My Child is NOT Attention Seeking. My Child is Seeking Help.

I’ve struggled with how to write this. I’ve struggled with if I should write about it all. I’ve got about four drafts of this same blog saved. Some with more facts, some with more humor, some with more personal antidotes, some with more anger, some with more guilt. Either way I go would be honest to the struggle that my family is currently finding itself in. One of my threefold struggles with a lot of mental illness. She has been diagnosed to date with Bipolar I, General Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, ADHD-combined type, Complex PTSD, and exhibits self-harm behaviors as a coping mechanism for physical, psychological and sexual trauma and has suicidal ideation with a plan, and attempts. Another of my threefold suffers from Bipolar II, General Anxiety Disorder, ADHD-attentive type, and also has Complex PTSD from physical, psychological, and sexual trauma. The youngest has diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – Combined Type Severe. Personally, I also suffer from Bipolar II {yep the genetic link is me!} General Anxiety Disorder, ADHD-attentive type, and Complex PTSD from abuse. We are complicated and have lots of feelings and lots of triggers and loads of trauma. We are tough girls. We are strong and we are beautifully broken. This is just the story of our current struggle with mental illnesses.

I write this to educate you, so in turn you can educate your own children about the signs and symptoms of a mental health crisis. I relate this to your basic “Call 911 in an emergency” That can save someone’s life. Being aware and knowing to speak up when you are worried someone is in crisis can also save a life. To assume someone is “attention seeking” is a grave assumption that could result in life threatening consequences. Whether it’s for attention or a cry for help is NOT a determination you or our children are qualified to make. If you see a post on social media or get a text message or get spoken to directly about self harm or suicide don’t scroll past, don’t encourage their behavior, don’t try to be the hero, SEEK HELP! I ask this for my threefold, for myself and for all people that struggle with mental illness. We aren’t “fine”, we don’t “figure it out ”, regardless of how many times we say “I’m handling it, it was a bad day” or “forget it, I will be ok” or “please don’t say anything to anyone” or “it’s not as bad as it looks” or “I swear I won’t do it again” or “I can’t ask for help because I don’t want to hurt my family.” There are a million different ways we will manipulate, trick, and convince you that it’s manageable and that we don’t need anything else. The truth is we do. When we can’t admit we desperately need help that’s usually when we are at our worst. If there is a doubt, call them out! Why do I say this? This year has been a intense time for the world in general. As a mom who struggles with her own mental illnesses as an adult and seeing my threefold struggle it has been extremely difficult to handle the climate of change in any situation. Add in isolation, virtual school, pandemic mania, divorce, trauma and our combined mental illnesses and you have what is a recipe for possible catastrophe. Yes. I am about to momsplain mental illness. Buckle up, this a long one.

I am asking that you educate yourself. I am in no way certified, licensed or otherwise qualified to give advice on seeking treatment for mental health or for diagnosing a crisis situation. I am however uniquely informed with personal experience of what mental health crisis looks like in myself and my threefold. I have participated in and sought treatment for myself and my threefold on numerous occasions for minor symptoms to the most severe of clinical presentation. However, I do believe people present differently and encourage you to be in tune with your own personal behaviors in crisis and the actions, expressions, habits and words of those closest to you. I pray that this helps someone out there to recognize the signs and seek whatever level of care is appropriate to get the optimal level of care for yourself, a loved one, or a child.

As I write this very long post about mental health, diagnosis, warning signs, treatment and my personal experiences I am waiting for a phone call. I am waiting for a phone call from the crisis intervention center that is treating my 13 year old daughter for her fore mentioned extremely complicated diagnoses. She is in crisis. I am awaiting to hear from her treatment team about the length of stay initially recommended. I am waiting to hear what their plan is. I am awaiting to hear what I can do other than worry myself into my own crisis and how I can be the best support person on the planet for my kid while simultaneously taking care of my other two girls, working, and managing everything in my life that is spinning faster than the running to do list in my head. I am awaiting to hear where I have went wrong. I am waiting for knowledge that my daughter is ok, she is safe, that she knows that she is loved, and for them to tell me that she is going to get the help she desperately needs. It’s the most helpless and powerless feeling to know that you have signed over your child to be cared for by strangers at the recommendation of a doctor who has only known your child for 6 weeks. My daughter, one of three daughters is in an inpatient residential hospitalization program for at least the next 30 days, but it could be a much longer road. I am putting all of my faith in people that I pray are not just there to check off the I went to work today box and that want to see my child succeed and be healthy. It’s a faith and hopelessness that I wish on no parent. It’s no contact for days, it’s answering the same questions repeatedly, it’s phone calls, missed work, increased anxiety, loss of income, lost sleep and trying to be strong for everyone else around you especially your children. Its stealing away sleep as you cry and try not to let the people you love see you fall apart. It holding everything together with dollar store scotch tape. It’s living on a prayer and that you don’t find your child on a bathroom floor covered in blood ever again. It’s a hard road to recovery but I have to say that if the stigma was less negative and awareness was increased it could be a little less of scary and lonely road. I don’t have people that understand or even those that would attempt to walk this road with me. I have no one to discuss this with that actually gets it. I’m required to face this battle alone, without friends or family nearby to lift me up. I’ve got myself. I’ve got my threefold. I’ve got a good man that watches me struggle and picks up the pieces of my broken heart day in and day out. Who unfortunately regardless of not being their father shows up for them out of love and genuine interest in seeing them succeed and be happy. He allows me to take out my pain on him, he lets me fall apart, he pulls me back from the edge when I feel I might fall into the dark places where my mental illness waits for me. There are no meal trains for mental illness. There are no viral “go fund me” pages for psychiatric care. There are no flowers or “get well soon” cards for those facing mental illness. No one knows what to say to me. It’s not an easy thing to talk about it. I don’t want to expose my daughter’s deepest darkest secrets and struggles. I don’t need or want your pity or your attention. Believe me when I say it’s hard enough to explain it to the people who know her personally, a treatment team, and I don’t have the energy to run through the history for 15th time today and how we got here. It’s rarely met with offers of love and support. It’s judgment and a lot of insensitivity to mental health. If we educate ourselves and our children we could be helping our family and friends recognize the signs of crisis and get help for the people who are struggling before the meal trains and funeral flowers are delivered. That’s a hard truth, but a truth that literally scares me every second of everyday. That my kid could lose this battle against herself. I am determined to keep her alive and safe. I can’t do it on my own so judge me if you must but I am willing to admit I can’t wish upon shooting stars and hope for miracles or pray this away. I have to move the mountains. It’s just me. It’s my job to protect her and regardless of your opinions, that is exactly what I am doing.

I was shocked at the social media posts I found that were targeted to exclude the people that would be able to get help for my daughter, myself included. I was even more shocked to see that these posts were responded to by “friends” of my daughter. These so called “friends” in her social media circle were some I knew, some I didn’t know. They were quick to validate her, tell her “whatever you need, we all deal with pain differently”. They were encouraging her self harm behaviors in some of the responses. I was gutted. These “friends” told her what she could use once the safety plan was enforced that would be normal household items that you and I don’t see as threats. One kid said “if you need an outlet break a pencil sharpener and get the blade. Screws, nails, if you’ve got a garage I bet there are tools in there. I’ve used spiral notebooks and jewelry.” Another told her “are you ever going to actually go through with it? You aren’t getting better, why wait?” And yet another, a friend I knew said “treatment never works, they’ll try to change you and they’ll fail you’ll end up more f’ed up with more reasons than you had before so why even try” Who are these kids? They’re supposed to be “friends”! Why is it that these kids are ok with my daughter hurting herself or worse. Why is it that not one single child that claims to love and support my daughter once told me or her older sister? Why did they not know that this is serious? How could they not see that having 500 cuts on her leg wasn’t for “attention” but that she didn’t know how to ask for help. She felt safe in the knowledge that these kids wouldn’t “snitch” that she was having thoughts of self harm and suicidal ideation. I get that you have to trust your circle, but to me this circle doesn’t value your life or your well-being. If they are encouraging your unhealthy behavior and feeding into your negative self-talk. You have a toxic circle. Then I thought, they don’t know. This is equally as disturbing if true. They think it’s “a game” “a show” “untrue”. They don’t know she is doing these things. She isn’t posting pictures of her bloodied body after she decides enough is enough and that she “can’t deal” anymore. She bears the scars and wears them. Wearing shorts is fine around the house, but in public she has just became comfortable with her healing enough to wear dresses again. They don’t clean the cuts, see the blood in the sheets, see the towels soaked in blood, the scars her body is forced to bear from this pain, and they don’t know that cutting isn’t a scratch for her to “see what it’s like”, it’s more than 500 deep cuts that cause her to lose blood so she gets an intense head rush sensation that forces her body into “fight or flight”. It’s a rush of adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine. It’s an addiction. It’s a disease. What they see is the mania her mind is in after the cuts. She is happy. On top of the world. She is confident. She is fun and loud. She is inappropriate and funny. She is boisterous. She sees her beauty and feels good again. It’s the closest thing she has to what happiness feels like. She is feeling herself. Then within days, is the crash. The darkness swoops back in and takes hold of my sweet baby girl. She becomes lethargic, isolated, emotional, angry, and unable to handle the pain and guilt of her actions. She is in true, deep physical and emotional pain. I had to sit with my thoughts for some time after becoming so angry at her social media, at her posts, at her words, her feelings, and her behavior. I had to remind myself of many, many things. For a very brief moment I thought about all the people who had said “she only does this for attention.” I thought what if they are right? I was floored. What if? Then I thought about her trauma, her descriptions of how she feels. I thought about what a fine line we have between needing validation, support, a semblance of not being alone in this, and what inadvertently asking for help looks like at 13. Maybe she did on some subconscious level seek out the approval of someone. Maybe she purposefully excluded the people she knew would tell someone because she desperately needed someone to tell her it was ok to do this. She needed someone to tell her that her trauma was her problem. She needed someone to feed her with approval so she wouldn’t feel so much like a failure to herself. I remembered her diagnoses and her mood disorder is known for self harm, extreme highs and lows. I kind of wish it was for the attention. That would be maybe easier to treat than the mood disorder. People that are “attention seeking” don’t go to the extremes she does. They don’t actually want to die. They dabble in self harm {no amount is ok} they don’t use it to cope with depression, anxiety, emotional overwhelm or a total lack of emotions. She hates being in treatment. No phone. No electronics. No family. No good food. No caffeine. No friends. No partner. No connection. All she can do there is work on trauma. If it was attention seeking, she wouldn’t be in her 4th program and cry and beg to not go, reasoning with me, bribing me, promising better outcomes when she needs to be admitted. She wouldn’t eventually accept it and choose to work through her issues and try to get better. If it was all for the attention she wouldn’t have major issues that required this level of care. You don’t see the pain. You don’t see the guilt, the shame, or her overwhelming sense of failure when she relapses. You don’t see the extent of the damage. This is the reality of self-harm. This is what it looks like, at least for us. ***TRIGGER WARNING***Skip the following picture if you don’t want to see what self harm entails. If you are in active treatment or in recovery the following image could be disturbing. Please understand it’s not the intention to trigger, it’s only to give a reality check to those who may have a underestimated view of what self harm looks like, especially for us.

****TRIGGER WARNING****

I don’t want this life for my daughter. I don’t want her to feel so much intense pain and have so much unresolved trauma that she feels this is the only outlet for her very survival and that this is “better than suicide” because at least she is still alive…today. Breathe into it. Look and stare and judge me as a mother and her siblings, our family and her close friends who knew. Blame us, blame her, tell us all the nasty things we tell ourselves each and every day. Don’t blame an illness when this is a behavior issue. Beat it out of her. You should’ve known. You should’ve done more. She needs more help than you can give her. Thank God she is getting some help. My kids would never. You’re supposed to protect her from this. How did you let it get this bad? This is for attention. She is over dramatic. She can’t be in that much pain. You knew she did this? She shouldn’t be allowed to go out in her condition. Go figure it’s always about her. Why do kids feel the need to label themselves? You failed her. She must have issues. My kids can’t have that kind of influence around them. I don’t want my kids to think this is ok or normal. What kind of mother are you? How is this ok? I can’t believe you took those photos. She is definitely a child that needs a good butt whooping and a reality check because it’s never as bad as it seems. Your kids ARE drama. They run that house you don’t. She needs to choose to be happy. Her “breakdowns” are always timed with someone else needing something. She is obviously your problem child. I’m glad my kid doesn’t do THAT. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. She is a liar, she will lie and go to extremes to get you to do what she wants. This isn’t a real problem it’s not a sickness, it’s all about the attention she isn’t getting from it. You’re not the parent you just pay the bills. You made them like this. If it wasn’t for your past they wouldn’t be this way. You put up with her getting abused and didn’t stand up for her. You’ve been emotionally unavailable for her for too long. You’ve been the one making this acceptable by allowing them to get attention because they act out. She doesn’t know REAL abuse. Daddy issues resurfacing again? Give them the space and they will take advantage of it. She is so over dramatic. Social media is the culprit. I will never understand or even try to why she would do this to herself. She is always the victim. She can’t even tell you why. What is the point? You’ve given her the life she said she wanted and bent over backwards and she is doing this. She is disrespectful. She has too much time on her hands. She just wants a label. You’re horrible to expose her like this. You should be ashamed and worried what people will think. Aren’t you worried about people staring? I can’t believe they let you keep your children after that. You are a horrible mother. You’re divorce is the cause. If you are thinking it right now, believe me, I’ve already told myself that a million times. I’ve asked myself the same questions. I’ve told myself the same hurtful things. I’ve been there. I’ve looked at it rationally, irrationally, I’ve made myself the perpetrator in her story, the victim, the one handing her the blade, I’ve honestly questioned if I am the best parent for her. I’m complicit. I’m neglectful. I’m awful. If I haven’t said it to myself then I can almost guarantee that someone has said it to me. I’ve lost friends because I stand up for myself and my threefold. I’ve lost people I never thought would walk away because “they are drama” I’ve been forced to confront parents with their children’s blatant encouraging and caused my daughter’s circle to grow smaller. I’m not blaming anyone. I hold the ultimate amount of mom guilt for how bad this is for my daughter. I will be forever trying to make up for the mistakes and missteps I’ve made in parenting and forever holding myself to higher standards in the future. I won’t stop fighting this fight for my threefold. It’s not ok for them to be blamed when they are sick. It’s not ok and doesn’t serve them or my mental health to take on the amount of blame I do. I will probably never know the exact moment things went wrong. I may never know when I should’ve been more aware, all along I guess. This is why I urge you to talk to your kids. Mental illness isn’t contagious. It’s controversial and complicated. It’s not all in your face all the time, but it’s not hidden as well as we like to think it is. Quit telling my kids and I to just suck it up, push it down, and move on. We’ve been doing that. It makes us worse and doesn’t benefit our mental health. It only benefits your skewed attitude towards what mental illness is. You don’t understand if shoving it down and keeping it in were possible and not detrimental to us then we would’ve continued to do that. Mental illness isn’t a convenient excuse to not fix dinner, go to a social event, or fix our problems. It wasn’t a choice. It’s not a label we gave ourselves. This isn’t Web-MD telling us our various diagnoses. You can’t see the pain and struggle. You don’t wipe their tears. You don’t clean their blood off the floor. You don’t do the skin checks that are humiliating. You haven’t done a safety sweep. You haven’t had to lock everything that could possibly cause harm. You haven’t read the suicide notes. The journal entries of how hard they are trying. You don’t see the intense amount of energy we have to expel to be “okay” or how drained we are by day’s end because we’ve plastered on that mask and it is beginning to slip as the emotional and mental exhaustion sets in. You don’t see the intense need and desire we have to be your version of “normal”. We aim to meet your standards because that’s what is required of us. We rarely have a safe place to let our guard down and we don’t have near enough support. When can we decide it’s ok to not be ok without fear of the judgment that comes with being unable to hold it all together all the time? I’m only one mom. Thery are only three kids. We are a family of millions of others who struggle with mental illness.

You don’t see the intense amount of energy we have to expel to be “okay” or how drained we are by day’s end because we’ve plastered on that mask and it is beginning to slip as the emotional and mental exhaustion sets in. You don’t see the intense need and desire we have to be your version of “normal”.

-mythreefold

If you’re still reading I hope that means you care enough to know what to look for and how to help someone. Please continue reading this next bit of information could possibly get someone the help they need before it’s too late.

---

What is a MHC? How Can I know? How Can I Help?

The National Alliance of Mental Illness defines a mental health crisis as any situation in which a person’s behavior puts them at risk of hurting themselves or others. A crisis can also mean that an individual is unable to care for themselves or function.

A mental health crisis can take many forms:

• Self-harm
• Suicidal ideation
• Panic attacks
• Psychosis (loss of reality)
• Reckless behavior, such as getting in trouble with the law

Recognizing a and symptoms before the onset of crisis and seeking treatment is sometimes not easy. Every person is different, however with children, we as parents know their “normal” baseline attitude, moods, behaviors, and patterns. Unfortunately, sometimes the change is so gradual you don’t begin putting the pieces together until you are in a situation that makes you see the full picture. Other times you can have a sudden onset and a spiraling that seems to have come out of no where. Even if you are proactive and plan your crisis plan with the knowledge of mental illness and red flags for yourself or your child you may not always want to believe you need help or you want to trust that person when they say “I’m ok. It was just a bad day. I’m working on it. I’ll do better.” Go with your gut instinct. It’s better safe than sorry. We’ve heard that saying and said it a million times I’m sure in our lives, but just because it’s overused doesn’t make it less true. I would rather make an emergency session with our therapist or make a phone call to our psychiatrist and get a phone evaluation, a tele-health session, an in person appointment, something to get someone else IN the medical field’s opinion of the current situation. I would rather sit in an acute psychiatric facility waiting room for six hours waiting on an evaluation than to risk the chance that this time could be the time she goes through with it successfully.

Signs can include but are not limited to:

• Increased isolation
• Decreased interest in activities including hygiene and self care routines
• Sudden and ongoing changes in mood
• Increased anger and irritability, lashing out or having disproportionate reactions to situations, feelings, or physical stimulus.
• Intense shifts in mood with changes from extreme highs to extreme lows
• Sleep disruption. This can involve not sleeping enough or sleeping too much.
• Increased stress from friends, family, relationships, school, work, or other stressors.
• Sudden change in circumstances resulting in major changes to normal routine such as divorce, relocation, death, global pandemic or trauma.
• Increased anxiety with or without panic attacks.
• Obsessive behaviors such as picking skin or nails, scratching, pulling hair, pinching, biting, hitting, or doing other harm to themselves in stressful situations.
• Self harm
• Suicidal ideation with or without a plan, with or without attempts.
• Expressing opinions that they are “worthless” “a burden” “too much” or that “it would be easier”
• Sudden changes in appetite and weight
• Fear of the unknown
• Hallucinations visual or auditory

Did you know according to the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI) 1 in 5 adults struggle with mental illness, 1 in 20 have a major mental illness diagnosis? That rate is 1 in 6 for kids between 6-17 years old who have an treatable mental illness. Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death between 11-34 year olds in the United States. Over 90% of those suicides were people who displayed one or more of the symptoms of mental health crisis before committing suicide. Over 45% have an actual mental illness diagnosed that may or may not have been actively being treated for.

---

How Can You Help?

The first thing you can do is STOP judging mental illness. Stop increasing the negative stigma. Stop believing the untruthful and unsubstantiated snap prejudices about mental illness. Quit judging people for struggling with an invisible illness. Mental illness isn’t a choice. We didn’t label ourselves or decide to be depressed or to have anxiety. We don’t assign symptoms. I promise we aren’t talented enough to fake the symptoms of mood disorders or an anxiety attacks. We didn’t want to be given these struggles. It’s not an excuse. It’s not for attention. It’s not because we don’t want to be happy. It’s not because we are lazy. It’s because we are too scared to accept help or seek treatment because YOU can’t educate yourself. You won’t educate yourself yet you want to dictate how I should handle my diagnoses, my children’s diagnoses? In what way is this ok? Your kid having ADHD and doing a nondairy, gluten free, sugar free, vegan meal plan and supplement ting with vitamins and a low dose non stimulant medication for them to manage their symptoms is ABSOLUTELY your choice. My choice for behavioral therapy combined with medication is my choice. AND THAT’S OK! It doesn’t make you better than me. It doesn’t mean you are more vigilant about treating your child’s diagnosis. It means we parent differently. You are allowed your way and I’m allowed mine. Neither way is harming our kids and neither way affects anyone else’s ability to seek treatment and care for their kid. So it doesn’t matter. Your child might make straight A’s and mine might struggle to pass. That’s ok too. As long as they are doing the their best, then that’s all we can do. No amount of spanking, grounding, restrictions, bribery, or sugar coated fantasies is going to make us better. Please quit acting like it’s a discipline issue. Please stop telling me how to parent a child with mental illness. Please redirect your thoughts and words to a more open minded and accepting view point. It’s getting tiring having to defend my kid to everyone who thinks because their mom’s cousin’s daughter had a psychotic break in 1996 that they can somehow relate their hand me down account of outdated information to what we are currently dealing with. You don’t know unless you know. And even then you aren’t me, your kid is not my kid, your decisions and mine don’t have to match. We have different mental health care teams, resources, and strategies to deal with things. There is no right way. There is only trial and error and more trial until you find the fit for you and your family. It’s ok. We don’t need to argue our perspective we only need to support one another and encourage each other.

Second, you can educate your kids. Please. If a child made another kid promise not to tell anyone that they are cutting themselves to cope with their feelings and explained it in detail about how they had been abused, were scared to cost their family any more money, time or resources getting them help. How they are not going to do it again and just had a rough few days, weeks, months, but they are ok. How they are scared of disappointing their family, scared of having to go to a doctor or hospital, scared of what will happen if their family finds out. If they said “I’m so tired of feeling this way. I don’t know how much longer I can keep living like this. Nothing helps. I’m tired of trying. I’m not sure how much more I can take.” Should the child keep the secret and trust of their friend or tell someone what is happening? Are they more scared their friend will be mad at them or are they more scared that they will lose their friend keeping their secrets? Is your child the friend keeping the secret or is your child the one with the secret? Honestly, chances are that the kid doesn’t know how to react, respond, who to tell, how they can help, or what the consequences will be if they remain quiet. It’s not a fair situation to be put in, but this secret isn’t one to keep quiet about. Please inform your children that it’s extremely important to tell someone. Call their friend’s parent, call their friend’s sibling, tell you so you can take it out of their hands, tell a teacher, coach, counselor, but tell someone. This is one case where it’s perfectly acceptable and necessary for them to be the “snitch”. It sucks having to be that friend and they might get a little bit of push back because their friend is upset, but I promise that hurt would be minuscule in comparison to the hurt and guilt they would feel if their friend hurt themselves or followed through with their suicide plan. It’s not worth risking losing the friend or the trauma endured by the one who kept the secret. Please if you want to help these kids you have to make your kids aware that they should always, always speak up if they know someone who is threatening suicide, self harming or in an abusive or dangerous relationship or situation. It’s not betrayal, it’s because you want your friend to be ok. Please don’t assume your kid is the one who already knows how to handle this situation. Believe me when I say that what we want our kids to be like and how they actually react in these situation are vastly different. Don’t think because your kid knows right from wrong that they can’t be persuaded into keeping secrets for their circle of friends. Don’t think that your kid is going to seek help for someone because it’s the right thing to do. Understand that they are struggling to understand and they are not sure how to handle it. They are scared. Talk to them. It could save a life.

Lastly, I simply think we should all be more aware of the people around us. Especially our kids. As they travel through the many stages of life from infancy to adulthood they change so much. Their style changes, their attitude changes, their interests change, their friends change, and their views change. Notice those things and keep an accounting of what’s pretty much their normal. Any variation from that should be honed in on and if possible have a fact driven explanation as to the change. If there are multiple changes, make sure you are checking in and don’t take “fine” as the cop-out answer that’s acceptable. Be proactive. If you need help, get help. Be the parent that fights for them and advocates for them. Stop holding your kids and mine to a higher standard than you hold yourself to. They are kids. They aren’t perfect. They are as human and flawed as we are. Normalize asking for help. Telling them that you will always be their biggest fan and in their corner regardless of the struggle can give them comfort if they ever do need help. If you’re struggling, please know you’re not alone. If you’re kid is struggling, you’re not alone. I’m struggling, I’m fighting, I’m advocating, and I’m speaking out for all families who struggle with mental illness. Our voices are stronger together and one month of awareness will never be enough time for awareness of the 200 different variations of mental illnesses and disorders that are currently being diagnosed and treated. If you are or someone you love is suffering from mental illness or is in crisis please seek help from a licensed medical professional or facility, call 911, or contact the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK.