James Holmes Several Years Ago
It’s fascinating to look at James Holmes after he graduated high school to get an idea of his personality in what I call facial profiling or here personality profiling. The first photos released to the media how Holmes with dyed red hair and a face that is completely void of emotion or expression. Holmes appears to be lost in deep hole, so who was he before this? Here we get to see a glimpse.
It seems to me his story of his fall and his basic personality are completely consistent with Bipolar 1 dysphoric type.This is a difficult diagnosis to make,even for professionals.Just my opinion of course.
When I heard about this incident initial I was immediately thought, this is a psychotic break. then I wondered if the psychotic break would be more consistent with those seen in a state of mania or schizophrenia, which both involve delusions. I thought it might be the case that he was experiencing grandiosity and struggling with overpowering compulsion to act on his ideals in a self-destructive method, because he felt that depression was closing in on him.
I have been dx’d bipolar for years now, and had similar aspirations to Holmes in terms of studying neuroscience, but the events leading up to his break seemed all too familiar. I underwent this cycle in school beginning in probably my 4th year, when I was 8 or so. The stress it causes, especially when not treated, is completely overwhelming without appropriate therapeutic discourse and the ability to apply stress-management techniques (which, trust me, when you’re high-strung from mania, you aren’t gonna recognize that you’re in an episode if it’s in full swing) that would prevent things like rapid cycling and mixed states. I deal with that form of bipolar disorder, too.
People really don’t seem to understand how alienating it can be to struggle with impulse problems, have high expectations imposed on you, and having inconsistent energy levels that you may or may not recognize as being apart from your actual self. I hear guys tend to externalize shame. If that’s true, and the self-aggression I had experienced turned external, and instead of just despair in my inability to be “known” for who I truly was, it would have been devastating. Luckily, I started receiving treatment at a fairly young age. All I had known prior to being diagnosed with Bi-polar is that I was largely incapable of things authority figures would shame me for being unable to do, saying that I have so much potential, and that I was wasting it… I never thought it was unusual to have thoughts of suicide until I took a pretty lengthy online test out of curiosity and as a byproduct of escapist tendencies, and ended up scoring ridiculously high on the index measuring depression. And it didn’t register. I made fun of the score with my friends and felt almost proud about it. I was so out of touch with the reality of my situation, and experienced such a complete lack of intervention believing it was an issue of willpower… I don’t know how many suicide attempts and hospitalizations it took until I was able to begin learning coping mechanisms and let go of grandiosity preconditioned and predisposed… I know I was clinically dead at least twice, and it took 7 years of being switched around on medications, and cocktails (mixed medications), and at the very least, attempts to be treated with 75 individual types, and therapy, along with trips to the psychiatric ward, to get me to a point where I was able to begin coping with symptoms.
People mistakenly believe medication nullifies symptoms altogether, but that’s not true from what I understand. They just lessen the degree to a point that you are able to begin learning to cope with them in a healthy way. First and foremost, you need a support system to keep you from falling through the safety net we have to keep others in the community from slipping beyond our reach and sadly, I can see how Holmes didn’t really have that.
The consequences of not having that basic need met were tragic. For him to be blamed for it is tragic. It doesn’t matter how much he wanted to believe he was in control to compensate for his lack of it, and how he tried to, in his delusions, address and resolve that… It can’t be handled alone. Without guidance and education, the struggle with maintaining an accurate perception of the events you experience in the midst of a mind twisted with cognitive distortion and disorder is just not possible. It’s sad to hear he became apprehensive of it taking hold of him, and reacting by pushing people away because he realized what was happening when it was too late (at his mind in the very least). It took away his life, whether people recognize it or not. The difference between him and others who experience the hell of the process is that his actions happened to gain media attention. If he wasn’t so knowledgeable, he wouldn’t have been able to pull off what he had. His intelligence was a crippling disposition. Stigma prevented him from receiving proper treatment… 🙁
I truly believe that, had he received appropriate medical help earlier, the disaster may have been subverted, yet I can’t blame anyone for that. The most I can do is lament about of it attests to the human condition we are all mutually plagued by. I am younger than he was at the time, but… maybe I’m completely wrong about all of this. It still wouldn’t change anything… I’m lucky to not have met such a similar fate. Luck. That’s all I can attribute it to.
It depends on where you are I think. I am prescribed anti-anxiety medication and medication to handle insomnia along with anti-depressants and a mood stabilizing medication. I wasn’t just prescribed those things arbitrarily. You can’t really say, hey doctor, can you give me Xanax? When it’s a scheduled substance there are supposed to be precautions taken considering they are substances that can become addicting, or can be abused. You’d really need to establish a longstanding psychiatric profile to warrant such prescriptions theoretically. They aren’t first-line treatments. Then again, not everyone is so careful or mindful to precautions.