This week marks the halfway point of the season. So far I am in 4th place out of 5 family members for overall wins. Hmmm. Last week I went 9-6. Yes there were only 14 NFL games, but my family is divided between Penn State and Ohio State fans so we did picks for that game too. Ohio State won. .

Chargers
Broncos
Ravens
Packers
Bears
Dolphins
Redskins
Lions
Texans
Bucs
Seahawks
Steelers
Falcons
Saints

So this morning was my first in what will be many sessions with my cognitive behavior therapist. I feel like if I write down my experiences in both my personal journal and on my blog, that I can kinda supplement the help I get from my therapy. So this will be part 1 of who knows how many parts of an ongoing journey to therapeutic healing. I will tag a few people who expressed interest in either my journey specifically, or the journey generally. @megabyyte @light_blue_fables and @heytherejoann

So this morning around 11 I arrived at the facility depsite Frankenstorms best efforts to keep me from my appointment. I was really nervous while in the waiting room after signing in and did my best to pass the time until he came out to get me by reading The Economist. It’s not the best in the world but it was the best of what was available there to read.

The actual appointment didn’t really delve too deeply into the past or into my dreams or anything like that. Remember this is just the first session and CBT deals with practical approaches to everyday anxieties. So today my doctor and I set out to write down some goals.

Goal #1. Try to get to a point where I can be alone at night. This is an area we talked about for quite a bit because when I was in the midst of the onset of my Schizophrenia my sleep was terrible. I had to listen to music every night to keep from being utterly overwhelmed by everything that was happening to me. In October of 2007 I lost a night’s sleep….then another night’s sleep…then another and another and the cumulative stress broke me and I had to be hospitalized for the second time. I tried during the next year to live on my own again(I still had my apartment at this time) but every night I would freak out because I was alone. I would do everything I could to try and get to sleep, but only nightmares came. That effort lasted a month in mid 2008. Eventually I knew it was going to lead to a relapse and called my Mother to come pick me up and I’ve been living here ever since. She isn’t going to be around forever and if I am going to have any kind of independence if something happens to her, I need to be able to live on my own. So this is priority number 1 for me.

Goal #2. Try to get to a point where I can be around dogs and not feel anxious. This is an area that we also talked about quite a bit. After our house was broken into back in 2010, we got a decent sized dog to be a home protector. She was the nicest, most innocent dog ever(and thruthfully was no protecter), but because everyone else worked or was in college, she was my responsibility during the day. I’m am whole-heartedly a cat person and love the low maintanence quality of cats. Innocent or no, Rosie(that was her name) was a 180 and I was worried about her 24/7 non stop. I’m a bit of a worrier and every time she would send any indication that she wanted to go outside I would take her out. Most of the time we just walked around. But the constant worry, boy how it got to me. I started losing sleep(RED FLAG!) and having nightmares about some kind of anti-peta group coming to get her. Losing sleep caused me to eventually start to physically shake with anxiety over whether I was going to relapse or not. My Mom knew that was the signal that we had to give her up. Fast forward to this year and now my brother and sister in law have a dog and I am seriously struggling to enjoy their company because I never see them without their dog around. I refuse to tell them just how much Leanard affects me, though they knew I am in CBT to get help for dealing with him. Again, he is a perfectly nice and innocent dog. Neither Rosie nor Leanard were pitpulls or anything like that. Just medium sized 20-30 lb dogs with a happy demeanor. I have no idea why they trigger me so much but I aim to find out over the next six month to a year.

Goal #3. Try and get to a point where I can go to my youngest brother’s wedding. I went to my best friend Brad’s wedding in 2010 and seeing all these people from high school(or worse – didn’t know at all) really got to me. I don’t regret going to his wedding at all and one day I intend to meet his wife, but his wedding set the stage for what was to come in 2011. My younger brother’s wedding. Around June or July the anxiety for what was coming with all the relatives(who for some reason are ALL extroverts) and other individuals who would be there just started to affect me to the point where I took my brother to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and afterwards took him to Raising Cane’s where I told him I would be unable to attend his wedding. I told him this in July and his wedding wasn’t until December, that’s how much the anxiety was getting to me. Talking to my doctor at the time about all the symptoms I was feeling and the absolute dread of that wedding was got me diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. So even though my youngest brother is in college and is nowhere near a marriage-calibur relationship with his current girlfriend, I have set the third goal to be for me to be able to attend his wedding.

So that is a wrap up of what was discussed today. I appreciate you reading all of this and I’m sure you now know quite a bit about what makes me tick. Yeah, suffice it to say, there’s a lot going on upstairs and not all of it is pretty. I just hope I can remodel a little bit so that it can be livable. And oh, my therapist asked if he could read my journals from 2007. I’ve never let anyone else read any of my journals so that would be a big leap of faith for me. But I think that once he and I have built a rapport that I will give him the journals to read so that he can trace the timetable of the onset of my illness.

Until next time he asked me to buy a book called ‘The Feeling Good Handbook’ which is a monster 750+ page book. I bought it before logging onto Xanga and put it up at the top of this post. He is going to buy it as well. He told me there would be homework during all this so yeah, got some reading to do!

Anyone who responds to this post will get a mini from me. A little cookie at the end of a long post.

So last week was a bounce back week for me. I went 4-10 the previous week and went 10-3 last week. Much better. Also there is a bonus pick this week. Penn State plays Ohio State so my family will be split 3-2!

Vikings
Bears
Chargers
Seahawks
Packers
Titans
Patriots
Jets
Falcons
Steelers
Chiefs
Giants
Broncos
49ers
Buckeyes

So last week I went a whopping 4-10! 4 and freakin 10!!! But that’s okay because my brother went 5-9 and my sister-in-law went 2-12. Rough week. Let’s hope this week goes better all around.

49ers
Bills
Colts
Packers
Vikings
Giants
Saints
Panthers
Texans
Raiders
Patriots
Steelers
Lions

I have been more than a little upset over some things over the past week. Some involve Xanga, some don’t.

1. Politics – My mother listens to some very conservative radio jockeys and their mass hysteria over even the possibility of President Obama getting reelected has poisoned my mother and turned her into Chicken Little. “If President Obama is in the white house for another four years…the sky will fall.” For the past few months I have been able to ignore her and did my best to think rationally and reassure myself that I had good reasons to support the president. But she is still under the belief that I am an independent and can be swayed (as she puts it). The truth is that I am proud of my ability to be swayed. It means I’m not locked into my views and am open to new possibilities. But with each passing debate she is getting worse and worse. Debate number 1 result: The sky is falling! Debate number 2(VP) result: The sky is falling! Debate number 3 last night: The sky is falling! It gets so tedious that I wish I was still on my own. But the guys on the radio and her fear have caused me to seriously rethink what I am going to do this election. I want Obama to win, but I no longer believe I can vote for him. I value my relationship with my mother too much to vote for someone she fears so much. This dissonance has been eating away at me ever since the debates started. Do I vote for Romney instead? Up until yesterday that was what I was planning to do. Just suck it up and vote for Romney and hope the final tally in Ohio comes down to more than one vote. This decision caused me great distress. But now I have found a new tactic. My number one issue has always been the environment. Romney mocked environmentalists during his acceptance speech at the RNC. So I will not vote for him. Obama can’t get anything through congress (though he did stop that Keystone Pipeline), but it isn’t nearly enough to fix what has been broken over the last 150 years. So between his lackluster efforts and Romney’s ignorance, I will not vote for either of them. Instead I will vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party nominee. I agree with her on approximately 94-96% of her views, and the only reason she isn’t considered a viable candidate is because the radio conservatives and television liberals are mired in a two-party system and won’t give anyone else airtime. So here’s what I can do to preserve my relationship with my mother. I won’t vote for Obama, which will make her happy. I can tell her I didn’t support him if he gets re-elected which will make her happy. And I don’t have to compromise my principles by voting for Romney and instead vote for Jill Stein. Make sense? It’s not ideal, but I care about my Mom and don’t want her to be afraid of another four years.

2. And then I made a decision the other day that will change the course of my life. All I will say about it is that the ultimate sacrifice is not death, but giving up the chance to be happy.

3. And then there is @rulerofmasons comment the other day on Nadia’s blog that just deeply offended me. I’ve dated a pair of girls who have been raped either before or during my time with them. His callous comment is unacceptable even for the internet. I spent the entire night furious, but also hurting because old memories of old girlfriends and the pain they went through before (and while) I was with them resurfaced. It didn’t help that theodan made his jackass post about how to get away with rape. It takes a lot to make me mad, but those two did. A word to the wise, if someone you love ever tells you that they have rape in their history, don’t make some snarky comment. You tell them you don’t see them any different and give them whatever they need to heal. For me with my friend Nadia, this meant calling out @rulerofmasons on her blog for being the insensitive idiot he typically is on this site.

4. So with all of this going on right now, I have decided to take advantage of my upcoming trip down to my Father’s house and take a break from Xanga. I will be around, just not on my Shadowrunner account unless something really pulls me online. Those of you whom I consider friends know who you are. I hope you all have a good weekend while I am gone. I will be on later today, tomorrow, and Friday morning, but that will be it until sometime on Monday.

Last week I went 10-4, which is pretty good but didn’t win me the week. I picked the Steelers this week so I’m already off to a bad start! Here’s hoping to make 10-4 again this week.

Steelers
Falcons
Bengals
Rams
Colts
Eagles
Buccaneers
Ravens
Cardinals
Patriots
49ers
Vikings
Texans
Broncos

Check that out! I reset my Hearts game earlier today and just got on to play a couple games before the Reds game started. Sure enough, I scored a 1!!! Oh yeah! Now to see if the Reds can close out the National League Division Series against the SF Giants!

Hello again! It has been a couple months since my last Schizable update. As those of you who have followed my blog for awhile now know, I have Schizophrenia and have taken up the cause to raise awareness about the disorder, destigmatize the disorder, and just plain be a model citizen to represent those who are hobbled by the disorder.

With those goals in mind, I’ve decided to take you on a four month, four part journey of the Insanity Defense. For all of my searching via Amazon and local bookstores, I could only locate one truly reliable source of information(short of passing the bar) on the Insanity Defense. This source is a book called, “Thinking About the Insanity Defense” and is edited by Ellsworth Lapham Fersch. As some of you know, there have been some mass shootings in recent months that have elicited some very hateful comments on message boards and newsfeeds that have me greatly concerned about the future of the Insanity Defense. Nobody knows whether it will be used in the case of the Aurora, Colorado shooting, but all the news outlets seem to be hellbent on tainting the jury in case it is. So what do I hope to accomplish by providing you with information about this defense? I hope that if you are ever called upon to be a jury in a courtroom setting where the Insanity Defense is being used, that you will approach it with an open mind and not be tainted by personal vendettas or mainstream media bias. In short, I would like you to THINK if and when you find yourself in a courtroom and a person’s future is in your hands.

This first part will examine what is the Insanity Defense and how often is it used and what is the success rate. I will quote word for word from the book I mentioned. If you want to, feel free to buy the book through the Amazon link provided up at the top. .

“What is the insanity defense?”

‘The insanity defense is one of a number of defenses available to individuals who have committed an act which the law has declared criminal. An individual who commits such an act may be found not criminally responsible for the act with a successful plea of insanity. The individual is, in other words, determind to be not guilty by reason of insanity. Because insanity is a legal and not a psychological term, the defense is often misunderstood by the public at large and by juries who must grapple with it. A more clearly understood defense which, when successful, may excuse an individual from criminal responsibility is self-defense. When that plea is successful, the individual is simply found not guilty, though by adding the phrase by reason of self-defense would be an appropriate way to understand the finding. Because of the connotations of insanity and of mental illness and because of the history of attempts to deal with those mentally disordered individuals who come to the attention of the police and the courtes, the insanity defense has been the center of controversy within the legal and mental health professions and with the public at large.’

“Why is there an insanity defense?”

‘Supporters of the insanity defense argue that it exists as an attempt to impose a moral check on a system largely designed to assume mental stability while weighing facts and evidence. They contend that it humanizes the criminal justice system and makes it moral. Opponents of the insanity defense argue that it unduly emphasizes an inexact science, excuses individuals who acted purporsefully, and denies some of their human dignity by labeling them as insane rather than dealing directly with their contentions and arguments.’

“How often is the insanity defense used?”

‘Every review of the insanity defense has shown that it is rarely used throughout the United States. Studies have concluded that the insanity defense is used in less than one percent of criminal trials and is successful only about a quarter of the time it is used. The reason that the public may believe this defense is used more frequently is due the large amount of media attention given to high-profile insanity defense cases involving violent acts.’

“How often is the insanity defense successful?”

The insanity defense is generally unsuccessful. A 1991 eight-state study performed by the National Institute of Mental Health showed the insanity defense was used in less than one percent of all cases, and when it was used only twenty-six percent of those please succeeded. A 2001 study revealed that over a ten year period only sixteen of ten thousand indicted used the insanity plea, and success almost always came in the form of a plea bargain with the prosecuters.”

To be continued next month…

The first two questions were from Page 3, the second two from page 5. If you are at all curious, buy the book!

To see all previous Schizable entries all you have to do is google search ‘schizable’ and they are the results that come up. Feel free to browse around, I won’t call you out. Haha.

Have a good one Xanga!

Last week I went 11-4, which is by 2 wins my best week of the five so far. The Steelers are coming off their bye week so I’m picking them again. Only 14 picks this week so here’s hoping for 10-4 or 11-3.

Arizona
Cincinnati
Green Bay
Ravens
Giants
Steelers
Falcons
Panthers
Bears
Vikings
Patriots
49ers
Chargers
Texans