left my gym bag in the parking lot.

Steve went by an hour later and it was gone. The gym said no one had turned anything in to the lost and found either.

Unfortunately, in my gym bag I had my tennis shoes, work out clothes, MAKEUP BAG, Hygeine bag with brush, deoderant, victoria secret perfume, soap, shampoo/conditioner, etc. The worst, though, is that it also had my WALLET in it!!! ahhhh! ::deep sigh::

No one's tried to call me yet to return it either, so I guess it's time to start cancelling the debit card and credit cards. That person's probably going to be pretty dissapointed to find that there's not really any money there. I guess I need to go through the stupid DMV process for my license too. BLAH BLAH BLAH. I hate making those kind of calls and errands.

Wish me luck. :( Sorry to whine.

Top 10 Myths about Mental Illness: Myths #2 and #3

Myth #2: People with a severe mental illness, such as schizophrenia, are usually dangerous and violent.

Fact: Statistics show that the incidence of violence in people who have a brain disorder is not much higher than it is in the general population. Those suffering from a psychosis such as schizophrenia are more often frightened, confused and despairing than violent.

(The movie, A Beautiful Mind, is a great portrayal of a man living with schizophrenia.)

"Schizophrenia is a serious brain disorder that distorts the way a person thinks, acts, expresses emotions, perceives reality, and relates to others. It is a life-long disease that cannot be cured, but usually can be controlled with proper treatment." (Web MD)

I thought it might be interesting for people to know about the different types of schizophrenia. I think that most of the general population have no idea what Schizophrenia is. And many people confuse it with Dissasociative Identity Disorder (DID, used to be referred to as Multiple Personalities).

Types of Schizophrenia

1. Disorganized schizophrenia – This type of presentation is characterized by disorganized or incoherent speech and the expression of inappropriate moods and emotions based on the social situation. Generally, there are no hallucinations.
2. Paranoid schizophrenia – Characterized by being very suspicious of others and often have grand schemes of persecution at the root of their behavior. Hallucinations and delusions are a prominent part of the paranoid behavior.
3. Residual schizophrenia – In this type the patient is not experiencing delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech and behavior. However they suffer from a lack of motivation and interest in day-to-day living.
4. Schizoaffective disorder – This is a combination of symptoms. The person exhibits the symptoms of schizophrenia combined with mood disorders such as major depression, bipolar mania, or mixed mania.
5. Catatonic schizophrenia – Is characterized by profound social withdrawal and isolation. There are also marked psychomotor disturbances.
6. Undifferentiated Schizophrenia – This is a subtype where individuals meeting diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia but not fitting into any of the other subtypes are placed. Also, if they exhibit the features of more than one of the other subtypes without a clear predominance of a particular set of diagnostic characteristics are placed in this category.

We've had many people diagnosed with schizophrenia come through our program, and even more diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder. Some of them are fairly "high functioning," holding jobs and living in group homes, or sometimes even on their own.

One of my "favorite?" schizophrenic clients was this big burly guy with a bushy gray beard, big belly. He was like 6'5'' or maybe taller. He lived in an assisted living center for adults with mental health, but was sent to us to be more stabilized on his medication and get closer to what we call his "base line." If you judged him by his appearance, and I think if most people saw him walking down the street, they would think, "that man looks crazy!" And probably a little daunting.

However, his most disruptive symptom was that he could hear and see fairies and little people. They would tell him to leave out candy and food for them and tell him to do other things. Unfortunately this meant that staff and other clients would find like moldy cheese on top of the fridge that he left for them and little food items under his bed or at the back of his shelves. He built a "Scarecrow" out in our courtyard to scare away evil using our broom and some of our yoga blankets.

One day he fixed up a big plate of lunch, and we assumed he was going to have his lunch. But then he fixed himself another lunch to eat and left the first plate outside on the picnic table for the little people but mostly it just started attracting bugs and flies. The worst part was that this same day the little people told him to eat a whole banana peel so he tried, but ended up gagging on it and throwing up.

Our psychiatrists increased his anti-psychotic medicine, though, and he began to return to more balanced state where he was able to have more insight that these visual and auditory hallucinations were in fact, hallucinations, and so he could return to his assisted living facility. That's kinda a success story for our program- haha.

Maybe we (my coworkers and I) seem callous that we laugh about this, however, it's nice to have a break from some of the more disturbing symptoms that also consistently come through like persons who are explosively angry and combative (usually not schizophrenic, though, more likely diagnosed antisocial personality disorder) or actively self-harming by cutting or being suicidal. For example, I was counseling a woman with major depressive disorder (recurrent, severe) who threw a book against the wall while we were talking.

Another thing I find interesting about schizophrenia is the age of onset:

• It typically begins in early adulthood; between the ages of 15 and 25.
• Men tend to get develop schizophrenia between 16 and 25 years old. Average is 18.
• Most females develop symptoms between the ages of 25 to their early 30's! Average is 25.
• Schizophrenia onset is quite rare for people under 10 years of age, or over 40 years of age.

Myth #3: Mental illness is the result of bad parenting.


Fact: Most experts agree that a genetic susceptibility, combined with other risk factors, leads to a psychiatric disorder. In other words, mental illnesses have a physical cause.


I hope that this fact can bring comfort to a lot of parents. Axis II personality disorders show more evidence of being related to early childhood trauma or lack of healthy emotional modeling or nurturing. Axis I disorders like Major Depression, Bipolar I and II, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, DID, Schizophrenia, Schizoaffective, Schizotypal, dysthymic disorder, and other variations of these. Oft times, people are diagnosed with an Axis I disorder and an Axis II disorder.

I worry a lot about Eliza and joke that I wonder what ways I've already messed her up. I know that it's inevitable that she will have plenty to talk about to a therapist when she reaches adulthood; however, I hope that genetically, she does not inherit some of the mood disorders that appear to be somewhat prevalent in our family.

One reason I combined these two myths is because when psychiatrist first began to diagnose people with schizophrenia they said that the main cause was bad mothering! They believed this for decades and said that obsessive, domineering mothers created stressed-out, psychotic kids who couldn't cope with reality.

Thankfully, we now know that schizophrenia, along with many other mental health disorders are caused by brain disease, in that the brain's structure is actually changed, with an extremely high genetic link.

Another thought I'd like to put out there is that blame and guilt that we, as parents or family members, should consider is that this is not a productive way of thinking. Instead of searching for someone to blame it on, spend the energy researching the disorders and finding out how to be the kind of support that your family member or child is in need of.

I think it's hard to not feel betrayed or angry about the presence of mental illness in yourself or your loved ones, and not ask Why me? Why my family member?

However, in my documentation and evaluations of clients at work, we look at their general insight into their situation. Some insights are labeled as good, fair, blaming, disorganized. The blaming insight is unerstandable, however, it can prevent people from going deeper into the step of how to start incorporate copings skills to help improve things.

Thoughts? Questions? Comments?

(I was happily surprised by the insightful and interesting comments I received with my last post, so hopefully I didn't get too excited about go overboard in my length and content in this post. Feel free to let me know! :))

Top Ten Myths about Mental Illness: #1

Source: PRNewswire

"Misconceptions about mental illness are pervasive, and the lack of understanding can have serious consequences for millions who have a psychiatric illness," according to NARSAD (or the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression).

NARSAD is the largest not-for-profit organization raising and distributing funds for psychiatric research, and they surveyed mental health professionals nationwide to determine the most common myths about mental illness. NARSAD received 102 responses from the experts.

"Misconceptions about mental illness contribute to the stigma, which leads many people to be ashamed and prevents them from seeking help," said Constance Lieber, NARSAD President. "Dispelling these myths is a powerful step toward eradicating the stigma and allaying the fears surrounding brain disorders."

As many of you know, I have spent the last year and a half working with adults dealing with acute mental illnesses and related crises. I do individual and group counseling and case management stuff. I've had the chance to hear a lot of tragic stories and work with some amazing individuals.

I've worked with people with major depression, drug and alcohol addiction, homelessness, sexual abuse history (abused and abusers), domestic violence (both the abused and abusers), schizophrenia, and much more. One of my supervisors forwarded this article title "Top Ten Myths about Mental Illness" to me, and I'd like to use it to open up a discussion on mental health, sharing my opinions on each of the 10 myths, one or two myths at a time for the next week or so.

Top Ten Myths about Mental Illness
Myth #1: Psychiatric disorders are not true medical illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. People who have a mental illness are just "crazy."

Fact: Brain disorders, like heart disease and diabetes, are legitimate medical illnesses. Research shows there are genetic and biological causes for psychiatric disorders, and they can be treated effectively.

I can't count how many times I've tried to convince my clients that they need to consider their mental illness as a disease, and that just like diabetes, you need to monitor your symptoms daily and use coping methods to counter-act those symptoms. And many of my clients say that they have never thought of it this way.

It hurts my heart to think about how many people believe this myth, that psychiatric disorders aren't real medical illnesses.

I think that many people who have never experienced serious mental illness believe, perhaps not even consciously, that those who struggle with mental illness are just weaker or lazier than themselves, and that's why they are struggling. (I'll talk about this more later this week.)

There are real chemical imbalances. There are synapses on the nerves that are firing messages through the brain that are not getting to the right destinations. There are imbalanced seritonin levels. That is why there is psychiatric medication, which is a proven intervention for mental illness. (Intervention not cure)

From Web MD, "Experts believe genetic traits, along with stressful events, illness, medications, or other factors, can lead to an imbalance of certain brain chemicals called neurotransmitters, causing depression. "

There are many different conditions that can trigger these imbalances, though, such as chronic stressors, social stressors, drugs or alcohol use, hormones, recent child birth, long term diseases, and even types of infections.

(However, mental illnesses are classified into two seperate divisions in the DSMIV. There a mood disorders (Axis I) and thought disorders (Axis II). Mood disorders are like depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia. Thought disorders are personality disorders like Narcissistic, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder. Thought disorders have less research supporting the effectiveness of medicine as the primary means of treatment. Insurance companies don't pay for medications related to Axis II disorders.)

But I look forward to continue to discuss this concept more later this week.

Thoughts? Anyone read this whole thing?

Confessions

That's me winking, in case you can't tell ;)

I learned quickly that if I was going to survive mommy-hood, there was no room for being a control freak. So it's been interesting picking my battles with my adorable toddler, Eliza Monster!!! Here are some confessions that I think are funny and not terrible enough to be locked deep in my mommy vault.

1. Yesterday, Eliza and I were leaving Mother Goose story time at the library and made a pit stop at the bathroom. While I was washing my hands, Eliza ran from one stall to the next flushing the toilet, then running to the next toilet and flushing that one and running back to the other, and so on. She did this like 5 times. I thought about how most moms would intervene. Instead I shrugged and rearranged the diaper bag in the stroller. Sanitary? No. Environmentally friendly conservation of water? No. Safe? Not so much.
2. Eliza and I were sharing oreo's this afternoon. Yum. We were dipping them in milk and munching. This got messy fast with 'Liza creating a chocolate goatee and chocolate coated hands. Eliza held her hands up to me and said, "Messy!" and then I realized that I apparently have not taught her to use napkins because she started trying to wipe her hand off on her dress. I stopped her and so she immediately started wiping her hands off on my skirt. Again, Yum. After wiping her down with wipes, I found residual damage on the ground that looked like chocolate rain splotches on our floor. More scrubbing ensued. (This is a confession also b/c I felt guilty about feeding her oreo's. But not really. More like I felt like I should feel guilty for giving her oreo's. Hence I felt guilty for not feeling guilty.)
3. Today Finnegan was resting on one of our chairs. Eliza found him and grabbed his tail and started pulling. Finnegan dug his claws into the chair. I looked up from whatever I was doing in the kitchen when I heard a dragging sound. Eliza was dragging the chair across the floor via the cat's tail. Poor Kitty.
4. Eliza dropped some yogurt covered raisins on the floor of the doctor's office this morning. I didn't even move to stop her. 10 second rule? Some other lady there was like, "Oh! don't eat that off the floor!" right as Eliza popped it into her mouth.

5. I put on a Little Einstein movie for Eliza to watch while I blogged about this.

6. I have started packing boxes slowly, getting ready for our move. I've gotten about 15 packed so far and a lot of organization done.
When I pack boxes, I put Eliza in a box. She loves it. Seriously.

(Eliza's wearing her Brazilian soccer outfit from Uncle Robby)

In other news, I've loved getting to play soccer this season. Steve and Eliza came to my last two games. Every time I got subbed in Eliza started sobbing as I ran onto the field. However, Steve said that she's been able to track me on the field. Apparently when I go in for a tackle, though, she often says, "Mommy, oh no!" or says "Uh oh!"
She has learned how to cheer, though! Steve said that during our last game, Eliza yelled, "Come on guys! Go!" So... she already cheers louder than Steve. Nice to have some fans! :)

Egg Hunter

Happy Easter! Our neighbors were running out the door to church at the same time as us and offered to photograph our family, and so we could take pics of theirs too. It's priceless to get the opportunity to get all three of us in one picture. Love it!

Our neighbors are a sweet family that have two boys, one a little older than Eliza and one a little younger. She LOVES when they're outside at the same time that she is. We'll miss Everett and Tate when we move.




Saturday Morning was our ward's Easter Party complete with a building wide egg hunt (excluding the chapel) for the kids and a visit from someone dressed as the Easter bunny and a brunch. Eliza's reaction to the Easter Bunny was one of fear. She would sign a scared shiver to us when we'd ask her about whether she wanted to see the easter bunny or not. I figure not trusting a strange, giant, furry creature is probably a pretty good instinct, though, so no big deal. Hehe.
Eliza scored a pretty good amount of eggs. We found a small sunday school classroom with like 10 eggs in it and no big kids around. The door just happened to close behind us so Eliza had free reign. We caught a video of that too!



I went to the movie Coraline a few weeks ago which is 3D, so here is Eliza rockin' the 3D glasses and neon orange paci. Totally rad.

Hope you all had a great Easter.

By the way, all the Eliza outfits featured in this post were thanks to Oma! Thanks, Mom!

Sleepy 'Liza

So I mentioned that we installed the toddler bar on Eliza's crib last week, so that she's now in her Big Girl Bed!

This installation has spawned many a disruption to our otherwise peaceful nights and naptimes. Forutunately, I believe we are on the downhill (knock on wood). The last two nights, it only took Eliza one reminder to get back in her bed and go to sleep. YAY!

We were all getting a little bit grumpy.

It kind of felt like when we originially "sleep trained" Eliza back when she was like 4 months old, having to let her cry it out. After one week of consistent, exhausting, hard work, it really started working.

For anyone one who's actually curious, some of the things we had to do to help make this work was to install Eliza's old baby gate on her door frame, so she can open her door and call for us and not just fall asleep behind the closed door on the ground. There were some times in the middle of the night that I would hear her and go check on her and she'd be whimpering to herself in a yoga-like child's pose on our wood floor behind the door. SOooo sad, I know.

We also give her a sippy cup to go to bed with but if we had to remind her to go back to bed more than 3 x's, then we took away her cup (after warning her). But when we go in to check on her a few minutes later and she's still in her bed, she can get it back and we give her lots of praise for staying in her bed.

I also gave her the opportunity to choose which of her stuffed animals or books she wants in her bed with her to make it a little more exciting for her, but I don't think I needed to because she acts like she likes it a lot. I think most of all she likes that it gives her more independence. There's not much Eliza likes more than that! Independence and Ba-ba's (pacifiers).

It's April, Fool!

This is my favorite April Fool's joke this year:

click here:
Announcing: SLC Feminist First Ward

I wish it were real.... :(

FYI- Don't go read it if you are sexist and think Feminists are evil or stupid (and don't tell me about it either).