Innercept Fails

Ever since I went to stable a few weeks ago I've been different. It's like I have an increased amount of anger and stress.

Stable has gotten progressively worse since I've been at Innercept. Some of that is because I've moved to stages in the program where there is more freedom, but a lot of it is because they keep changing the stable program. It actually used to be kind of chill. You could hang out, chat with staff and fellow residents all day, play card and board games, chill out in the hot tub. There is still a hot tub there, but I doubt they would let residents use it. Now, stable is like a prison. It is not relaxing or therapeutic.

I associate stable with some of the worst times I have had at Innercept. To bring up feminine issues, I had my period when I first got there last time. It stopped when I got there, was gone for a week and a half, then came back the day after I got out. I blame stress.

I don't understand the reasoning behind stable. They think that if you spend time doing nothing or forced pointless labor, you will have time to reflect and come to the conclusion that whatever you were doing that got you into stable was bad. Or something like that. They don't allow most people to talk anymore. I was allowed to talk, but the other residents couldn't so the only person to talk to was staff and a lot of time they were busy. There were some staff that I liked but some had this kind of rude controlling attitude.

Speaking of which, there are some staff that act like I am fucking stupid. I don't remember why but they threatened to send me back to Maxwell. Maxwell is the first part of the program I was in, it is the girls house, the most restrictive semi-long term part of the program. It was because I wasn't being obedient. It's like dude, I'm not stupid. My parents are paying and they aren't THAT crazy with their money. That's the most expensive part of the program. And that is saying something, but Innercept is crazy expensive and not worth one penny of what it costs. But they are not going to go along with spending a crazy amount of money to send me back to Maxwell just because I was upset at that time and had a bit of an attitude and wasn't being compliant. I didn't come to Innercept to learn fucking obedience. Even if  Innercept did recommend that, which is highly unlikely because him saying this was just an empty threat, my parents wouldn't go along with it because they don't always do what Innercept recommends. And even if I really did need to go back to Maxwell, like I suddenly got worse, I was in Maxwell already for a year in a half. My parents aren't going to do something again that they have already tried and has proved ineffective.

So anyway, despite being a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, this place is stressful. The boredom makes me restless and crazy. Which makes me stressed. I was confined to the carpet in the main room. I would run around in circles for exercise. There was one girl who they punished by making her sit in the chair all day long. She wasn't allowed to get up. She wasn't allowed to talk, read, or write. Just sit there all day doing nothing.

There were days when I wasn't allowed to go to class. I didn't feel well enough to do homework. When it became obvious that I wasn't going to get out before my physics test, I wanted to study but was made to rake pine needles instead.

And then they decide the best thing to do is to move me to a different house. What is the fucking point? I didn't have enough hours. You could have just given me a warning. I missed two appointments. It was just a coincidence that these two appointments I missed were around the same time. I had missed some aftercare social outings. I didn't know that was such a big deal. Apparently it is. Apparently Innercept thinks missing social outings indicates a low level of functioning. Innercept is freaking clueless when it comes to assessing functioning. I just didn't feel like sitting through a movie. So what.

With the thing about hours, I had been getting away with having less hours for a long time. You know, a lot of times, with things like this, if I can get away with doing things I'll do them. I liked having the extra time on my hands. Innercept wasn't paying attention so I started feeling like it was no big deal. I know what it says in my aftercare plan. But I was under the impression that we were working towards a common goal: a Rachel who is functioning well. Sending me to stable was counter productive. It literally threw me off balance. It fucked with my menstrual cycles.

It was weird, because I got out of stable and I got this immense amount of pleasure from really small things. Like listening to music on the bus, or painting my nails and sipping coffee. I appreciated things things so much all of a sudden, and I could feel my head swimming with happy chemicals.

So I come home for Thanksgiving break. I have just been so irritable and angry and depressed. I have to go over to my grandma's house and the whole time I feel like I am so irritable I am about to explode. And then yesterday I was back at home and it was Thanksgiving dinner and I just feel the urge to start bitching and complaining about Innercept. And I have to stop myself, because I know if I burst out complaining and being obnoxious it is going to ruin Thanksgiving dinner. But I am stewing in anger. So I am trying to bring up the topic without saying something obnoxious, and I say, "I am going to be just fine." Meaning that I don't need Innercept to help me I will be fine. Anyway, so it ends up making my sister take off on a rant, so instead of it being me it's my sister now bitching and complaining. And so I hung my head and thought, "God dammit. What did I do?"

I am hoping that my parents will see the light about Innercept.

A Facet of the Icosahedron

There are many things that make me abnormal. One of them is that I have a very odd relationship with religion. I'm not talking about my relationship with God, I am talking about my relationship with religion. These are two separate things to me.

I grew up in an atheistic household. The closest thing to religion or God we had in our lives was that we listened to Christmas songs at Christmas time and we had a mini nativity scene in our Christmas decorations for some reason. It was my mom's, she's not a bible believer, I think it just reminded her of her childhood. I wasn't taught by my parents that God didn't exist, God just really wasn't something that was talked about very much. As I got older, there was more of an anti-religious attitude, at least that I picked up on. Not like we should be intolerant of religious people, just that religion was a bit on the wacky side. Something to be made fun of.

The thing that is odd about me is that most people who grew up like this grow up to be majorly turned off by religion. I'm the exact opposite. I absolutely love religion. I get really excited when I encounter Jehovah's witnesses and I take their pamphlets. I'm not about to convert, but I take their pamphlets. I love the idea of being righteous or attempting to be righteous. I love the idea of certain things being holy. I like the idea of praying and humbling yourself before a higher power. Of having faith in a higher power to protect you and help you through times of darkness. I like the idea of being a servant of God and doing God's work. I like the idea of having a sacred text with sacred laws.

Whenever I see positive references to religion in peoples' facebook statuses, I almost always like them.

But I don't think that the bible, or any other single religion on Earth, is true. At least not literally true. I kind of think it's like this - the bible is a single facet of the icosahedron that is truth. For those who don't know, and icosahedron is a twenty sided geometric object.

I don't really believe that Jesus died for our sins. But I like Jesus. I have him as one of my inspirational people on facebook. I will make references to Jesus in conversations. Like the other day, I was talking about how I have done dangerous things in the past and I was protected, perhaps by a higher power, but I wouldn't count on that higher power to protect me again. Because it was like when Jesus was tempted by Satan, and Satan told Jesus to jump off a cliff or something and God would save him and Jesus said, "do not tempt the Lord thy God." Or something like that.

Anyway, so I don't know if this is a result of having delusions of a religious nature or if it was something that was present in me before that.

I may revisit this topic again later.

Edit: So I posted this and I was re-reading it before I shared it on facebook. In one place instead of writing "Jesus" I wrote "me." Interesting.

Undiscovered Talents

I would appreciate it if people who read my blog would like my "Rachel Zuhl" page on facebook. Not my personal page but my writer page. Thank you. I also have a "Party Like Jesus" page, but I haven't really been asking people to like that yet. You can if you want though.

So I am getting ready to make a book trailer for my memoir. My sister is big into film making so she is going to help me with it. In the book trailer, she will be interviewing me, but the entire thing is scripted. I wrote the script a few weeks ago. I tried to make it humorous. I am hoping it is not too confusing.

Anyway, so I was thinking about back when I first realized that I was delusional, back in early 2008. I mean, plenty of people had told me that I was delusional, but I didn't believe them because I knew better. I decided to make the best of this situation and write a book and become famous. Because I knew that when life gives you lemons, the smart thing to do is make lemonade. And I was pretty sure that I could make lemonade out of these lemons that life had given me.

I didn't know that I was any good at writing. In fact, in the beginning I was thinking about having it ghostwritten. Which is funny, because I think the only kind of people who get their books ghostwritten are famous people. Because if you're not famous and you're not a good enough writer to write a book then you can't have a book. But then I decided to write it myself, because I was on a writer's website and I read a comment from an author, an author who's book I had repeatedly seen on display at bookstores, saying that he didn't think his book would have been as successful as it was if he hadn't have written it himself.

It's kind of odd because I don't even see myself as that great of a writer but people act like I am. I originally decided to write not because I thought I would be good at it, but despite not being that great at it. It turns out though that I am good at it, apparently. I don't know what it is about my writing that is good. Maybe it is because I use a certain kind of humor, a certain kind of subtle humor. I don't really know.

I don't even read that much anymore. I used to read a lot when I was in fifth and sixth grades. Then I stopped. I would still read on occasion, but not nearly as much as I used to. Nowadays if I read I usually read nonfiction. And not usually memoirs. I can't even think of a single memoir I have actually finished reading off the top of my head.

My dad tells me that people who think they are really good at something, like writing, a lot of times aren't good at it at all. They don't know good writing, they lack both the skill to write well and the skill to assess their writing properly.

Tired Controversial Issues

So I am sitting here with a little bit of time to kill, and I think I will write a tired post about my position on the most over-debated issue ever - abortion.

One of my conservative facebook friends posted a good article on facebook a couple weeks ago about the whole pro-life/pro-choice thing. It was basically about how pro-life groups care less about saving unborn babies and more about punishing women for having sex. They want women to have a child to feel the consequences of their actions.

I am pro-choice, but I think that if you are going to be against abortion it should be because you genuinely want to save the lives of unborn babies. I haven't talked to many people about the abortion issue but the people who I have heard express their opinion who were pro-life said something along the lines of: "If you can't handle a baby you shouldn't be having sex."

I think this is the worst reason for being pro-life ever. Sure, maybe if you aren't responsible enough to handle the consequences of your actions you shouldn't be having sex. But it takes a certain level of responsibility to abstain from sex, and if you don't have that then you are not responsible enough to handle a baby. We are talking about a real living person here. A baby should not be a form of punishment.

Some people might argue that there is always adoption. I would argue that the act of carrying a baby for nine months requires a certain level of responsibility.

My views also comes from the belief that a "life" isn't just simply something that is physically alive. It is a whole lot more than that. It is a spiritual state. I don't know when the soul enters the body. Actually, my belief is that it kind of comes and goes during pregnancy and hangs around the mother, and then when the baby is born it becomes permanently implanted, or at least implanted until death, unless it leaves it temporarily for some sort of out-of-body experience. That's what I think. At any rate, if you abort a baby, the soul didn't lose its one shot at life. It can continue to seek ways to enter our world again, through hanging around some other woman, waiting for her to get pregnant.

I was reading this local free newspaper called the Capitalist Papers a couple weeks ago. It is real right-wing publication. It had an article about famous people who were, to put it bluntly, accidents, but their mother chose not to abort them. It was supposed to be some sort of argument against abortion. I thought this was stupid. You could make the same argument in regards to choosing sex over abstinence. Have more sex so that you can have more babies - you never know who you might be missing out on by not fertilizing those eggs.

As a former unfertilized egg, I oppose abstinence.

Mind-Blowing Bouts of Crazy Delusional Thinking

So I'd like to take some time to discuss old issues. Old, delusional issues.

A nice way to combat insecurity and feelings of being judged is with arrogance. That's what I did when I was delusional and my delusional world wasn't going my way. I just decided that I was better than everyone else. I was better than all those mean, cruel, imaginary people.

So I combat feelings of insecurity about being delusional with arrogance. What happens is, first I get mad because other people don't understand what I experienced. Than I realize that what I experienced was so mind-blowing it would be really difficult for other people to understand who haven't experienced it. Then I take pity on them, them poor folk who haven't had their minds blown by intense bouts of crazy delusional thinking.

The thing about being delusional is, or at least one of the things about being delusional is, it isn't pure insanity. There is rationality too. Delusional thoughts and actions rest on the rationality.

Actually, I don't know if I've written about this before, but I'm going to write about it again anyway. One of the things they ask you is "why you?" Why are you the special messiah or whatever? Well, it has to be someone. You've been given this great responsibility, and you must follow through with your spiritual mission. For a long period of my life I hardly even talked. I didn't even trust myself to speak. I needed to learn to trust myself. To trust myself above other people.

I kind of think people thought I was more out of it than I actually was. When I was first becoming delusional, I was writing on my livejournal. I knew full well that writing certain things made me look crazy as fuck. I didn't care. I didn't realize that what I was doing was very dangerous. I didn't realize how important it was to my parents that I appear sane and reasonable, and that they could follow what I was saying and understand what I was talking about.

My dad deleted part of my livejournal because of it. I'm over it now but I still think it's kind of weird. True, I was a bit messed up in the head, but I knew what I was saying. I mean, I had some idea what I was saying, it came out sounding a lot more crazy than I intended but it doesn't really matter. I knew full well that repeatedly addressing this one guy and acting like he was reading when as far as anyone could tell he wasn't made me look like I had lost my marbles. The thing was, I didn't even want to say the stuff I was saying. I was pushing myself very hard to say the stuff I was saying. It took guts to say the stuff I was saying. I was proud of myself. To repeatedly act like this guy was reading when there was no sign that he was reading, to spew religious and God related bullshit when I came from an atheistic family.

I knew exactly what I was doing.

A Dark Abyss

So I've already made a post today but I feel like writing another one. This one will probably not make very much sense to a lot of people.

With me there are a lot of emotions associated with facebook. At times it has been an abyss of negative emotions, where I would swim in a very dark kind of negativity that made me suicidal.

I am not suicidal right now, I was just messing around on facebook and I was thinking about this.

There was a time when if someone made any sort of comment about someone being creepy on facebook, I would go into the closet and cry. Then I realized that my circumstances were different. Still, the paranoia about what other people would think eats me up.

There was a time when I couldn't even go on facebook. Then there was a time when I could, but I couldn't directly look at my friends list. I would refresh my profile page many times, hoping that certain people would show up as one of the six friends of mine it showed, because that's how facebook worked at the time.

I'm not sure why I am so weirdly facebook sensitive. That's just how our culture has evolved I guess. I shouldn't care who still has me as a friend. But I do. It means a lot to me to see that I am still friends with people. And for the people who don't still have me as a friend who might know about me and my issues, it really bothers me. I don't know what the reason was. But if it has anything to do with my delusional issues or something I did or said while I was delusional, then I'd like to say that I hope all your children die of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Because it is so much of a struggle just keeping myself together because I am torn about with regret about everything. It's not because I'm bipolar. But I feel embarrassed all the time. Sometimes I am okay, but sometimes I just keep thinking about things that make me embarrassed and anything and everything makes me embarrassed, and it is like being tortured with electric shocks. And then when I am not thinking about things that make me embarrassed, I have this nagging feeling like there is something I should be thinking about that I should be feeling embarrassed about, and then I feel embarrassed, and I feel the electric shock feeling, even though I am not even thinking about anything.

As time goes by it gets easier to deal with and I develop more and more of a cushion that cushions me from feeling embarrassed all the time. But I don't forget things easily, and I will always remember the things that contributed to my deep horrible feelings of insecurity. And I will remember who didn't have me as a friend.

I don't really know why I even care though. I just think it is insensitive the way certain people are. And I know that this is my paranoia talking, because I am jumping to conclusions about why people did certain things.

I hope that I will one day rise above the insecurity and be happy being who I am, and all these negative feeling will just be a memory.

A Love/Hate Relationship

So it's weird because I take the same dose of Adderall everyday. Normally I will feel its effects, and I will feel a little buzz or high. It's happened a couple of times recently where for several days in a row I won't feel its effects hardly at all. Then, after not feeling it for a few days, I will take it the next day and it will effect me stronger than normally like I haven't been taking it for several days. Except I have been taking it, I take it everyday. So anyway, that's what I'm experiencing right now. I feel it in my system more than normal, which makes me feel a bit thoughty but not excessively thoughty, but above all it makes me feel like writing.

So my brain is swimming with happy chemicals right now. And I find myself contemplating things that annoy me. I'm not really angry though, I'm just thinking about these things. When I found out I was moving to this other house for a couple months, I was given a few reasons why, and I was also told that seeing a guy who is a Scientologist doesn't help matters. Also, when my mom left to go home a couple weeks ago after visiting me, she left a note telling me to do my own thinking. She meant she doesn't want this Scientologist guy corrupting my thinking.

I'm annoyed with people trying to control me. I am going to see who I want to see. And I really don't give a flying fuck if Innercept approves or not. I don't like Innercept. I don't think it is helpful. I think it is evil. So them not approving of what I do doesn't mean shit to me.

And it's funny what my mom wrote because if I didn't think for myself, I wouldn't be seeing this guy to begin with. I would have thought Scientology = Bad and that would have been the end of it. Because that's what the common conception is about Scientology.

And now I'm sitting here thinking about my mom, and how it's strange that she thinks she has some sort of influence over what I do. I really can't pinpoint exactly what my mom has done to make me so angry at her. The details escape me but the angry energy is still there. It's a number of things. Her general ignorance. Her excessive amount of trust in the Innercept program. My mom has faith in Innercept like Christians have faith in Jesus.

Talk about someone who doesn't think for herself. She has blind trust in doctors. She believes what psychics tell her, even when the same psychic has told me things that contradict what they told her. That's a whole other topic though, psychics.

The thing is though, I love her because she is my mom. And as much as I disagree with what she does, I know that my parents do love me and that's why they do what they do, because they think it is what's best. And I know that having loving parents is something that not everyone has and is easy to take for granted, especially in my situation. It's the kind of thing most people don't appreciate until it's gone. You don't know what you had until it's gone. I do have a lot. I have the necessities and I don't even have to work. Except I want to work. I want to be independent.

But anyway, this is why I can't say that I hate my parents. Because that is what ignorant bratty children say.