Empower101

I am a mental health counselor myself and I am going through a lot of PTSD turning 49 on October 7th.  Been misdiagnosed as bipolar and schizoaffective.  Within my life I have witnessed, been involved with toxitiy in environment--I used to say in speeches as a mental health advocate, that I started my counseling career around 1964 when listening to my mother talk about the horrors of shock treatments she went through at the California State Mental hospital.  Both parents were equally abusive with drug use and alcoholism and I was sexually violated by a family member at aged nine.  I went into the mental health system as a client beginning in January 1982 and then experienced the worst period of my life for over 15 years going from on prescription to another, losing friends and grossly overweight by around 100 lbs by my late 30s.  In 1990 a kidney infection and running away from my coercive, controlling parents (in heightened anxiety) led to me voluntarily to go to an emergency room in Portland Oregon.  However, the staff looked at me as if I were psychotic and stapped me down against my will and did not allow me to go to the bathroom so I held it for 3 days.  I was terrified afterwards yet it gave me the impudence to quickly finish up college because I knew I needed to do something about this.  I graduated in 1993.  However I wasn't equipped to find a job so I volunteered at Oregon Advocacy and the Mental Health Association of Oregon.  Also I helped people navigate the system yet continued to find abuses, prejudices in the medical system.  Therefore I began to attend conferences and make speechs such as in front of the Portland Police Bureau and the State Capital Building in Salem Oregon.  In 2001, I was invited to the National Mental Health Association Conference in Washington DC where I told my story to a number of Congresspeople and Senators on Capital Hill--most listened intently and gave me liberal time.  In 2006, I was invited back to Washington DC for the NMHA's Conference. In 2002 I was hired to run a dropin center which I did like a improvasational humor like Patch Adams along with music therapy. Later I became a case manager and continued to listen to others' stories of medical abuse such as what they experienced in psych wards like Oregon State Hospital (which again I internalized and later triggered me)> Also in 2006, I married the love of my life yet the marriage turned out to be traumatic and controversial from the start.  For one thing, a jeallous co-worker accused me of stocking her child; the allegations were found to be untrue in court yet it led my professional career in jeaopedy.  Additionally I experienced nightmears/night-terrors of being forced drugged and being slandered because I had been political.  My wife did not understand and this led to additional arguments.  Because of witnessing multiiple abuses within the medical field after long time affiation as a client, I left conventional medical system in 2005 to go strickly naturpathic.  However, I was aware since going off lithium abuptly because of the beginnings of documented kidney damage, that my kidneys were possibly on borrowed time which caused additional traumas.  By February of this year, lab and ultra sound tests proved that my kidneys were operating at less than 8% and that I needed to start dialysis, which I started in the hospital by late March.  This further caused divisions between my wife and myself; a vacation we took in August in which I got sick with an infection and needed to be hospitalized in Southern Oregon led to my wife to be abuse in the long ride back home in the Portland area and she abruptly kicked me out of the house.  So you can see how things pile up and lead to another and it becomes horrible when doctors dismiss things as delusional or they don't listen to you.  To date, I have never conclusively believed that I have schizoaffective disoirder or bipolar yet suffer profoundly from the effects of accumulated trauma and abuse which has not been effectively dealt with effectively.  As a matter of fact, I am having a hard time getting my insurance company to recongize my PTSD conditions which I feel is equivilent to those suffered from combat in war.  As far as the dialysis is concerned, it is rough physically on me yet I continue to work full time.  It allows me to clean up my system (which leads me to believe in accumulated toxins had been built up which had led to behavioral despire).  I continue to look at alternative means for my own health care and as I continue to physically clean up I find more re-associations from the dis-associations of my life--many more aspects of 40 some odd years are making clearer sense to me now.  I posted this because I need support as I have lost my family who did not believe in me as a spokesperson.  It is extemely important that we, as an informed group, educate people to re-associate with their bodies and really question their own medical treatment before they wake up to diabetes, kidney failure or not wake up at all.  As I am writing this, I am feeling the despire and anxiety of being more alone yet I have goals and purposes in mind. Incidently, I am now more physically active and my weight is around 145 lbs at 5'7". I need to get a public speaking career going as well as a writing outlet.  Therefore I am posting this for inspiration and ideas to carry on uniquely.