Author
Aubrey Ellen Shomo
This is a one-hour episode of Let's Talk About It, titled "Personal Experiences with the Mental Health System: Emerging Intact," that aired on KUBO 88.7 FM in El Centro, CA, on May 5th, 2005. The Show's host was Scott Dudley, with Angela co-hosting. Aubrey Ellen Shomo was the sole guest. Reproduced here with permission.
It covers personal negative expieriences with the american commercial and public mental health system
Below is a transcript of an episode of Let's Talk About It, titled "Personal Experiences with the Mental Health System: Emerging Intact," that aired on KUBO 88.7 FM in El Centro, CA, on May 5th, 2005. The Show's host was Scott Dudley, with Angela co-hosting. Aubrey Ellen Shomo was the sole guest. Reproduced here with permission.
The audio is also here on indymedia.
Transcript:
SCOTT: Aubrey Ellen Shomo is Today's Guest. Good Morning, Aubrey....
AUBREY: Good Morning.
SCOTT: Thanks for coming aboard. Let's kind of give people kind of a chronological background of what happened here. Umm, you know. Let's start with, perhaps, saying that you were kind of at least semi-rolling along successfully in a couple of different gifted schools and all of a sudden you turned six years old?
AUBREY: Umm.... Well, it was more of a progression. Most of the really bad stuff happened when I was eight. So, I was sort of rolling along. You know. I was in a private school for the gifted then switched over to a public gifted program.
ANGELA: Which means that you had, like, high IQ?
AUBREY: Yes. I had scored pretty, pretty high on the Stanford Binet test, which is a test they used here. So, you know, I was in with a lot of the more intelligent kids. And I was doing quite well academically. Now, I was something of a strong willed kid and, was a bit short in the self-control department. So, I also managed to get into a lot of trouble, and that's where the problem really came in. My parents wanted to think that it was just because I was smart, but, they ended up being told that I probably had other problems. So, they got me a psychologist and that psychologist, in turn, referred me to my first psychiatrist. And, that referral, I started seeing this psychologist when I was six and a half or seven, and then I got referred to a psychiatrist around the age of eight.
ANGELA: Aubrey, what kind of problems came up that they made you, you know, that you got referred to a psychiatrist?
AUBREY: Umm. I'm not actually quite sure. The referral pretty much took place, um, under suspicion of ADD or ADHD. So, I did have a lot of energy and, um, I was pretty impulsive. I was pretty strong willed, pretty emotional. As far as I can tell that was pretty typical of kids that age.
ANGELA: Yeah.
AUBREY: So, I mean, maybe, I took it a bit further than most, but I don't think I was really all that different.
SCOTT: So, one of the initial things that was going on, though, is, is that at least, you didn't have a sense of why this process was even starting. At least, and especially at that age, perhaps.
AUBREY: No. I... Just all of this stuff was going on. I had been involved in a number of different extracurricular type activities. So, especially with the psychologist, who was a play therapist, I wasn't aware of the fact that I was seeing a mental health professional. And, you know, I was aware of that with the psychiatrist, but I didn't really know what was going on. I just figured my parents were going through stuff, and doing whatever.
SCOTT: So, mental health treatment was, like, your way of helping your parents get through their stuff, or?
AUBREY: That could have been a part of it. But, I think mostly I just had no concept of what was going on.
ANGELA: So, after going to the psychiatrist, what happened afterwards?
AUBREY: Ok, he decided that I was probably either Bipolar or ADHD and, what would be diagnostic there was to put me on Ritalin and if I got worse I was Bipolar, and, I'd be ADHD if I got better. And, starting on Ritalin is what started most of the fun that I had with the mental health system, because, on Ritalin my behavior got a lot worse, I started to hallucinate, and, at least according to the copious documentation of my life that started around then, started showing signs of a thought disorder.
SCOTT: What was that like in those times in your shoes, I mean, it's... You've had the ability to, kind of, probably, go back and read some of your documentation, but what was it like for you as a kid?
AUBREY: Sometimes I found some of the events frightening. I didn't really understand what the whole hoopla was about. I had no idea how big of a deal hallucinating is supposed to be. So, people were asking me about it, and I was used to people asking me all kinds of questions about various things, so I was actually getting excited about telling them what was going on with me. And, only later would I learn that would come back to bite me. Internally, I mean, there were times it was frightening, but at that point, I wasn't that horribly bothered by it.
ANGELA: But, what kind of hallucinations were you having?
AUBREY: Well, I mean, there were times that I would, like, see my parents and interact with them only to learn later that nothing ever happened. I think the biggest things is, and they never really did figure out exactly what was going on with this, I would see stuff like geometric shapes. A really. One that really set things off was I saw a patterned triangle hovering outside my bedroom window. And, I don't know. They never seemed to get the end of that one. I also, saw things like the wallpaper moving, or, and, well, the wallpaper moving and singing. Or, later on, I would see, say bathroom toilets with teeth. And, that last one was pretty frightening. So I, mostly, it was a lot of lower level type stuff. I mean, there wasn't that much that seemed to have complete thoughts to it, it was just like random scattering of what came in to my senses.
SCOTT: Great. You know, we're talking this morning with Aubrey Ellen Shomo, and um, again, a childhood survivor and emerger from mental health treatment and, we're really honored to have you on today, Aubrey. Listen, Aubrey, hallucinations, you know, of that level. Toilets, I mean. This isn't like the 65% of kids who have imaginary friends. This is stuff that could probably be real distracting and really get you off track. How did that impact you at home and at school? I'm guessing we went from bad to worse.
AUBREY: Pretty much. I mean, I tended to ignore it when I had something else to do. Sometimes I found it distracting. The most problematic is when I would accuse my parents of saying things they hadn't actually said. Only, it took us a while to figure out why. Well, it took me a while to figure out why they were later denying what they had said. But, you know, it's, it to me didn't seem like as much of an issue as it probably would, because, I mean, as far as I was concerned that was the frame of reference, that was the situation I was in. And, you know, I can see how from the outside that that would have seemed, really horrifying, but to me, I didn't, I didn't find it that terrible.
SCOTT: So, just like other children, when you don't know anything else is normal, your own frame of reference is all you really have. That's what you think is normal.
AUBREY: Exactly.
SCOTT: Even at that level, which normally, we would consider that to be beyond that, but, but, certainly.
ANGELA: So, did they give you more medication? Or what kind of treatment did you get, once your parents and the mental health people found out that you were hallucinating?
SCOTT: Once you happily started explaining your hallucinations to everyone.
AUBREY: Well that was generating a lot of interest, but what really started the kicker, is one day at school, and it was actually a behavioral thing the kids were picking on me and I lost control, and, I actually ended up suspended from the third grade. I didn't know that was possible. But, when that happened, my parents went, and took me to the psychiatrist, probably at that point saying "ok, um, not ADHD. The Ritalin isn't really doing anything here." But because of what happened, I wasn't really that keen on telling my psychiatrist all about it and I wouldn't even make eye contact with him. So, he asked why I wouldn't make eye contact with him. And, I'm not sure exactly what I said - what my words were. What I was trying to communicate was that it felt really, really bad when I made eye contact with him because I was not really okay with everything that had happened, and was actually a bit ashamed of it. But, he took whatever I said to mean I think he can read my mind. And, at that moment I became an inpatient at Children's Hospital.
SCOTT: And that was, of course, in your frame of reference something that probably came as a tremendous shock?
AUBREY: I had no idea what was going on. I thought the session was over, we were leaving. My parents said there was one more stop to make, so we stopped by the emergency ---
SCOTT: For ice cream after the session.
AUBREY: [Laughs] I don't think they were quite that sadistic about it, but, then, you know, I went to the emergency department, I figured they were filling out paperwork or something, and I was just waiting for that to be finished. We ended up going back upstairs, and, somebody was showing me around the unit. And, I, at this point, still didn't know what, precisely, was going on. When I saw them putting beds down, I realized I wasn't leaving. They had those fold out beds that folded out from the walls.
SCOTT: Oh yeah.
AUBREY: So, you know, up until that point it just looked like cabinets and I was walking around. I didn't know what this place was or anything else. But, when I saw them putting the beds down, I realized I wasn't leaving and, started to get very, very upset, and so at that point, they explained to me that I was going to be staying there a while.
ANGELA: How long did you stay there?
AUBREY: According to my records, I was only an inpatient for three weeks, I ended up staying over Christmas. I was in day treatment there for quite a while.
ANGELA: You were how old? Nine. Or Eight?
AUBREY: I was eight at the time.
ANGELA: Oh my gosh.
SCOTT: But it felt like much longer.
AUBREY: It felt like a very long time. I was honestly surprised to learn it was only three weeks.
SCOTT: You know, for all of the DSM-IV words that you were gifted with, by various mental health professionals, it's kind of curious that they missed the adjustment disorder with mixed disturbance in conduct associated with the hospitalization.
AUBREY: [Laughs.] Um, that actually amazes me, myself. What amazes me more is that as time went on I tried to explain to them that my hospital experiences were just making me worse and that a lot of my problems, in my professional insightless opinion, were due to my treatment, and nobody ever seemed to be able to get that through their heads as anything other than deflection of blame.
SCOTT: What kind of things, what kind of feelings, what kind of thoughts, were evoked with you in, in dealing with this, kind of, forever three week experience initially. You know, what were you feeling then?
AUBREY: I was feeling really betrayed that I had ended up there. And, you know, really, I was just horrified. I had no idea how this worked, you know. I had no idea when I was going to be going home. The unit had all kinds of, fascinating little procedures and rules, you know. I had not, you know. I was so young I hadn't really been grounded per say that I could recall, so I had no idea what it meant to be restricted to unit, or what I had done in order to deserve that, not realizing that that was pretty much standard practice starting out. So I sat here and I saw this monumental system that I really didn't understand why I was being subjected to and why I was being subjected to a lot of it by default, before I had done anything to piss anyone off.
ANGELA: Hm.
SCOTT: What kind of, I mean, we talk about, being there, and the loss of liberty, and, and, not, probably not having it explained, I mean, you know, many times with, you know, eight year olds, we kind of don't really bother to tell them why things are happening. Assuming that they're not going to understand it anyway. Which in your case doesn't appear to have proven true. What kind of things were going on treatment-wise?
AUBREY: Well, there were all of the groups, which I never really quite figured out the point of, other than to kill time. They wanted to put me on medication and my parents eventually grudgingly agreed. They, started me on lithium and Stelazine. The lithium took a lot of effort and the Stelazne, my chart says, my patents "required considerable support" to put me on. Now, my parents told me they threatened to go to social services and basically take custody of me and do it anyway, because if they didn't approve the treatment for me, they weren't being fit parents.
SCOTT: So, that's the euphemism, then, for "considerable support."
AUBREY: Yeah, I've never seen very much good happen associated with the words considerable support. So, I mean, that's pretty much, what happened there, I -
ANGELA: [Interrupts]
AUBREY: Go on.
ANGELA: Yeah. What kind, did you have any kind of side effects, being on this medication? Well, first of all, how many types of medication were you on? During this stay.
AUBREY: At that time, I was on mood stabilizers and neuroleptics.
ANGELA: Ok. Any side effects?
AUBREY: Not that I specifically noticed, I mean, I was really really tired and out of it, which apparently was a side effect rather than an intended effect.
AUBREY: But, I didn't notice anything that serious. Later on, my parents would be afraid I was developing tics but that would prove not to go anywhere.
SCOTT: We're back this morning with Aubrey Ellen Shomo, and again talking about her experiences in the mental health system. And, you know, from any system, you're dealing with power issues, and I think the power issues are really escalated and magnified when you're dealing with age differential, in addition to, you know, the professional versus the non-professional and the system versus the individual. You throw in the fact that the person is younger and perceived to have limited understanding and legally doesn't have any rights -
ANGELA: Decision to make. They don't have any rights to make any decisions.
SCOTT: So you were, kind of, in the ultimate position of powerlessness, which, I'm sure, kind of, exacerbated your oppositional defiant stuff. Hugh?
AUBREY: [Laughs] That it certainly did. One thing I might add to your list is just, you know, being a mental patient on top of that and that particular system. A lot of times, especially when concepts like insight get floated about, people just aren't interested in listening to what you have to say about yourself, or what you think is right for yourself. So, that was actually compounded. Especially when I got to the point that I didn't think the medication was being terribly helpful and wanted to stop it. Nobody was interested in doing anything other than telling me I only wanted to do that because I was sick.
ANGELA: At this time, when you were hospitalized, did they give you another diagnosis?
AUBREY: The first time I was hospitalized, it shifted through a couple of different things and it ended up Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which as you pointed out, a situation of powerlessness is great to exacerbate, and the Primary Diagnosis was Bipolar Disorder, Mixed Episode, Severe, with Psychotic Features.
SCOTT: Contextualize that for me, if you can. That's kind of a specific symptom set. How were those emerging in the context with where you were at?
AUBREY: Well, I was pretty depressed about my situation. I was still both hyperactive and energetic and I was seeing things. So, those together pretty much made the Bipolar Psychotic come out. And the Oppositional Defiant Disorder, which tends to happen, tends to be diagnosed in strong willed kids if they're just willing to disregard authority was exacerbated by the fact that I was really pissed off about what was going on, and that anger was boiling over.
SCOTT: So at least a part of this was the context of where you were at and what you were being subjected to interacting with who you were.
AUBREY: Exactly.
SCOTT: How did it go, you know. Three weeks, we're out, life goes on. How did the next several years kind of sum up for you.
ANGELA: In other words, did you get better? I mean, did the hospitalization work?
SCOTT: Or did they get better?
ANGELA (repeating): Or did they get better?
AUBREY: Well, after I left the day treatment program, I went back. I went through a special classroom at my school back into the mainstream. I performed a lot better. I didn't really feel very much better. And, from time to time, things started to go on. I didn't really notice what they said was mood instability. That seemed perfectly natural to me, but they said it fluxuated. What I did notice was the hallucinations because I noticed that these things weren't supposed to be going on and by that point I was well aware that they weren't supposed to be going on and that they implied bad things. So, they ebbed and flowed over time, never really going away.
ANGELA: You just didn't say anything.
AUBREY: Actually, at that point, for those couple of years, I was still talking about it and I was telling people. I figured that I was seeing things, so that was obviously a problem and so I was working with my psychiatrist on it. I didn't stop saying anything until after my second hospitalization which is where my outlook on the system really changed.
SCOTT: Tell us about that second hospitalization.
ANGELA: How old were you, first of all?
AUBREY: At that point I was ten.
ANGELA: Ten.
AUBREY: And what was going on is that my parents, their relationship was going south. It had been for some time. And my mother was having a number of her own run-ins with the mental health system, which she actually found her way into after I did. So, I was under a whole lot of stress and so the hallucinations started to get really really bad. And at that point there were times I was hiding under my bed because I just couldn't deal with the situation. There were actually voices telling me I was worthless and shouldn't be around anymore. So, that was a really really nasty situation. So, that time, I actually wanted to go to the hospital because I figured they could do something about it. So, I ended up in the hospital and that time they did some blood work. They realized that, thanks to the lithium, my thyroid was having problems, put me on synthroid. They switched out the medication, so I was on Resperidal instead of Stelazine, at that point. They added some Depakote to the lithium. And, none of that was really changing very much. And, as soon as I got back into the hospital I realized it that wasn't exactly a terribly wonderful place to be and I just wanted to go home, even though at home I was just too scared to be there. So I tried to develop my own way to deal with it. So, I tried to imagine that I could counteract the hallucinations. When something visually would happen that was scary I imagined basically something else coming and attacking it. And, I thought that was a really really clever solution, but the people treating me, especially when I described it using the phrase 'thought weapons,' weren't as okay with that.
SCOTT: So, creating a delusion to attack a hallucination was just a little bit too imaginative, I suppose.
AUBREY: [Laughs] Yeah. I think they thought I thought that the thought weapons were real, or something. Rather than realizing that I was just, the hallucinations weren't real and that I was doing something unreal to combat them. So when I ended up in that situation and I realized they didn't have any understanding of that, I decided, "You know. Maybe I just shouldn't tell anyone about this." I'll manage it on my own and I won't end up in places like this anymore. So, I started denying everything I saw. I stopped telling anybody about anything that I figured they could have an issue with as far as beliefs went. I would only learn later my diagnosis during that time had been upped to schizoaffective disorder so, by the time I got into major re-contact with the system all my denying things wasn't going to be too helpful. But, for a couple of years, there, that worked out pretty decently. And, after I gout out of Bethesda, which was another three weeks. I got back into my school, just really hit the pavement and didn't admit to anyone anything bad was going on, and focused on my schoolwork and focused on what I was trying to do.
SCOTT: Developing the skills, then, to kind of combat the hallucinations and combat some of the more disruptive elements of what was going on.
AUBREY: For me, I look at that era as when I learned to start lying and keeping secrets. That, at the time, and even in retrospect, for me isn't a very positive thing, but it's what one has to do to survive.
SCOTT: Well, in some respects it was empowering because it almost sounds like that was like a cornerstone of you beginning to say, you know, "This is my life. This is my recovery, and I'm not getting much help at this level. I'm going to begin to do this in ways that make sense and are meaningful to me." And whether those include working with providers or medicine, or anything, or just doing it yourself, just having that kind of volition, particularly at ten years old, that's really really like, you know, "Can I will this onto my children somehow?"
AUBREY: [Laughs]
SCOTT: How was adolescence, then? I mean, I'm thinking that your next developmental stages must have been, um, nothing but more exciting.
AUBREY: [Laughs] Well, that they proved to be. After I got out of there and I was denying everything, I stopped wanting to take medication. With my father leaving in the divorce, the stress level in my house was down, so, the hallucinations were down with it. So, I basically told my psychiatrist I stopped wanting to take medications. I told him I didn't think I was ill - I didn't think I'd ever been ill, and he told me that people with brain problems often don't recognize it.
SCOTT: So being told you thought you were healthy was a symptom of your disorder.
AUBREY: And ironically, I was fully aware that I was still having symptoms at the time I told him I wasn't ill. I just wanted to justify trying to stop my medication, which he wasn't okay with. So, I'm sitting here in this double bind scenario of claiming that I'm not ill, when I believe that I really was hallucinating, and trying to defend that with somebody who's telling me that I don't believe I'm ill because I'm sick.
ANGELA: [Laughs]
SCOTT: So your very claim itself... It's the ultimate catch 22, almost.
AUBREY: Exactly.
ANGELA: Oh, wow.
SCOTT: But, did your psychiatrist at that point begin to say "ok, well, fine. We'll begin to lower your medications?"
AUBREY: [Laughs] That would have been nice. I would have found out something like, "you shouldn't stop Risperdal right away." Instead, I stopped everything cold turkey. I read up on symptoms of hypothyroidism and I even stopped the synthroid, thinking, well maybe I'll know what's going on and I do have bloodwork scheduled soon, so if anything really bad is happening I'll get through a short while without the synthroid. So, I just stopped everything. And ---
SCOTT: Welcome to baseline.
AUBREY: Not quite. Stopping a number of things, including Risperdal-
SCOTT: Rebound?
AUBREY: too abruptly can cause serious problems, so I ended up, within a couple of months back in the hospital.
ANGELA: How old were you at this time?
AUBREY: I was fourteen by that point.
ANGELA: Your stay at the hospital, how long did you stay there?
AUBREY: I would end up there admitted several times back to back.
ANGELA: Wow.
AUBREY: It was a total of about a month. By this point, insurance companies were pressuring people to get people out fast. Each time I left, I was on more medication. And, there were some other situations going on, my mother was dealing with her own stuff and that was having an effect. So, at the end, they wanted to put me in residential treatment and my insurance company wouldn't pay for that. So, that situation actually was probably the darkest and the worst era of my life, but I sprung back from that equally ferociously.
SCOTT: Was the, kind of, going back and forth and the threat... I mean your initial experiences with hospitalizations had been
ANGELA: Not good.
SCOTT: Yeah. I was going to say traumatic, but not good works. Was that kind of interplay there where you were maybe going back, maybe not, and adults making most of these decisions. Was that again kind of contributing to some of this energy?
AUBREY: I think so. I mean, I was sitting there and I was well aware that the adults had all of the power over me, you know, whether I went to the hospital or stayed home, and for a fourteen-year-old, that's really not a happy place to be. And by that, I mean that position of powerlessness. So, at that point, I started to really act out and really take out my frustrations on the staff and on the system, and they started to respond equally harshly. And, that was a real mess. I mean, there were a couple of times I refused to cooperate with the day treatment thing, so they just up and dragged me into a cooperative stance.
SCOTT: Is therapeutic hold an oxymoron?
AUBREY and ANGELA laugh.
AUBREY: I would have to say so.
SCOTT: So, there's not much therapeutic about being held in your expierence?
AUBREY: Now, when you say, I'm actually not sure with your terminology, either thing I was thinking of would work.
SCOTT: Someone taking control of your body and kind of keeping you in a place because you're being what they term non-compliant.
ANGELA: Mmm. Hmm.
AUBREY: Yeah. That's not therapeutic - that's trauma.
SCOTT: For your experience.
AUBREY: From my experience. I mean, here I was, there were basically five men on top of me. I have a hard time understanding how anyone could find that a situation to be in that was anything other than traumatic. At least, that's my perspective.
SCOTT: Tell us about the sense of invalidation, because that, kind of, is a thread that runs throughout your experiences in the mental health system. What was that like for you?
AUBREY: Basically, when I felt very much I was told that I was experiencing mood symptoms. Every time, I would respond to a situation with strong emotion, that usually involved responding to a situation with strong behavior, nobody really separated those out so every time I tried to explain how I felt I was told I was simply sick. On top of that, you know, I was one of those kids who liked to come up with, really, cockamamie sort of ideas. So, I came up with a lot of those, and with a normal kid it would be like, "Oh, that kid's a dreamer," or something. For me it was always, "That's grandiose... Oh, he's getting manic."
SCOTT: By the same token, some of your schemes, I suppose, have actually proven to come true. Tell us, you know, it's ten to eight, and I've got nine minutes left, and I really want to deal with your emergence as a person.
ANGELA: When is it that, actually, you had enough? That's you made the decision, "You know what, I'm going to take control of my life."
AUBREY: Well, that was one of the positive effects of therapeutic hold.
ANGELA: [Laughs]
AUBREY: At that point, I basically said, I mean, it wasn't really positive at that time. I was horrified. I just never ever wanted to be back in that situation again. I couldn't deal with it. So, at that point, I upped the deny everything standpoint. I stopped being emotional for years. Eventually, I'd start that back up once I was out of the system and felt safe. Like I had after Bethesda, I hit the pavement really really hard, and just focused on what I could do. I never wanted to end up back, so I took a very hostile, non-cooperative stance with my psychiatrist and focused on pulling off what I wanted to do in life. During the window that if they'd gotten their way and put me in residential, I still would have been in residential treatment, I actually founded an Internet company. It was during the end of the bubble. It didn't end up doing that much, but for a while, it was quite a thing. We got some real money behind us. I actually ended up on the front page of a local technical paper. So, I basically came out of the system where my prognosis was considered horrible and nobody thought I was going to pull off very much, and I just said, "Screw this," and I went for broke, and actually pulled off a few decent things.
SCOTT: Aubrey, who are you today? What kind of stuff do you have going on? What kind of energies are you putting into stuff and how do you manage your life?
ANGELA: Yes, now, are you on any medication right now?
AUBREY: No, I ended up back on medication during that time. I ended up a couple of years later discontinuing it again, only being a lot smarter about it. So, I've now been off of medication successfully for four years.
ANGELA: Wow.
AUBREY: I never plan to go back on it. I'm currently working as a network engineer, working on a couple of film projects. I'm co-editing a book on how people can be inadvertently hurt by the psychiatric system, and actually how that can interfere with their recovery. My partner in co-editing this book is a social worker and also a consumer, in Georgia. So, we're taking my standpoint which is pretty much, keep the system the frick off of me, because here is how you managed to mess me up in my youth, and her standpoint, which is "I actually found the system quite helpful, but at times things people did interfered with my recovery," and we're trying to combine those to create a text that will show mental health workers how to be aware of when they're potentially running into a situation that will end up harming their patients more than it helps.
SCOTT: And you've actually got a website where people can participate in that process. I don't know if you'd like to share that with people.
AUBREY: Sure. It's www.psychiatricharm.com.
SCOTT: So, like psychiatric, the word, and harm, with no spaces. Actually, it looks like psychiatri charm.
ANGELA: [Laughs] Kind of, kind of.
AUBREY: [Laughs] {jokingly} We'll need to change that.
ANGELA: Aubrey, going back, now, going back to your childhood, what should have been done, in your opinion? What should have been done? And this is in your opinion, because you're the one who lived through it.
AUBREY: You know, I have a really hard time saying how some of the big stuff could have been different, because, you know, I've had to come to the realization that when kids are having hallucinations that's a big deal. But, I think the biggest thing is people could have listened to me more, and talked to me more about what was going on, rather than assuming they knew best and my finding myself going places not really knowing what was going on and not thinking anybody listened, or anybody actually understood or cared. My big experience was people feeling they knew my mind better than I did, and they knew my life better than I did. That attitude, I think, is the biggest thing that could have been changed. I think if they could have been more cooperative instead of authoritarian, my experiences could have been very very different.
ANGELA: Also your parents. Your parents did what they thought was best because the professionals were telling them what to do. Correct?
AUBREY: Exactly.
ANGELA: And then, what I'm hearing is that parents should be more vocal, and if they don't think that's the right thing, they should say it, and they should say what they think not necessarily go with what the doctor's saying.
AUBREY: And doctors should be aware that, my parents were pretty resistant to putting me on medication so they were threatened. And, when I finally stopped medication and fired my last psychiatrist, the last line in my chart concluded I wasn't certifiable. So, I'm sitting there, leaving the system, doing pretty decently for myself, but the fact that I was making this decision on my own was not taken as reasonable. So, you know, parents speaking up, but professionals listening to both parents and consumers when they want to try a different way, and at least be supportive about making that attempt. And, you know, maybe you'll be able to manage without medication, but medication is a great tool, maybe that won't work. Do whatever works for yourself and whatever works in your own recovery, whether or not that's the way everybody else does it.
SCOTT: Aubrey Ellen, how was it, today, coming on this show for you? How has this been for you?
AUBREY: It was very nice. I liked talking about my own experiences and hoping that, maybe, I can make some changes in the parts of the system I didn't like, and also let other people out there know that it is possible to get through this stuff. Not only is it possible to just get by and function, but it's possible to excel, and it's possible to live your dreams no matter what your brain wants to do.
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