Therapy Tactics: Understanding Poetry and Therapy

So the straightforward theme that can be talked about in "Apathetic Artist" is cutting or self-harming. But as I revealed in the Soul section and my video post, the more subtle maybe even invisible theme of the poem for me is being polar. A mental illness that's invisible to everyone else, in my case at least since I've always had to hide my real emotions for other reasons which I'll talk about through other poems. So poems like this one made it possible for me to write down how I felt about deep personal shit that I wasn't ready or wiling to openly share with anyone because I didn't want to be seen as damaged or broken even if that's how I felt. But I can post my poems on Facebook and have my friends "like" it and comment on it. I can share the emotion without sharing the specifics.

Well, it's always a challenge trying to think of the best way to start about talking about a single issue of mine since I'm so complicated with so many issues that overlap and intertwine. I've been through so much in such a short amount of time. I'm only 21 so it's been a whole decade since my problems manifested in a significant life changing way. It's taken me some time to look back and see what was cause and effect and what was independently compacting my problems. So I'll try my best to focus on my bipolar issues for this post. Like I said in the last post, I knew something was wrong with me mentally when I was 15.
I thought I had Borderline Personality Disorder. It's very similar to Bipolar Disorder in having erratic emotional issues that disrupt your ability to live, and mental illness isn't as easily diagnosed as broken bones or infections or viruses, and even more difficult to treat. Of course my main source of information was Wikipedia, but I did double check everything on professional medical sites. I had all the symptoms necessary to be diagnosed according to the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). I was 15 and it's even more difficult to diagnose minors because, you know, fucking hormones, but I have a strong history of mental illness in my family. So I had that genetic thing going for me. Now I'm probably not, but I felt like I might be the only person in the world who was hoping he had a mental illness. Because if I could be diagnosed with a mental illness, then it wouldn't be my fault. I knew I was broken and seriously messed up, but an illness implies that there might be a cure. But there isn't really. There's medication but it's not like antibiotics. The medication is trying to correct an imbalance of chemicals, but you don't really know for sure what chemicals are out of whack or how exactly to put them back in whack. That's where the symptoms come in to help diagnose the specifics of the illness, but the problem is that a lot of my symptoms were as ambiguous as the text book descriptions. Then there's the surprisingly common case of having multiple mental disorders, and sometimes the symptoms of one overshadow those of the other one. It ultimately comes down to seeing a professional psychiatrist (the doctors that can prescribe medicine; psychologist are the "shrinks" or counselors; someone could be both, but he or she could not be both to the same patient). But a psychiatrist can only properly diagnose you if you tell him or her everything. And I had so many secrets I felt like everything I said for years was nothing but lies. Poetry was the only place I could be completely honest, but even in my poetry I had to write in coded metaphors in case someone read it. It may have been cryptic or invisible to anyone else, but I could read it and know exactly what I meant. It was my way of being truthful to myself that wasn't just internal dialogue. I already felt like I was crazy. The less I talked to myself the better.

I've been in and out of therapy since I was 16. I've been in group therapy with kids my age going through the same stuff and some of them going through completely different stuff. I've been forced into therapy where I just sat there and sometimes took a nap for the hour. I've been in therapy that doesn't even feel like therapy, and that's the therapy that helped me improve the most. Therapy should really just be a safe place and healthy way of talking about your feelings. Human beings are emotional creatures. We need to exercise our emotions like we exercise our bodies and minds. For the most part this is done through normal social interactions or within family units. You have that one person who you know you can go to to talk about anything and you trust to keep your secrets. That's what a therapist does without the pre-established emotional bond, but with a legal guarantee of confidentiality. A professional therapist is like a professional physical doctor. You go to them for help when everything else you've tried isn't working or there's an emergency that you can't deal with on your own. If you eat well, exercise, and just generally take good care of your body, you typically won't need to go the doctor as often. But everyone gets sick sometimes and it's not shameful to go the doctor when you need to. The same applies to your mental and emotional health. And even before medication, psychiatrists prescribe the same things other doctors do: a good nights rest, a healthy diet, and exercise. The brain is as chemical and physical as any other organ (more or less), and sometimes that extra hour of sleep or at the gym can make a huge impact on your emotional health. Exercise actually releases a natural feel good drug called endorphins, but so does cutting which is why it can become addicting. It's a shortcut (pun not intended; as much as I love puns I try my best not to joke about self-harming and other serious issues although I do use rumor as a self defense mechanism to distance myself from my pain).  But sometimes all that doesn't cut it and that's why there's medication for the same reason any other part of your body isn't performing optimally and requires additional supplements from vitamins to Vicodin. The biggest difference isn't physical; it's social. Social stigma of mental illness only makes it worse. You're already depressed. You don't need to be more depressed because you're not "normal." If you have a broken arm, you don't need people expecting you to do activities that require both arms and then poking it so they can decide if it's broken or not. You push those people who could help you away so that they don't hurt you or leave you because of something you can't control that makes you "socially not desirable."

You've probably heard of art therapy. In the mental hospital they made us do arts and crafts every day. It was fun. But I suck at painting or gluing things together or cutting shapes, not that they let us use scissors. I could never even color within the lines or fold those brightly colored construction papers evenly or even draw a  straight line, but maybe that's because I wasn't. My medium of art therapy is words through poetry. But not always poetry. Stream of conscious and "nonsense" writing can be therapeutic too. I think I can relate to a lot of people who need therapy but are afraid of the stigma of the perception of therapy or don't even realize that therapy could help them. I struggled with my gender and sexual identity, and to an extent still do. I was suicidally depressed for the better part of a decade. I self-harmed daily for most of high school and relapse is a thing, and I'll talk more about that later. I was anorexic and bulimic for a couple years, tied mostly to depression but also body image. Being bipolar is just the issue that's genetic, that I can't necessarily work through on my own for recovery. I have and can relapse on the other issues, but it's not the same as relapsing when it's something that's more or less with you for life. I was a cutter. I can still personally identify as a cutter, but I'm not a cutter anymore. I no longer technically fit that label. But my bipolar disorder is stamped onto my medical records. I, not necessarily, am bipolar. But rather I have bipolar disorder. So yeah I think I can relate to a lot of people who are struggling just like me. And that solidarity really does mean a lot as I learned in group therapy. It helps just knowing you're not alone, you're not the only one. I do have a gift for words. I feel like it's my only gift, like it's the only thing I'm good at, like it's the only thing I was put on this earth to do. I probably have other hidden talents I'm not aware of, but let me share what I have with you. If you can relate to me on any of those issues, then I know that exact feeling of raw emotion that you just don't know what to do with it. The more it builds, the more you have to use it before it blows up on you. Use it. Use your words. Poetry has this reputation of being sophisticated and elegant and super deep and meaningful and enigmatic. And as I've shown you the mechanics behind poetry can be pretty damn complicated. But I hope to show you that it doesn't have to be. All you really need is that emotion, that something to write about, and maybe a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary. It's not cheating. It's research. I get stuck a lot. I put Rhymzone in the Helpful Resources links. It's my favorite. Sometimes there's that word I absolutely love and refuse to change but I can't always think of something that rhymes, and furthermore Rhymezone has the search option of near-rhymes that you might not even think but could actually work well. Just listen to song lyrics. They're not always the best rhymes but they still sound nice. Poetry is just rearranging the words that you don't even know you have into something uniquely yours, that only you could possibly create. The heart of poetry is the emotion the poet puts into it, not necessarily the rhythm or the rhyme. Poetry is my therapy, and I think it could be yours too. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Who knows, you might end up really like being a vegetarian like me.

Now that I've gotten all that foundation stuff out this week, I hope future post will be much shorter. And I'll continue to learn how to better edit down my videos because I know our attention spans are not that long. So thanks for listening. If this helps just one person, then all the time and effort I take to put into this project will be worth it. Every time I make a video, I poke my eyes out putting my contacts on because my glasses reflect the screen. I poke my eyes out just for you because I care, because you're worth it. But don't worry about me, I love doing this. I know my life would have turned out much differently if I never found my outlet in poetry, and I know it would have turned out more smoothly if I had found more resource and real people to connect with and share my pain. The internet has grown so much since I was 11. And doing my best to be that someone is helping me grow and continue to heal as well, and it's actually so much fun it doesn't feel like work. It didn't feel like it took 6 hours to make and edit a 7 minute video. So as always, if you have any questions of any nature or any topic you want me to address, you can email me at hashtaghashtagnofilter@gmail.com or comment on any post. If you have a question there's probably a dozen more people out there with the same question but are too afraid (or whatever) to ask.

I really do want you to at least attempt to write poetry as therapy. So pick a topic whether the issue of the week, your issue, a friend's issue, or anything you want and write a poem. It can be a couplet, a sonnet, free verse, stream of consciousness or nonsense that only makes sense to you. Email it to me at the address above and I'll pick a few to publish here on my blog with your permission. Please, include your name or a pseudonym, or request to be anonymous. Or you can tweet at me or just social media me with the #PAST and #DIW so I can internet and find them (yes, I just verbed "social media" and "internet"). And I may even pick my favorites to add to my next poetry book as contributors and inspirers. When I have the chance to work on that which will probably be after I graduate, but that's just a couple months away.