Can we talk about mental illness?

[venomous]

Psychosis and hallucinations comes under disturbed patterns of thinking:



This comes from the NHS website (national health service in the UK). Not all people with BPD will experience this, but it is fairly common, looking at one text, they found 20-50% of BPD patients reported psychotic symptoms. It is not part of the DSM-5 though, so it's not necessary for diagnosis. The people I know who do have BPD all seem to experience (likely stress related) psychosis to more of a degree than those I know with other conditions. People with other mental health conditions also experience it of course, but that does not mean that it is any less real.

It's good to know that it can be comforting for you, I think my friend often jokes about things and makes light of the funnier situations because she wants to make sure everyone knows she's aware she's a bit nuts, so that people understand and don't hold those times against her. It must be really hard, having the imbalance of "sanity", doing something one day which then seems totally mad the next. My boyfriend is also likely BPD and is looking to get diagnosed, though it is very different to my friend in how he responds, and I think if he has it then it's milder in terms of how destructive it is. I have had mild BPD symptoms, but I think they are more to do with my PTSD.

I love talking to other people with pure-O who didn't realise they had it: Talking about slightly funny mental illnesses, if I explain to someone my type of OCD, and how I will be having a great conversation with a new friend, really bonding, it's awesome, and then suddenly will have the image in my head of slapping them, and see their expression of pure shock and distrust with me having the knowledge and disappointment that I totally fucked up that conversation. I have never slapped someone in the middle of a conversation, and I likely never will. Just the same as I haven't "accidentally" driven into a wall, or opened a car door while moving, or thrown my phone or camera off a high place while walking. I still have those uncontrollable thoughts. Some people just think it's hilarious, but it's amazing how many people will suddenly go "I do that!!", because they probably just thought they were weird and put it out of their heads.
It's kind of funny when you think about how socially awkward you really are inside your own head, but it is a really annoying disorder to have. Sometimes I fear being accidentally racist, sexist, inappropriate, and lately I have had a weird fear of being attracted to children. Of course I am not attracted to children in the slightest and there is nothing to have given me this idea, but the idea of it still scares me, and it actually in a weird way has started making me feel uncomfortable seeing pictures or videos of children which come up online. I think online specifically because I usually only see attractive adults online, so seeing children in that area freaks me out. Just like "what if I accidentally run that person over because I decide to swerve into them?", there's that "what if I accidentally decide to molest someone?". It will never happen because I am not going to randomly lose control of my mind to some inner demon.
The physical part of my OCD is that I touch corners (and sometimes not corners). This can be corners of tables or objects, or even people's shoulders, knees, hands or faces. It's something to do with the sound that scratching makes, the chalk board kind. Corners I think because they're sharp, and I somehow want to smooth them over. Same as if a sharp object touches a surface, I want to "wipe" it away. As a child this meant that using fountain pens was a messy experience. I also have a few weird little ticks, hard for me to tell what it is I actually do though.

Love your attitude. It's very dry and honest. My mother has the same issue...fearing she's attracted to children. Seems a bit odd for bipolar? I've always wondered if she had pure-O with psychotic features.

Anywho, the human brain is definitely a crazy, complicated thing. I think most people are abnormal in some ways. We're just too complicated for that many people to be truly okay, haha.

 

[Lollie Berrymilk]

Wow, @IsabellaSnow your description of Pure-O is so relatable. A psychologist did suggest that I might have OCD, or that my symptoms could be explained by my autism. Now I'm thinking I should look into OCD more. I have those kinds of intrusive thoughts, especially when I pick up a knife. It's like my brain is telling me what not to do, but framing it in a way that makes it seem like I would do it, even if it's something so unlikely. I also have dermatillomania, which I've so far been unsuccessful in distracting myself with other autistic stims (repetitive, self soothing behaviours). I know that if I'm not careful, I could develop trichotillomania. Not a good look for a camgirl lolol.

Anyways, the mental illnesses I know I have are depression and anxiety. I have a lot of anxiety in my family, plus being a hypersensitive autistic in a noisy, chaotic world has contributed to that. Everything was undiagnosed until a couple of years ago, so I ended up burning out and having to quit work because my brain just wouldn't cooperate. Trying to think was like wading through thick sludge. I finally seem to be on a good set of medications - an SSRI and another antidepressant, plus a small amount of antipsychotic, which has taken away the inexplicable sense of low lying dread I used to feel, and made me a bit less scared of my phobia (a children's movie character).

The illnesses affect my camming by making it hard to get going and actually get on cam or film stuff, because I'm so sleepy. I have to force myself. I also get anxious that I'm doing nothing right and suck at it. But camming has also been great for my confidence in other ways, and it's flexible, so if I'm really low or ridiculously tired, I don't have to go on. Plus, I don't have to travel or put uncomfortable clothes on, so there are no stressful, tearful mornings involved. So far, it has helped me work around my illnesses and given me a new lease on life.

My advice: Go easy on yourself and just let yourself exist without having to prove your worth. You don't have to be constantly achieving things and being useful. Sometimes surviving is an achievement.

 

[FyrePowers]

Do you have a mental illness?

I have undiagnosed mental illness. I recently started seeing a doctor for it, because camming made it super obvious that I need to. I have anxiety and PTSD behavior that is triggered a lot by social relationships. I have been abandoned by people who were very close to me, so I have trust issues (about whether or not people actually like me and want to interact with me fucking brutal). This is very hard with my close romantic relationships, where I should 100% believe and trust my partner. But I don't always. And then there are all the times, where it's like

I do crazy things, too. Like, ridiculously crazy. But I know they're crazy when I'm doing them. I just feel like I can't stop. There's this feeling of emptiness or panic and it says...keep fucking up, this will make you feel better. Or just feel at all.

My dispositions seem to change quickly at times. Then I can have days of feeling nothing and being like "the goal today is eating three meals and changing my clothes", mixed with days of being crazy productive and motivated? I have a chronic physical illness as well that makes me afraid to leave the house, for fear of being out and not able to go home when I feel really bad.

How does it effect you on cam?

I have found I have to be doing something when I get on cam (blowing bubbles, making snowflakes are two I have done so far), or else the anxiety of getting on and being online as my room starts to get going gets to me and I don't log on. Definitely vulnerable to the spiral thought process of "oh no, no one's here, is it me?", which I am trying to train myself out of, since that thinking is in a lot of my life. I am interested in trying out MFC for its more hang out vibe over Chaturbate to see if that helps me, but I'm worried it will just be the same :/

Does it interfere with your work?

Because I think a lot that people resent me (for whatever reason), it makes keeping my momentum challenging. If I missed a day I wanted to cam, especially if I said I was thinking about being online, I feel really bad about myself, like I'm automatically thinking that people are mad at me for it and I'm getting the punishment going for them. In turn, this makes me hide from my social media and camming, which is not not not not not helpful at all. It's really hard for me to be straight up and say what's going on (even a peeled back version, since I don't want to go into detail on Twitter), because I have that fear that if I am honest, people will abandon me. It makes me want to cry all the time, because I feel trapped by myself. I just want to engage with people and share the sexy, radiant person I want to be/am with them.

What positive effects (if any) has camming made for your mental health?

Making me realize I needed to get help was a huge positive effect. Legit, there's a post around here that says (going to paraphrase here) "if you are getting exercise and sleep and you still feel tired and junky, go see a doctor". No matter what I did, I still felt bad about getting on cam or posting on my social media after I felt like I messed up, and I decided this probably wasn't healthy behavior. Really really happy I went to see a doctor.

I had pretty bad self esteem before I started, which is greatly improved now. Still working on having consistent personality self esteem and not just loads of physical self esteem. I feel confident I will get there someday!

Do you have any tips for other models struggling with mental illness?

You gotta stick up for yourself and get what you need to feel better. When I feel really bad, and I'm telling myself "hey, you need to do x and y to feel better", sometimes the last thing I want to do is feel better. But I remind myself that underneath those weird feelings that I don't really like very much, is a desire to get better, to have my life back in my hands and to do what I want to do. This is what motivates me forward right now. Even if I can't feel that in the moment, I believe it is there until I actually do feel it. "You deserve to feel better and to have a good life." I tell myself that a lot.

Recently I was like, "these things you are worried about won't necessarily go away on their own. What do you need to do to feel better?" and started working on the answers. One thing I felt bad a lot about was my twitter page, since it was sadly neglected. I have been working on it over the last few weeks, slowly, and it has been helping me feel more relaxed and comfortable, to the point where I even went on cam Saturday. Yay!

 

[IsabellaSnow]

Love your attitude. It's very dry and honest. My mother has the same issue...fearing she's attracted to children. Seems a bit odd for bipolar? I've always wondered if she had pure-O with psychotic features.

Anywho, the human brain is definitely a crazy, complicated thing. I think most people are abnormal in some ways. We're just too complicated for that many people to be truly okay, haha.

The first thing my Abnormal Psychology lecturer ever emphasized was that "Abnormal" is not a good description as mental illnesses are so common. I can't remember the statistics off by heart, but a huge percentage of people will experience a mental health issue during their lifetime, and a pretty large percentage will experience one during a year. It's completely reasonable to think about it, most people don't go through their entire lives being completely physically well all the time, mental health is no different. The problem is that we have such an awful stigma when it comes to those with mental health issues, it's why it's so important to talk about them and show each other that they are not so dangerous and scary.

I'll use OCD as an example, there are people who may try to claim I do not have OCD because I do not have the severe version that most people hear about, for example; when you need to switch a light on and off a bunch of times or someone will die, or something to that extent. Sometimes this comes from people with a severe form of OCD who don't like someone with a less severe (or a different version) adopting their label, or it comes from people with no experience of the condition. This in my opinion is such a toxic attitude, because it helps maintain a stigma of people with mental health conditions being "crazy" or "unstable". Really a pretty large amount of people who you meet will suffer or have suffered from some form of mental health condition, and they will seem completely normal.

For example, I have a few weird thoughts and I touch objects, most people in my surroundings seem to find it endearing, cute, quirky and kind of funny. It's easy to tease me about, and people seem interested in the fact that I touch random stuff. But if I told someone before they met me that I have full blown OCD, they might make all sorts of negative judgments.
Of course it is a bit annoying for me, and I do get headaches because of it, but I don't have any feeling that something bad will happen if I don't touch an object, and I have no delusional feelings about it, I will just get a stabbing pain or ache around my sinuses. I think this may be because my touching objects was originally a learned behaviour to cope with sinus pain/headaches. I repeatedly touch that area, and it is highly sensitive. I obviously associate corners with pain there, and not it happens that way. I have no idea if there is genuine pain there and maybe the thought of corners out of habit brings it to my conscious mind, or if there is no pain and the OCD causes me to believe I am feeling pain.

The psychological part of my OCD, the pure-O part, where I am nervous that I might just do something like throw my phone (or myself) off a cliff (if I happen to be walking along a cliff), I think is surprisingly common, yet most people don't have a clue what it is. I only found out about it because of the corner touching thing, people kept telling me I was OCD, to which I stupidly responded "but I'm really messy". Eventually I looked it up and found all of these symptoms I identified with, which I had no idea were symptoms of OCD. I think being able to identify that you are not alone, and that these thoughts are just a part of the condition, is comforting. You can begin to identify what the thoughts are and pay them less heed.

 

[Ann_Sulu]

The psychological part of my OCD, the pure-O part, where I am nervous that I might just do something like throw my phone (or myself) off a cliff (if I happen to be walking along a cliff).

This is how my main one goes. Best I can explain it is through the "Call of the Void/L'appel du Vide." I hate stairs for this reason.

 

[ExcellaExe]

This is how my main one goes. Best I can explain it is through the "Call of the Void/L'appel du Vide." I hate stairs for this reason.

I get moments where my brain just latches onto the idea of doing something utterly stupid, especially when cooking. "Just put your hand in the pot of boiling water, it'll feel amazing!" No, brain, it won't. Now, stop it. The intrusive, obsessive thoughts get really bad in the car, though, because I'll think about how easy it would be to get T-boned by a truck or another car at a certain spot, or to lose control on an over-pass and just fall a hundred feet down, and I have to basically yell at my brain to calm its tits.

I'm so glad I've gone to therapy and have the tools to calm the O parts of my thoughts down when they start happening. They used to be really, really bad.

 

[Ann_Sulu]

@ExcellaExe Sharp objects freak me the hell out. When I wash dishes, my roommate has to wash the knives. Chopping veggies gives me anxiety too. I know it's irrational, and shouldn't be a big deal, but every damn time my brain fills my head with how I'll inevitably injure myself horribly if I use a dang knife.

The irony is when I accidentally do hurt myself on rare occasion with something sharp, then it's no biggie and I can't understand why my brain latches onto it as being so big a deal for small things like cooking and cleaning.

 

[MsRoxie]

Do you have a mental illness?
How does it effect you on cam?
Does it interfere with your work?
What positive effects (if any) has camming made for your mental health?
Do you have any tips for other models struggling with mental illness?

Yes I do I have body dysmorphic disorder, depression, ocd and post traumatic stress disorder. It does not effect my cam/stripper life that much, except for when I have bad bdd days and I feel super ugly. It has had effects on my health and mental health.

It has allowed me to work on coming out into the real world slowly, while supporting myself and living on my own. I used to have severe panic attack, so I started a vanilla job where I worked 2 days a week and would cam for the rest of my income about 90%, then moved to work 3 days a week at my vanilla job, and cam part time for my 60% of my income income, then work 5-6 days a week at a vanilla job and cam for 25% 30% of income. I had some psychical health problems to where I been out of a vanilla job for 6 months it allowed me to make my own schedule.

My tips for models struggling with mental illness is to make goals for yourself, invest in a business or college and kick mental illnesses ass.

 

[Summer Raynes]

Oh my gosh,

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have been super struggling today. I have PTSD, GAD, social anxiety, and body dysmorphia. Body dysmorphia is where my silly brain likes to think that my body looks like shit and still believes I'm fat [the aftermath of anorexia] no matter how many guys go "bb you look soooo gooood". I'm 174 lb, 5'4", and losing the weight.

Camming is a positive outlet. I run. I don't medicate myself, though I've been considering it if I'm honest. Ever since I've moved back to the Northwest and facing the grey. cold winter it's been hard to get out of bed. It's been difficult to get ready for work with abysmal token counts and room activity. I should dance and just make a damn fool of my crazy self, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe tonight. Working and trying to get my mental state under control has been a feat. Especially right now, 3rd day of less that 1,000 tokens. It'll pick back up eventually, I know that. I hope soon.

 

[Vera]

Yeah, I'm kind of a walking executive dysfunction. I've been diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and garden-variety depression. I also have some issues from past violence/trauma/whatever. All of it is a real pain in the ass, to say the least, but I've kind of gotten the hang of managing my shit. I'm also on medication and a regular exercise schedule, which has been incredibly helpful.

I'm awful at time management or really getting much of anything done if I am not under strict time constraints. I've found that setting a daily routine for myself has helped a lot. Once I get into the rhythm/momentum of my daily obligations I do a lot better. I also keep TONS of spreadsheets so I can keep track of video releases, whether or not I've promoted X website yet during the day, etc. I also use spreadsheets for income tracking so I can course correct if I'm not hitting my projected earnings.

If I don't keep up with those safety nets I get super behind. I also try to keep at least two weeks of content queued up at a time because sometimes I am a depressed lump and won't work for a week.

I'm used to working very active jobs in the vanilla workforce -- I do great under high-pressure and am very good at multitasking. I just kind of don't know what to do with myself if there isn't a fire that needs putting out.

I really recommend setting up a spreadsheet/tracking system for any other ladies who have trouble staying focused/on top of their shit. It's saved my bacon more times than I can count. If any ladies want to see my basic spreadsheet template for video releases I'd be happy to share over PM.

 

[FyrePowers]

@Vera Price Spreadsheets are so useful!! I have been making some for more professional purposes lately, but I also legit made one just for the daily things I have to do to take care of myself so that I don't get sick as much and fall behind. Things like, washing my face, getting dressed, taking my medicine, eating three meals a day (box for each of them), exercising, etc. When I don't remember to check my spreadsheets (since it's still a newish habit and I have squirrel brain), my day crumbles in terms of productivity. Which motivates me to remember to check it the next day It can be intimidating to look at lists and know that you're responsible for getting it all done, but I always feel super good when I do get it done. Reminds me that I am powerful and can do it!

 

[Starling]

I'm awful at time management or really getting much of anything done if I am not under strict time constraints. I've found that setting a daily routine for myself has helped a lot. Once I get into the rhythm/momentum of my daily obligations I do a lot better. I also keep TONS of spreadsheets so I can keep track of video releases, whether or not I've promoted X website yet during the day, etc. I also use spreadsheets for income tracking so I can course correct if I'm not hitting my projected earnings.

If I don't keep up with those safety nets I get super behind. I also try to keep at least two weeks of content queued up at a time because sometimes I am a depressed lump and won't work for a week.

I'm used to working very active jobs in the vanilla workforce -- I do great under high-pressure and am very good at multitasking. I just kind of don't know what to do with myself if there isn't a fire that needs putting out.

I really recommend setting up a spreadsheet/tracking system for any other ladies who have trouble staying focused/on top of their shit. It's saved my bacon more times than I can count. If any ladies want to see my basic spreadsheet template for video releases I'd be happy to share over PM.

I would LOVE to see any examples you have of spreadsheets you use to stay organized. I have ADD (and 3 other things), and ironically one of the unavoidable side effects of my other meds is short term memory loss, so I have a REALLY hard time staying on track and being productive.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Vera]

I would LOVE to see any examples you have of spreadsheets you use to stay organized. I have ADD (and 3 other things), and ironically one of the unavoidable side effects of my other meds is short term memory loss, so I have a REALLY hard time staying on track and being productive.

Thank you in advance!

Sent!

 

[Ann_Sulu]

Earlier this year in January

I just realized I derped heavily by saying this. Interesting to have that many DX's in such a short span of time...I meant January 2017. My brain apparently isn't in 2018 yet. XD