I’ve been invited to join the Canvas family which I consider both an honour and a privilege.

When I first found this blog I though, “what a cool idea!”

And then, the more I read, the more I thought, I wish I were invited to contribute to this blog. I really like what they’re doing here.

Well, lo and behold, here I am!

I’ve decided to start by telling you a bit about me so you all know where I’m coming from.

I’ve been dealing with chronic pain since I was 11.  In retrospect, I’d say I’ve also dealing with depression since I was a little child.  However, I only started to understand the extent and scope of my mental problems until well into my 30’s. Way after I moved to Canada, when I was lucky to find a doctor brave enough to undertake my case and only after having a big melt down while pursuing a PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine.

As things stand right now, I have ADD, MDD, PTSD, and maybe DID.  Oh, and a higher than average IQ. I’m what some people call gifted.  But that’s also a mental illness, right?

Fun, eh? Somehow, it looks and feels a lot better when I type only the acronyms instead of the whole name.

And those are only my Mental Health-related diagnosis. I also have a few other physical diagnosis that include hypothyroidism and Fibromyalgia/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  I talk about those on my personal blog so I’m not going to discuss them here.  Or at least only in relationship with my depression, when they decompensate me.

I first realized I had a mental illness when I was in med school (oh yes, I forgot to mention, I have an MD degree).  How did that escape my husband -who is also a doctor, and my many treating doctors, I don’t know.  I’m very good at hiding things, I guess.  I have outstanding defence mechanisms, too.  That, I also realized at med school, while taking psychobiology, psychopathology and psychiatry.

Now, I am not a psychiatrist.  While I did excel in my psychiatry year, I am just a normal, regular MD.  So most of what I’ll be talking about here will be from a patient point of view.  Maybe spiced up with an educated guess here and there and some bits I learned from my patients too. But that’s about it. I don’t have any formal training in psychotherapy.

It’s been a long, winding, dark, treacherous road to get to where I am now. From being willing to die before admitting I had a mental illness to being completely open about it and even becoming an advocate of ending the stigma associated with mental illness.

That’s me.  A completely crazy person who lacks most of the adulthood filters and still sees the world like a child.

© Summer Solstice Girl and A Canvas Of The Minds 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Summer Solstice Girl and A Canvas Of The Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. This work is protected under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.