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New Book Release, On Sale Now

From the author of “In the Shambles: Revised” comes the next installment in a collection of works that you have never quite experienced before. Unlike its predecessor, “In the Last Place I Saw You: A collection of Poetry for the Misfit, the Lost, the Grieving, and the Hopeless Romantics” is not a haunted and captivating confession. It is an illustration. In the Last Place I Saw You” is like walking into a fever dream of the imagination. It embraces and articulates without hesitation just how far the mind will go to live through the things we never expected to face or have to live through. It summons the curious voyeur of tragedy and commiserates with those who were left behind in the spaces that steal our rationality like sunlight in order to survive. - In the Last Place I Saw You Click on the photo to be redirected and purchase on Amazon.

The Truth About  Major Depressive Disorder Author Stephanie Fjetland M.S.S.W., F.D.S What is "Major Depressive Disorder"? This is a loaded question to me. Finding it to be one of the most Googled mental health topics over and over again made me put it on my top ten starter topics for my mental health and social justice blog, "Kinda Unprofessional" hosted on "The Petty Cow". It was such a commonly searched and cited issue, that almost immediately, I knew that it had to become my second topic out of the almost 200 topics I told myself that I would write freely  about.  People ask this question for a lot of reasons. They need an answer for how they or someone they love is feeling or behaving. They want or desire validation, reference, or resource towards an answer that goes deeper than just questioning the powers of the internet. The reality of what someone is feeling and thinking when printed in black and white holds a lot of weight to the reader. The complications behind the information are at the discretion of the writer. The motive behind the writing then becomes who am I answering this question for? What do I know? What do I believe they need to know? How can I be of use to those asking? That’s how I walk into this topic. I could do an essay based on regurgitating the DSM V criteria, which I do touch on here to some extent.  I could hire someone with a PHD to write 1500 clinical and respectable words about the topic and hope the algorithm finds me useful enough to get site views.  Alternatively, I could approach it like I do everything. Carefully, with respect, with disclosure, with experience, and with far too many words for one article.  I had to remind myself that my mission is to be useful and concise. I choose to start with the most basic psychosocial and educational explanation of the topic. Then explain the diagnostic criteria for the decision. Then I go into the things I don't believe anyone else credentialed is willing to tell you. I believe everyone needs to have access to information. With that being said, I believe they also need the opportunity to understand the information. Over the course of my career, more than anything, the thing my former patients and clients needed and appreciated about me was that I told them the truth. Major Depressive Disorder is defined as a diagnosable psychological and chemical mental disorder that affects the way a person feels, thinks, functions and behaves. It is characterized by not just the manifestation of low mood and sadness. It is a chronic imbalance. It is a cyclic and episodic. When authentic it is lethal when untreated. Major Depressive Disorder is diagnosed by clinically observing the symptoms in historical report, physical presentation over time, biology, psychosocial history, and when done correctly it is diagnosed after a full spectrum initial assessment and clinical interview using scientific testing and tools like questionnaires or scaled symptom surveys designed by empirically designed by psychologists. It is not something that should be given as a label during a fifteen minute interview while in crisis. Just because a person feels depressed it does not mean they have a serious chronic mood disorder. When transparent and best practicing, Major Depressive Disorder is a serious condition that shouldn’t be taken lightly. There are several other types of depression or explanations for psychological depression, physiological depression, and social or occupational dysfunction. It is important to know that just because you are depressed doesn’t mean you have major depression disorder. Alternatively, it also means that if a person does have it, it can be managed when appropriately diagnosed and treated.  Whatever type of experience someone might be seeking answers to, there can be hope.  If a person has experienced a trauma, loss, or is going through a circumstantial or biological transition there is a good chance their symptoms can be managed or changed by gaining insight, therapies, non medicinal treatment modules, and time.  "Depression" when reported in layman’s terms is not a good barometer for a true prognosis of illness.  Don’t allow yourself to count yourself out as hopeless because you're feeling dissonant or traumatized and don’t have the words to explain it to yourself. Those are different things with different causes and implications.  At the same time, if you continue to meet criteria for Major Depressive Disorder and are suffering the effects of such symptoms you may very well benefit from and find relief from the appropriate treatments. There is a dangerously fine line in between mood and medicine. If you are thinking of harming yourself or someone else please go to the bottom of the page and call someone for help. So what are the symptoms and diagnostic  criteria for Major Depressive Disorder? Diagnostics begin with the experience of multiple congruent symptoms that onset and establish for over at least a two week time period. Meaning a person is having multiple symptoms at the same time and they are unchanged over a measurable period of time at minimum.  If you lost someone to death, lost your job, or ended a long term relationship last week you may feel trapped in depression but it doesn’t mean it is major depressive disorder.  That is not said to negate the severity of the feelings or the potential of risk of self that those circumstances might create. Those are valid, complicated, and life altering experiences. These experiences deserve the opportunity of time and discernment to be treated as such for the best outcome before being labeled as a chronic mood disorder. You can be devastated by an event and not be suicidal. You can be chronically suicidal and have your sociological and rational needs met.  The foundation you build your truth and treatment plan from deserves to be fully informed and appropriately assessed, period.  Two people may present with the same feelings and symptoms in one moment but one might need time and psychological processing in therapy temporarily then return to fully functioning. Meanwhile another expressing the same feelings and perceptions might need life long medication management to achieve a functional baseline or continue to decline despite motivation for change. Major Depressive Disorder is overdiagnosed as a gateway to treatment in more settings than it should be. It is often an umbrella disorder used by ten minute clinicians in order to open the door to insurance benefits and billing in different levels of treatment and therapies.  It is often blanketly misdiagnosed as it is used as an initial excuse to treat a patient in a moment of crisis without acuity, and it often leads to psychotropic medications and treatment planning that is inappropriate for the individual patient in their long term reality.  I cannot leave that information out.  The diagnosis of this disorder is a double edged sword not to be taken lightly.  That being said, lets focus on what it is and what to do about it.  The diagnostic criteria for MDD per the current diagnostics manual, The DSMV, include experiencing at least four of the following symptoms for at least two weeks and more.  Symptoms include:  Loss of interest Depressed mood Weight gain or loss Psychomotor agitation or retardation Feeling worthless or unjustifiably guilty Decreased concentration and Thoughts of death or suicide

When the disorder is active, the manifestation of the combination of these symptoms begins to outwardly affect a person physically, socially, and occupationally if untreated or inappropriately treated. If you are able and insightful, do a self check with yourself and your symptoms. If you don’t remember how you have been feeling or behaving or how long you've felt that way, write down how you assess yourself today and make a goal to revisit your thoughts and what you wrote down after two weeks go by.  This allows you to see where you find yourself currently and again after tracking yourself for a measurable interval of time.  In two weeks time you might have motivated yourself out of what could have been a dark time or circumstance or you might find yourself deciding it is time to seek potential treatment for symptoms that are sustaining.  Symptoms don’t equal forever or a lifetime in reality. Feeling depressed may go as deep as forever emotionally but understanding that it is a chemical response and can potentially be changed for the better is empowering.  If you find yourself still suffering the side effects of depression or another disorder, allow yourself the muster and priority to seek treatment. You deserve it.  Take what you wrote with you when you seek and find help.  Statistics for Major Depressive Disorder show the disorder is more prominent in women, adolescence, and people claiming more than one cultural ethnicity. Risk factors include heredity, substance use, socioeconomic disprivilege, intellectual delay, and trauma. You can read the specifics in the references section at the end of this article. What you need to know is like I mentioned previously Major Depressive Disorder is a diagnostic double edge sword. It is often over diagnosed and misdiagnosed used as a catch all blanket diagnostic in early stages of treatment.  A "working" or "initial" diagnosis is just a starting point for clinicians and doctors to use in filing insurance claims for treatment. While doctors are required to name what illness or disorder they will be treating in order to be reimbursed by health insurances, true diagnostics require time. They also require historical review and the assessment of symptoms over time to be diagnosed accurately.  In acute inpatient settings and many county funded mental health authority clinics the treatable conditions are limited to only a few specific and over generalized diagnostics. Sometimes the only way a person gets treatment is by getting qualified to be treated for the wrong thing.   Major Depressive Disorder is often used as a way for hospitals and indigent clinics to qualify a person or their payor source in order to receive payment. Healthcare is an industry not a person.  If person who lost a loved one to death goes into an inpatient psychiatric treatment facility for suicidal ideations during early bereavement the hospital can't bill their insurance for grief or circumstantial depression.  The hospital has to label them something they can get paid for. So doctor's narrow their opinions down to the most likely left on the list of things they know they can get paid for.   The patient may not actually need or benefit from the treatment planning or medications that are approved to be used for treating a chronic mood disorder. It might be detrimental or hinder progress. First time inpatient patients are often discharged for follow up outpatient care that may or may not continue in approximate or appropriate treatment.  They might be set up for failure at the gate. Oftentimes therapy is recommended but unattainable as an out of pocket cost. Contemporarily  clinicians are more often choosing not to work with insurances and offer cash only services to provide services at all.   Charity and sliding scale programs often require proof of low income and indigence. They often have waitlists and long admission processes that delay the patient from being able to continue recommended treatment or the refilling medications started by hospital doctors. Stopping these medications can be dangerous and create the patient more problems psychologically and biologically than they started with.  The experience of running into complicated social service access barriers while already in a state of mood episode or crisis is frustrating and defeating. Trying to find help and being denied access often makes the person seeking help feel more depressed and hopeless as they run into roadblocks and dramatically discontinue mind altering psychotropic medications.  The diagnosis and treatment of Major Depressive Disorder is not something to be taken lightly. While you may very well be suffering the symptoms of an imbalance I think everyone deserves the empowerment of being informed of the reality of contemporary practices in medicine and social welfare. These systems and processes put in place for treatment are often not acting in the best interest of the person in the real world. There may be some setbacks and roadblocks to finding a course to effective and accessible resources that work.  Major Depression is a cyclic and chronic condition. It's truth is that there will be more episodes over time. It will likely relapse. It will require maintenance to keep an established baseline. Once in remission, it will require diligence in preventative measures and supports to help prevent and lessen the future onset of symptoms. A person may find their perfect drug or reason for living in their first battle with symptoms but those cases are often not true major depression.  Consequences of unmanaged or inappropriately treated Major Depression often result in more the person experiencing exaggerated symptoms and further social and occupational impairment. Death by suicide is a common side effect of the symptoms of the illness when untreated.  The reality is that it is a true disorder and should be respected as such. The silver lining is that it can also be treated in a way that restores the person's quality of life and functioning when resources are accessible.  Education is the key to empowerment and progress.  Resilience comes from continuing to seek options and retaining your will to survive while surviving something difficult. We all have that in us.  I like to think that if we took all the social and political implications of mental health practices off the table, everyone could find their way to a balanced and sustainable life they enjoy living. If you or someone you know is experiencing the symptoms listed please seek resources for appropriate treatment. It can change your life.  If you are struggling to access services and feel hopeless in your quest for relief please know those feelings are real and valid. You deserve better than our system is set up. Please don't allow these barriers to prevent you from continuing to try to find your way to a healthy lifestyle. I struggle with what resources to offer since I am distrusting and jaded after spending a career in clinical social work and human service. I am also not practicing, not treating, and not liable for the consequences of anyone's thoughts, choices, or behaviors.  NAMI is a great starting place for resources and education.  They can help guide you to resources in your area. Service areas have so many differences that I can do justice to a single individual while speaking globally to the whole.  NAMI is an excellent place to find information and education for a variety of mental health disorders and resources. It is supportive to family members seeking guidance and support. It is national and regionalized. You can visit their site here.

https://nami.org/Home If you are looking for something to change how you feel for the better in this moment and you aren't tired of reading, check out my last post "15 Things You Can Do Right Now to Recover From a Setback" below. https://thepettycow.com/2022/07/24/15-things-you-can-do-right-now-to-recover-from-a-setback/ If you are thinking of harming yourself or someone else please call your local mental health authority or hotline number for crisis intervention and referral.  These symptoms can come to pass. Time and circumstances will come to change. It can get better.  The national suicide crisis operates twenty four hours a day by calling the number or visiting their website below. https://988lifeline.org/ If you enjoyed this article please comment, share, like The Petty Cow on social media and join the mailing list for updates on new content on other topics. Our goal is achieve sustainable revenue though ads and traffic that allow for the content to remain free for everyone. If you want to support the causes check out our store or you can donate below.

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by Stephanie Fjetland M.S.S.W, F.D.S.

I came up with over two hundred mental health related topics before remembering that part of making a legitimate business is gaining traffic from people who are searching for answers or readers who return to content on purpose. Since I am broke, as proven, at that point it became important to understand what kind of mental health information people were searching for.  I was self assured I would probably know some type of an answer for everyone. I'm a leo, my ego is bigger than I am at times.  My first ten or so article topics came from reading Google's list of most Googled mental health questions. I found it comforting and serendipitous. At the top of the list were questions like, "How to recover from an episode," "How to be resilient."...and " How to make a comeback." and more.  Those are the things that I don't only have the credentialing to discuss, but those are also the things I have already done. That is what matters to the people asking those questions. I know truth and experience go much further than empirical data with real live people living real lives. Considering the questions, "How to Recover From an Episode or Set Back." seemed the best place to start my mission to educate from my experience and reality.  Do I need to tell the world where I was this time last year in order to be perceived as valid? Only time and discretion will tell. This topic seemed like a critical entry point in introducing the type of content I want to provide. I feel it sets a  foundation for future entries.  I decided it was best not to interpret the questions in abstract ways but to answer the one question with the most basic,  proven, tangible, and literal strategies I know. People that are in dark and desperate places asking dark and desperate questions don't want my human interest story. They want help. They need specific, tangible, and free resources or direction. With an overwhelming amount of ideas, I decided my first entry needed to be in list format. I'd highlight ten things that almost anyone can do without cost or offense that will benefit them towards the better self and mind. It would also be credible and scientific.  The results of my suggestions might not be instantaneous psychologically. Still the action behind the results can be instantaneous physiologically.  The results we are seeking to feel validated by, when trying to regenerate ourselves, are almost never immediate.  It is the exposure to the benefits of a practice, the implementation of ideas, or the modification of a behavior that science has proven to be able to creep up on us towards our benefit. There are things that are good for us on a physiological and psychological level that the majority of us can’t really begin to understand the intricacies of.  These are coping skills and behaviors that literally make us heal and feel better no matter how down and out or self sabotaging we are. It's too our default that we might now be able to feel it or believe it at that moment in time. Positive change feeds and breeds positive change. A stable baseline is the goal for building the foundation we grow and change from as humans.  Before you can 'bounce back' or “make a comeback,” you have to be able to get up and move. You need to be able to think clearly and rationally. You need your basic needs met. You need time to recognize the process of change.  There are a lot of ways you can change your physical state of mind and body for the better while going through something difficult or traumatic.  These suggestions also work  while you are working to build yourself back from an episode, loss, trauma, or setback. I thought it was most important to start there.  These are things scientifically proven to enhance your mental health that can be done for free and on your demand with appropriate placement and discretion. I went over ten items, I apologize, I am working on that. 15 Things You Can Do Right Now to Recover from a Setback  1.     Sleep. Your brain needs recovery time. Science can't stop telling us how important sleep is. It is the time your brain shuts your body down physically to process and consolidate information and regenerate your psyche.  Regular solid sleep hygiene is the number one thing doctors, clinicians, and scientists recommend for supporting and stabilizing a mental baseline.

Without sleep your mind and body cannot function homeostatically. This ultimately ends up affecting things like mental agility, perceptions, and mood. Even if you don’t like to sleep or feel alert and don’t want to sleep, doing it anyway is critical to creating and maintaining. A stable sleep cycle is the best thing you can do for yourself in order to thrive.   2.      Go outside. You’re a human being. You need sunlight and fresh air. Ten years ago that would sound almost condescending but having survived the Covid-19 Pandemic globally, we all have a new understanding of what isolation can do to our minds. Anxiety, social anxiety, and depression grow as the walls close in if we don’t go outside and expose ourselves to the elements of nature that were meant to enhance our lives as creatures of the Earth. 

We need vitamins from sunlight and oxygen from plants and trees. If you find yourself stuck in your own world without leaving over time you will lose the motivation to leave and decompensate mentally and physically. Even if you don’t want to do it. Go outside. Take a walk. Breathe in new and open air. You need it.   3.      Talk to someone. Keeping the need for outside exposure in mind, we as people, don’t just need air and sunlight. We need social engagement to prevent getting stuck in our own narrowing worlds. I am not saying go to therapy or tell someone your darkest secrets. I am saying to have human interaction in society regularly. Texting and phone calls limit our exposure to the reality of our society and humanism. Even if the only thing you do is interact with a cashier at the gas station, say hello to a stranger at the park, or go to work, those things keep you and your mind engaged socially. Talk to someone everyday. I cannot express this enough.  4. Take a Shower and Other Basic Hygiene. These things aren't just healthy for you and make you feel better. They establish a healthy preventative maintenance routine, boost immunity, enhance mood, and help avoid social awkwardness and stigma.  They are also the first habits that tend to start slipping when someone falls into a depression or starts losing insight and judgment to psychosis.  I don't know how many patients I have seen wander hospitals responding to internal stimuli or sunken with suicidality and depression go without bathing for weeks.   Then, after a few days of medical monitoring and setting goals to shower and change their clothing, they wake up and decide to do it. Then they do it. The change in their progress and mood is indescribable. It is almost instantaneous. Once the desire to take care of themselves returns and they see a path of action that is achievable, they achieve.  I always tell the people in my life to watch their daily habits. Especially if prone to mental illness. If they can notice a change in routine maintenance and hygiene they can choose to act on these things preventatively and possibly avoid or lessen an oncoming episode.  5.      Exercise- It may sound condescending in a time of need but we all know by now that physical exercise is good for us in so many ways that we have been indoctrinated into a world that pretty much tells us that we have to do it to live.  As a human being, so far, I have found this to be true.  The other side of this is that not only does it improve our biological functioning and boost our confidence, it enhances mood. If you’re stuck in a bad episode of dissonance or depression, a good workout will change your mood and your physiological processing. It may be hard to talk yourself into starting if depressed or sedentary but if you do it anyway, science  says that you will change the way you feel and have a better life longevity.   6.      Masturbate-  I’m sure this one will catch attention but it is just as reasonable and scientific as the topics above and below it. When you orgasim, you relieve tension and release powerful endorphins. 

Those are the chemicals that make our brains perceive feelings emotionally and physically. As long as you use discretion in choosing time and location, masturbating is a quick way to get in touch with yourself and reset how you feel psychologically and physically.  It exerts excess energies and chemically changes the way we feel inside our bodies and minds. It is an excellent, on the spot, coping strategy when executed responsibly.   7.        Eat and Hydrate- Not to sound like the  cocky sidekick of “exercise” eating and hydrating is something we forget to take in mind when we are living in society. We get busy and forget to eat, eat unhealthily, and at odd times. We diet and binge. We swear off food categories and we lose portion control. It takes mindfulness to maintain a healthy diet. I’m not saying you need to commit to a program in a time of crisis. I’m saying, do you know when the last time you ate or drank water and had some electrolytes was? Do you know if your body has the fuel it needs biologically? Do you know if your blood sugar or dehydration level has started to have physical effects on your body or your brain? 

 If you find yourself angry and tired without reason, see what happens if you stop and eat something and drink some water. You might not even remember how bad you felt before and be able to think more clearly.  8.      Set Goals- Goal setting is something I have come to find myself doing daily to navigate myself through difficult times towards a positive and progressive present. Writing something down and putting the parameters of time on it not only helps you psychologically affirm the desire to achieve something but it leaves you proof of the accomplishment after the fact. That will set the deck against negative self talk and stagnation.  You know you want or need to complete a task in order to reach whatever outcome you desire. Your mind solidifies it into a motivated memory point for the inspiration of behavioral change. It reminds you that you want something.  It shows you that you believe it can be achieved.

 Achievement and change shape our self confidence and build our physical and material reality. Sometimes my goals are as simple as trying something new or learning something new within the year.  I create a list every year of things I want to do or experience and hang it on the wall.  One year that was how I learned to make cheesecake. One year it was why I made time to go to my favorite place, the beach to make memories.  Goal setting has allowed me to see some cool concerts, get certified in cool skills professionally, make some of the money I needed, and psychologically process. It allowed me to navigate my reality with an action plan while I ran out a few statute of limitations.  This year my goals are daily and simple. I can’t think as abstractly or complexly as I used to. I have to chronically reinforce my belief in myself in basic and tangible ways to stay sane.  Sometimes my goals are just to get through the day at work and go to the grocery store. Sometimes they are to write something. Sometimes they are to let go of something subconsciously. My record for follow through is far better when I sit down and write it out and put a time limit on it.   Whatever you are trying to live through, motivate, change, or create for yourself, the act of writing it down begins the brainstorming of logical action planning and success. You deserve that. You deserve to see that you believe you can do it.     9.      Self Check and Introspection. Be honest with yourself. I don’t lie to myself as a practice. I can hold myself accountable to myself. When I take the time to introspect.  It’s easy to get caught up living by the rules of survival and fall into the consequences of human behavior in complicated social dynamics.  We start thinking or behaving in ways that affect us negatively in body, mind, and spirit. I know myself pretty well. I have some default tendencies and maladaptive coping strategies that have run up and punched me in the face with self sabotage. My brain and body have experienced some major traumas. I understand that is going to have its deficits.   In my meditation planning I have  a bullshit checkpoint. I make it a point to stop and get grounded. Then I  think about things in my life literally, logically, and objectively. I have to be my own devil’s advocate. I can’t just get back on my bullshit and stay there. It wouldn’t be my bullshit if it was a state for progress. 

I know myself. I know that I have an inclination towards impulsivity. I prefer to think irrationally. I am ignorant to so many things that it is a scary disadvantage. I'm also over-educated. I take time to ask myself if what I am doing and what I am thinking or feeling is logical. Is it true to myself? I regularly ask myself, “Am I  being delusional or deceiving myself by thinking or acting however I may be?” Am I being honest with myself about myself? Thinking patterns and behaviors at home, at work, and in relationships are crucial areas to be willing to explore and call yourself out on.   Taking care of the part of yourself that wants to make sure you always want the best for yourself means taking the time to be objective. Don’t be avoidant of asking yourself questions. Telling yourself the truth is the best gift you can give yourself sometimes.    10. Keep Trying to Persevere. You’re going to keep living.  You're better off if you keep trying to strive for whatever it is that drives you forward. I tend to think my brain anchors this philosophy somewhere between radical acceptance and hope. No matter what is going on or how I feel, life and time are constantly going forward. I am alive. I have no desire or intention to harm myself. I am going to stay alive in my environment until time says otherwise.

My environment is going to continue to change with time. I will never have control over life and how life happens externally. I can only do  my best to try my best to be safe and content or create change towards the better at any given moment. Don’t stop trying to motivate yourself forward if you are unstable or want to give up on yourself. When you are running against the limits of time and change it's easy to feel overwhelmed and out of control of circumstances. It is also easy to miss opportunities to recognize success. It’s already hard enough  to fall and get back up. So get up before you can't anymore. Then every step is motivated by resilience and that energy breeds progress. Please choose to live while you are alive.  11. Grieve- It's going to happen anyway. If you have experienced a traumatic loss or circumstance then you honestly have no idea where your mind is at or how you will mentally and physically react to recover. The psychological and biological effects of loss or bereavement are complicated while your guard is already down and your heart literally feels broken. I’m not talking about the first couple months right now. The first couple months no one can tell you what or how to feel. We just react and survive until the desire to live and thrive begins to return with demand for adaptation. We often don’t remember the first weeks or months after a loss clearly. We make irrational decisions or avoid action at all cost. Some Days it’s agonizing enough to keep breathing. We block it out in self preservation and denial or shock.

  After time passes other days start to feel normal until a moment triggers and memory. If we don’t take time to process our grief it just thickens and becomes detrimental to our physical health and wellbeing. Allow yourself to process whatever it is you need to for as long as you need to. If nothing has changed in six to twelve months you might need to seek support for a better chance at thriving in the long term. Be kind to yourself when the holidays, birthdays, or Tuesday afternoons come around and kick you in the ass. It’s a shitty part of being human.  If you're agitated and don't know why. Be kind to yourself. If you need to cry for a day, allow it. You’re human.  12. Breathe and Meditate- If you are alive, you’re breathing. You can meditate, I can’t begin to confidently explain all the benefits of meditation and breathing exercises. There are so many ways and styles of practice that I would do it an injustice so I'm keeping it basic.  Science keeps telling us more and more ways it benefits us for the better. No matter how we feel or rhino we feel. And the effects are instantaneous. Don't get hung up on  perfectionism. Fact is fact. The practice, not the mastry, of breathing exercises and meditation will enhance your state of body and mind.

I don’t have a $10K a month blog, but I’d like to. It may not seem like that has much to do with mental health but it does. It is alsoy goal and that's good for my mental health. So I'm off to a decent start.  How am I supposed to reach that goal of creating a$10k a month blog? According to all my hours of obsession, research, editing, and insanity it all depends on the questions the millions of other people out there are asking Google.  Traffic comes from people searching for answers. Writers gain financially from the advertising they do on sites that already attract free traffic because they create or host something that the audience wants to come to understand.  While Youtube and the ads you can’t afford to skip will tell you that you can create a million dollar platform in a handful of days to change your life in months, my reality is not that.  It’s taken me three years just to get my sites functional. My content is always in editing or on a list somewhere. My internet is as slow as the last thing available to the free world. My tech skills are bullshit, and my information? There is just so much of it. 

It was in my quest to build and plan my “Kinda Unprofessional” project that I learned about the business aspect of blogging and the algorithm of human interest that is keyword research and search engine optimization. That’s not what this article is about by the way. I'm just getting started.  Google already keeps up with all the questions we ask and can literally tell us the best way to profit from answering the questions that the masses are searching for. If I wanted to live my own life and write, it seems all I have to do is be able to logically provide a respectable answer to a question about a topic people are interested in.  I just need to know something they want to know. The problem is that after a career in social science, social work, clinical therapy, and courtroom testimony; the only things I know are those I’ve liste. The millions of reasons why none of it is working, why the world seems to be falling apart, and how to keep living through it. Those topics are angry and depressing. They are the things that people don’t know they need to know. They are not the things people want to know…unless they're angry or depressed and have no resources. Those are my kind of people.

I learned what a blog was about the time I moved to Austin, TX to start my life over and write a novel in 2016. People working from home, on their own time, fueling their artisan, and  being paid astronomical amounts of money for it became my secret heroes. There wasn’t an internet when I was a kid. How was I supposed to know that’s what I really wanted to be when I grew up? I wanted to try products and write about  travel and food. I just couldn’t afford my rent much less either of those things. Blogging started as a fleeting fantasy thought and later a dismissive afterthought as I worked to climb the rungs in the healthcare rat race. It has now become something I have to pursue now.  Maybe I was delusional when the idea of blogging got a hold of me. Maybe I was just in a bad place and susceptible to schemes. Those are possibilities. Wishful thinking in dark times leads to all kinds of stupid decisions. In time even the realist in me couldn't help but think logically, “Who would want to spend life punching the clock  forty hours a week when they could do what they wanted and were good at while earning triple the income in half the time?” There had to be a catch.  For three years I created plans and outlines for different projects in hopes to push my business plan beyond fantasy while I dissolved mentally and financially. Blogging seemed like the viable answer. I just needed to know a lot about something worth knowing about.  It seemed all that I knew was therapy, diagnostics, trauma, tragedy, and debt. I was burnt out at work when my roommate, my only sister, was murdered and lacking more than three days bereavement leave I was forced to step down from my full-time position. A job I had been really good at and mostly enjoyed. I’d been a social worker for over a decade. I'd been doing clinical work in psyhiatric hospitals and mental health courts for last last five years. 

I worked hard. I’d lived a life I didn’t talk about. My patients and their reality and my ability to come up with the right words on a bad day were all I had to sink my independence, purpose, and confidence into. I’d already lost everything  in a lifetime, written a book about it and started my life over. I was grateful to have the only thing that I had, my education and career. I’d already “bounced back” as pop culture would say. I never expected to have to do it again. As my angst with the state of our human services festered it imploded with the  “what the fuck” type of luck that I lived with.  I was at the top of my game and about to test for private practice licensure.  Then one morning I went to work and that evening my sister was murdered. In a blur of leave policy and autopsy,  I found myself unemployable, destitute, and cognitively impaired by compound post traumatic stress disorder.  I did the best I could do to maintain my footing as Covid-19 began and the city locked us in for the year. I drank melted snow in Austin when the grid left us without water the next winter. I buried my mother and her literally broken heart by the fall. I took business and blog classes, I heard voices, and couldn’t afford to get to where my children were for nine months.  Eleven months into my eviction in Austin TX 2021 I was still working to build my websites and products. I didn’t know if I would be able to go back into the mental health industry as a clinician. I could barely read sometimes and I wasn’t oriented to date and day for months. Time passed and I dissociated.  I got by reselling items on Facebook and going to food banks while I saved to join the South By SouthWest Festival to network and take classes in starting a small business. My credit score and monthly sales left me unqualified for business credit or disaster relief as a sole proprietor. My blog writing time turned in to time I spent chasing grants, resources, and sanity. Support small business my ass Austin. That felt like  just another bitter lesson I learned too late.

I understood grief, psychosis, trauma and circumstances. Each new stressor shocked my threshold psychologically. I coped and self cared the best I could. By the time my mother died I had just started to process logically and organized. Shortly after  her sudden death my father remarried. I found myself paranoid, delusional, catatonic, unable to communicate effectively with my partner and unable to head out of one ear. My mind was turning on me and there was nothing else I could do but keep trying to take the best care of myself that I could and keep living in the tunnel as it narrowed.  I kept making products, taking classes, drafting outlines, and believing there was still potential for another life outside of the place I felt stuck for so long. The trial for my sister’s killer taunted me as extentions were granted for the killer to plead insanity and go to the psych hospital while I coudn’t get thearpy because my psychiatrist didn’t want to sign the Crime Victims Compensation papers the state required to cover my mental health treatment after the murder.    I kept not being able to afford advertising, not making sales, and being evicted. Chronic stress shadow boxed with my reality. I asked my partner to move out so I could focus on myself before I lost my ability to stabilize myself. I grieved the loss of a breakup equivalent  to my divorce, fought to keep my home, optimized my website and sold a few hats and canvases to feed my spirit. It wouldn’t sustain me and my content wasn’t ready enough for publication. I couldn’t commit to a schedule. I couldn't commit to a city when I was future planning logically. My only other friend died suddenly in January 2022, taking most of my platonic entrepreneurial support system with him in the blink of an eye.  It took three years to build and optimize my websites, much less load them with content. It was disheartening and at more than a few times, literally insane. That’s what trauma, grief, and time do to a mind.  It’s a contemporary American fantasy to believe hallucinations and delusion stem only from someone’s socioeconomic choice or substance use. The members of the public that don’t understand psychosis  need to be able to explain it away to themselves in a way that makes sense to them. It reassures them with the comfort of believing those things will not come to happen to their status quo minds of less complicated and tragic personal experiences.  . That doesn’t help anyone. Just education to the fact that it can and will organically happen to anyone in times of stress, death, or hormonal imbalance might comfort some who have the insight to work through symptoms that most laymen believe you cannot work through. The problem still becomes that the  mental health services in America are so dangerously liable and classist that those who want and need help still can’t get it. It’s mostly inappropriate when sliding scale or state funded. It often makes  the problems worse.  2019 my work and plans to go into clinical practice independently were trainwrecked by my sister’s murder, hospial politics, and my forgotting to change my address with the board cost me my current license without a fair hearing. Suddenly my career was over too. At times that was the hardest loss to get over and move on from.  While I’ve worked to recover and move on in financial security and purpose, I haven’t been able to. At first I was mostly angry that I spent all those years learning, working, and helping people. Finding  I couldn't afford to feed myself or keep my housing after someone else made the choice to kill the person I was living with during what was the peeking of my clinical career was the ultimate slap in spiritual face. How was I supposed to spend the rest of my life? Where was my security? What about everything I’d worked for? People and living through the shitty things that we don't talk about happening to us was all I knew. It was all I was good for. All I’d trained for. I had already rebuilt my life. Then life happened to me again. The same way that it happens to everyone else; randomly, suddenly, and violently. 

I shunned my previous discipline and vowed not to work for such a dangerously ignorant and inhuman administration in order to cope with no longer having a purpose or plan. Then one day I had what I'll call an epiphany.  Before I lost my job and state of mind I was training and working towards an outpatient practice for high acuity trauma patients based using a case management model with what I believe to be the coolest and most effective tool I was ever trained in, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, EMDR. It was being used to treat some of the worst cases of military trauma and having astonishing empirical results. I signed up for training the minute my credentials and tax return qualified me to take the course. I was ready to specialize and go into research on using it as a treatment for auditory hallucinations and psychosis in complex cases. Watching the possibilities in case studies and practice convinced me that for some we could provide a functional future and a cure if we stopped misdiagnosing for policy;s sake and truly give our best practices to everyone.  I was frantically trying to repose my life and budget in a post homicide, job loss, housing crisis in the middle of a pandemic when my partner had a horrible anxiety episode. He acquired a brain injury in a professional fight that retired him from the spot and left him with sometimes crippling anxiety. 

While trying to talk him through it I thought of some self soothing techniques I had been trained in but stumbled over whether or not I could ethically assist if I wasn't practicing and tripped over the irony of how it would be a conflict of interest if I was practicing.  He looked me dead in the face in the midst of his struggle and tears and said,"If you have something that can help me, you have to help me don't you? I can't live like this." It may not have been ethically principled but the humane thing to do is always right in front of me. So we walked through the same things I would have done if I were at work until he could calm himself down and take over.  I think about that now as I work auditing nursing and debating on how to save the $1000.00 it will take to get to take the test and finish my private practice license. I'm grateful to have a job at all. It doesn't have to be something I like doing or am great at to pay the bills. While it pays the bills, it's not going to replace my car, get my kids braces, or allow me any opportunity to save much less retire someday.  I find myself going back to all my blogging research that tells me you just have to have something to say that people want to know and dedicate your time to it. It will make the part of you that needs to write stop incessantly pounding your soul with the need to stand up or move around because you can’t use a pen correctly anymore. It will get the worries and the important linear thoughts out. It will help someone or accomplish your purpose, or it won’t. If you don’t do it you’ll never know.  Those are the thoughts I get lost in.  Over the years I continue to find myself reminding myself that I may only know mental health and social policy, but I know them very well in spite of having to live through the catastrophes our systems gaps have wreaked havoc on my life with.  I try to find gratitude in having a job and home at all but am plagued by the desire to do more for myself. I thought my stagnation was an energy issue. So I came to peace with the idea of quitting my blog and publishing missions to focus on my day job and settle into the rest of my life. I just can't seem to make peace with that yet.  Then I remembered my partner's panic attack and his question in a new light. How could I sit with a mind full of knowledge, experiences, answers, and ideas that  could change another’s  life for the better and keep it to myself just because the system is built to keep the information gated and complicated and I'm exhausted from chronic poverty and crisis?