Category: Mental Health

Mental Health awareness week 2021

A cartoon of an outdoor setting. There is a cloud with the word nature in it and a tree with a small bird flying towards in. On the ground is a hedgehog ontop of grass where the words mental health awareness week 10-16 May 2021 are written. In the top righthand corner is the logo for the charity Mental health foundation.

I am aware of mental health, I’m aware of Eating disorders, I’m aware of Autism and Tourette’s and Fibromyalgia, I’m even aware of Goths (yes there is a Goth awareness day) and I’m very aware of how tired of awareness days I am. At the moment there is (rightfully) a lot of focus on the mental health affects of the pandemic and lockdown, however those of us that struggled before feel like we’ve been yelling about social isolation and the 9 to 5 lifestyle being detrimental to our mental health for years but no one listened.

The thing about gaining awareness is its meaningless, how do you quantify awareness? How do you evidence it? What exactly is the aim?. People with mental health problems are aware of helplines and time to talk campaigns, we’ve heard all the talk to someone messages but who do we talk to? And what happens when talking isn’t enough? Or when no one listens?.

We’ve tried talking, we’ve asked for and begged for help, we’ve called the helplines, the crisis lines, we’ve been to a&e, walked until our shoes wore out, coloured in our colouring books, we’ve drank more tea than we can count and we’ve had a fucking bath. We do all the things we’re told because otherwise we get labelled as difficult or told we don’t really want help; since the pandemic started the already stretched services are at breaking point. There is no one to talk to.

The messages are well meaning but there is limit to what helplines can do and even being in contact with services doesn’t guarantee support. In the last two years three people I know have taken their lives and all three were known to services, being told to talk didn’t help them, awareness couldn’t save them, they had all tried talking, they had all tried reaching out.

In less than two weeks it’ll be two years since Juliette died.

This is why I don’t like awareness campaings they’re meaningless, hollow gestures with no real purpose or motive that don’t address the real problems or try to change the systematic problems with mental health services.

Please don’t tell me to reach out or talk or ask for help, I’ve done it for so long and I’m tired now.

For Nancy, for Juliette, for Ella.

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Bee for bee 🐝

In my last post I talked and Juliette and what a caring, fun, creative, loving, colourful person she was, when she died I said I’d get a bee tattoo not a worker bee I wasn’t looking to copy her but a bumble bee to remind me of her and our friendship which started from matching underwear, a reminder of the memes and pictures of bees with fuzzy butts we used share. On Monday I got my tattoo of my own fuzzy butt bumble bee with a purple watercolour background to match Juliette’s hair. I know she’d approve of this

A bumble bee tattoo on my wrist with a purple watercolour style background

Photo (and tattoo) by Sandro at Sacred Gold tattoo and piercing

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Suicide is pants

Long time no blog.

This post is about suicide though there is no mention of methods.

A bee on pink flowers at the station on the day of Juliette’s funeral

I’ve been wanting to write this for 6 months but it was too hard. A potentially creepy comment about owning the same underwear on a drunken toilet selfie did not get my blocked but instead was the start of our friendship. We met through an internet mental health “community” and there were many eye rolls about such places and some of the people in them (though we were aware that we were far from perfect ourselves).

I soon found that Juliette had a wicked sense of humour, she was attractive and creative and had various different hair colours in the time I knew her. She loved animals and owned four gorgeous rats, she had an accidental memorial leg of tattoos for people in life who’d died. Despite her intolerance to bullshit (and lactose) she was loyal and supportive to those she cared about. Hummus memes were frequently shared and still pop up on my Facebook notifications, some of the jokes we shared were truly terrible.

Living in Manchester she got a worker bee tattoo with ‘don’t look back in anger’ going around it after the Manchester bombing and bees became her ‘thing’ online. A gif of a cat dressed up at a bee (creatively dubbed beecat) falling slowly off a sofa became a of conveying frustration/ crap day/ crap mental health and often summed up how we felt, her mandala cat tattoo was also dubbed beecat.

We had a group chat with three of us in it which was 90% complaining about life, mental health and the internet and the rest was probably random memes and beecat gifs.

I knew Juliette had attempted suicide previously but part of you doesn’t want to accept that it could happen and when it did I didn’t want it to be real. It felt like someone had punched me in the chest; a feeling that’s come and gone for the last 6 months, I cried for hours and have cried for many more since.

Her funeral especially broke me, when many of the person who cared about her had mental health issues and were scattered around not only the country but also the world only a few of us were able to go but a request for people to change their profile pictures to bees spread and on the day of her funeral my social media was full of different types of bees. I’ve never been to a funeral full of people wearing cat ears before but as soon as we arrived we knew it was the right place.

People talk about grief and stages as if it’s linear and as if it doesn’t come out of nowhere and punch you in the stomach, it’s not that simple or straightforward. Oasis makes me cry, pictures of furry bumblebee butts hanging out of flowers make me smile and part of me still expects her to be online, sometimes I’ll make a really inappropriate joke and I know she’d have laughed and we’d both joke that we were the worst. I thought the 6 month anniversary of her death yesterday would be hard but instead I was caught out on Friday crying for several hours (the ugly snotty puffy face version).

Tomorrow I’m going for a consultation for a bee tattoo so I’ll always have a reminder of our friendship.

I miss you

Beecat loves you x

Helplines aren’t a replacement for proper mental health care but if you’re in distress and need someone to talk to you can contact the Samaritans or if you’re under 35 Papyrus. Text support is available from Shout.

If you’ve been bereaved by suicide SOBS can give you support and advice

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How do you solve a problem like depression?

A picture of me dressed in green and orange dinosaur onesie alongside a picture of a ceramic dinosaur painted to match

I’ve been trying to come up with something to write about as a sort of comeback blog post but my brain isn’t cooperating, nothing I write seems good enough even compared to my normal feelings of nothing I do being good enough. It’s difficult to write about things honestly partly because of the fact that most people who read this know me in real life and ranting about inaccessible transport is easier than being honest about how I feel. So how do I feel? I feel everything and nothing, I’m numb and disconnected and I’m coming home from work and lying on my bed crying, I don’t care about anything except I do I just can’t feel it right now, my heart feels heavy and time feels slowed down, there have been a couple of days when I’ve got in to work recently (and that in itself is a struggle) where I’ve honestly thought I dont know how I’m going to get through the next 8 hours.

Mostly I’m tired, not just physically because I’m also having trouble sleeping but tired of the endless cycles of depression. For me depression comes in cycles, unipolar bipolar without the high. I guess people who’s depression is more constant may think I’m lucky because I do have periods of not being depressed but this is my blog and I’ll cry if I want to (and even if I don’t) and I’m tired of this never really going away of always waiting for it to return.

I had my unusual Birthday existential crisis probably not helped by seeing a family member I hadn’t seen in a couple of years and stirring up fun memories from my upbringing but as ever another year brings more of the feelings of not enough, not doing enough, not achieving enough, not being enough and I’m giving out advice to people who for some reason look up to me and think I have my life together when I’m getting into work in the morning and wondering how I’m going to get through the next 8 hours. I’m a fraud.

This isn’t much of a comeback post but it’s why I haven’t written anything in so long.

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Release

A countdown for the number of days I’ve been self harm free

I was trying to explain to someone recently the conflicting feelings that come into my head around self harm. I want to self harm but really I don’t, I keep thinking how much better it was to have an outlet for the way I feel but really I know that it wouldn’t help, it didn’t help, not really, not properly but that doesn’t stop my mind jumping to it when I’m stressed or anxious or overwhelmed.

I haven’t self harmed in 391 days but I self harmed from the age of 17 to 32 and intermittently before that, it’s not that I want to self harm it’s just that I want to breathe and not feel like I’m suffocating, I want to stop feeling like I’m dragging a weight around with me or wading through custards and when it’s been something I’ve done for so long it’s an immediate thought an ingrained reaction that my mind jumps to when I feel bad.

I’m not naive I know that just because or not self harmed in a long time it doesn’t mean I won’t ever do it again because I can’t say for sure that I know I’ll never self harm again and even now it’s not that I never do anything unhealthy/ potentially harmful or things that could be soon as negative ways of managing things they’re just less destructive and don’t involve me ending up in a&e. The longer time goes on the bigger the stakes, once I was past 6 months I’d beat my previous longest time, then it was 7 months, 9 months and finally a year.

Sometimes people say what can I do to help or make things easier but I don’t always want them to do anything other than listen or try and see things from my position, I know some people are more practical than others and their reaction is to look for a solution but sometimes the solution is just please listen to me and hear what I’m saying when I say how overwhelmed and stressed I feel, how I miss people I was close to, how alone I feel, how the light at the end of the tunnel feels very dim and distant right now that’s what can be done to help.

Sometimes I just want someone to take me down to the carpark and let me cry

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2018 a (brief) review of the year

Some naughty elves decorated the office
A collage of pictures of Christmas decorations in the office

Before the earth makes that turn moving the UK into 2019 I thought I’d do a 2018 roundup post because it’s been a pretty intense year. At Christmas 2017 I said my goal for 2018 was to become permanent staff even if it was still on reduced hours but to have the security of a proper contract not a zero hours one.

The year didn’t get off the best start with my first trip to a&e of the year on the 2nd of January this was also the only visit to a&e all year, just over two weeks after this I started a new medication Lamotragine a mood stabiliser. I’m sure that lamotragine has been the biggest reason that I haven’t self harmed its almost like it’s turned something off in my brain that’s made me not want to self harm anymore.

My main goal for the year came true in May when I became permanent staff and took over running the youth service, in November I passed my 6 month probation so now I’m officially permanent staff running a service, managing volunteers a year after I said I wanted to be permanent.

A picture of a letter confirming that I passed my 6 month probation

I’ve been under the mental health service again this year slowly adjusting my medication and I’ve now come off the antipsychotics, reduced one of the medications I was taking for anxiety and only taking the beta blockers as needed. I’ve gone from taking 5 different medications for my mental health to 3.

For someone who often struggles with change there have been so many this year, changes with my job, and the people I work with, two of the people I was closest with at work both left within a few weeks of each other which has been hard and still hasn’t fully sunk in. The office is definitely quieter and I’m missing my verbal sparring partner, I’ll also the person who will always find something positive in everything who took me outside to the carpark to cry because she knew I wouldn’t want anyone in the office to overhear me.

I’ve also become closer to other people at work including two who started at the same time as me, I’ve been out for various drinks and social events (enough to maybe get a reputation) and I’ve had some lovely feedback and support from my volunteers.

As an incredibly indecisive person who struggles to make a choice when there are too many desserts on the menu I bought myself an early Christmas present and got my first tattoo covering some of my self harm scars something very permanent but positive and I love it so much.

A collage of pictures of my new tattoo a caduceus with the words omnes te moriturum amant above it

So 2019 will be off to a busy start with work but also starting with a huge milestone of a year since the last time I self harmed. Of course my love for a certain tv show about a certain grumpy dr has been in full force in 2018 (is a tattoo taking the fandom too far?) and I’ve spent my time off over Christmas working my way through Sherlock, 2019 is looking like a busy year for my fandoms.

Happy new year or happy January or happy Tuesday whichever suits you

Georgiesaurus ☺️🦖

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Who sits at a desk like this?

I like to make places and things “mine” make them reflect me and my personality, sometimes this surprises people like last year when a drunken colleague who got me as their secret Santa nicely summed me up saying “you’re pink and girly but not pick and girly” I love pink, my mobility aids are pink, I have quite a girly* bedroom but I’m mouthy and sweary and suggestions of laddette to lady have been made. I do know that all this gendering of colours and behaviours is to be fair a load of bollocks but lots of people do like to gender everything.

I think for me it’s important to make things and spaces reflect me is because I spent a lot of not time feeling like I lacked an identity which is one of the traits of BPD, I know it’s normal to go through phases and even identity crisis’ especially during adolescence and teenage but i was a human (dinosaur) chameleon I’d change the way I acted and even spoke around others it wasn’t deliberate I just soaked up other people’s personalities and mannerisms like an emotional sponge.

Of course I went through various embarrassing phases such as the emo phase (though I’m still an emo at heart) but it wasn’t just my tastes and appearance changing I didn’t feel I had a sense of self I felt like a hollow shell lacking an identity.

When I started my job six months ago I bought a pink desk organiser which has since been joined by pink in trays, a couple of toys and a coaster saying punch today in the face, I’ve also decorated it for Christmas and put up motivational postcards on the wall, for me it’s important that my work space reflects me especially as I spend so much time at work it really helps my wellbeing to feel it’s somewhere I belong physically as well as emotionally. Although I still experience the occasional existential crisis I feel more secure about who I am than I have in the past, part of this is having things I’m passionate about such as my job and writing, that’s not to say my job is my entire identity but mental health is obviously something I’m very passionate about so I’m Georgiesaurus I like pink, I swear a lot and often drink too much, I love House MD, my top artists on Spotify include Bruce Springsteen, First Aid Kit and George Ezra, I believe pineapple belongs on pizza, I hate Theresa May and I wear cat mittens.

“This is the only me you get”

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Sing little darling

Sing with me

Blue, green, red and white laser beams pointing in all directions around s concert venue

I love live music I love going to gigs even though I don’t do it that often it’s something I really enjoy. As a rather emo teenager I’d queue up in the cold wearing just jeans and a t-shirt arriving several hours early to guarantee a place at the front by the stage with only the bare minimum of possessions with me to avoid the need for a bag. I would far rather be crushed and sweaty in the mosh pit than sensibly seated or in the less crowded areas at the back.

My first and only festival experience was not something I’m keen to revisit, between the lack of sleep, disrupted medication schedule and discomfort of camping day festivals and open air gigs are more my thing with a comfortable bed to return to

The days of post gig highs from adrenaline and lack of sleep have been replaced by planned annual leave the day after a night out to recover, I can’t stand for anywhere near the length of time a gig lasts and crowds bumping and pushing me not only increase my anxiety but cause physical pain and my rock my already shaky balance.

Today I’m paying for last night although the pain and exhaustion are worth it for such a good time seeing First Aid Kit a band that although I haven’t been following for long I’m now a big fan of and really love the music of, they’re also amazing live but despite some of the perks of going to a gig as a disabled person like queue jumping or getting a carers ticket for free I do wish I could still be near the front and not forced to be seated out of necessity.

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Stranger than fiction

I didn't have a picture of a tightrope, the treetop walk at Kew is the closest thing.
A large metal walk way amongst the treetops at Kew Gardens

I’m not a fiction writer, not that I consider myself a writer as such I enjoy blogging and writing workshops and training but I can’t write stories. I admire people who can write fiction, recently I’ve been reading quite a lot of fan fiction, now I know the reputation a lot of fanfic has and the sort of images it brings up in a lot of people’s minds – badly written sec stories often with interesting pairings and while there is plenty of that it’s not what I read.

I read a description recently where a character was described as “walking a tightrope across a canyon of pain, trying to keep his balance, occasionally swaying slightly“ although this was a metaphor for physical pain I think it’s also very accurate for mental health and the balancing act of trying not to over balance from one problem or another and stay on course. I’m struggling with anxiety and low motivation and the 8 -10 week wait for another CMHT appointment has now been 15 weeks with no appointment in sight.

My tightrope is currently swinging between work and benefits with a chasm of fuck knows what beneath me too deep to see the bottom but with nothing good down there.

I’m behind with work and struggling to talk to anyone about it, I’m frustrated at myself and I’ve come to such a roadblock with this that it’s making me feel stupid which is why I’m struggling to ask for help or admit that I’m having a complete mental block, I’ve always struggled to ask for help with things I don’t understand for fear of looking stupid (or being told I’m stupid). Other issues at work currently stressing me out are things beyond my control such as not enough volunteers and having to rush training new ones and now someone close to me is leaving. Have a mentioned before that I struggle with change? Especially changes with relationships? The last couple of weeks have been an emotional shit storm from hiding in the toilets crying because I’m actually devastated that they’re leaving to losing my temper and shouting at them due to a build up of stress and frustration.

On the other side the benefits and money stress which is something that doesn’t just impact on me, my tax credits have been stopped in what I can only see as an hmrc cock up which has also had a knock on effect in stopping my housing benefit and having to repay the council what they’ve paid so far, I recently had to reapply for my PIP/ disability benefits and still haven’t heard back from that, the scary thing about this is if I lose it completely I won’t be eligible anymore for tax credits and my boyfriend will lose the carers allowance he gets for supporting me.

As I can’t currently see an end to the tightrope I just have to hope I can keep my balance and not fall over the edge like the character the quote was about.

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Three hundred and sixty five days

Watching me decay

One year ago today I started working on the youth wellbeing service, initially to support the volunteers when they delivered workshops and helping with training while someone else did the main day to day running of the service. One the first day he threw me in at the deep end and got me to rewrite one of the workshops, despite not bringing my armbands I managed to avoid drowning and quickly decided I wanted more than just the odd hours supporting the volunteers partly because I liked the extra money but also because I was starting to want more than the things I was doing.

I guess I was lucky to have a manager that was happy to give me more responsibility and delegate more work to me plus he didn’t have the time to do the amount of work the youth service needed on top of running another service 3 days a week. I loved the things I did as a volunteer but I was starting to get bored and after years of stagnating I didn’t want to get stuck again so the more I was given the more I took.

This arrangement was meant to last a couple of months then until Christmas then April. On the 26th of April I had my interview for the service lead position and on April the 27th I was told I’d got the job.

Today I jumped ship and went to work in one of the other offices with a different team, since starting this job I’ve found it hard to be alone in the office all day so I tend to pop up in other places from time to time, I celebrated in a work appropriate was with a boiled sweet which my current manager laughed at me for when I sent her a text telling her (feeling the love) but I might go wild tonight and have something stronger, maybe a bag of haribo 😜

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To alcohol the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems

A young drunk dino.

drunk (2)
A picture of me drunk with my mouth open wearing a black and white striped top

I’m a mouthy drunk, not the messy head down the toilet drunk of my early 20’s or the numbing my body with vodka so I could take action to numb my mind drunk of my late 20’s, I’ve never had a problem with alcohol as such more a problem with the things I do when I’ve had alcohol.

I don’t drink much now, chronic illness and medication have seen to that and I’m really only a social drinker but I’m also anxious socially and alcohol is a great way to reduce the anxiety and my tongue. When I say I’m a mouthy drunk I don’t mean rude or aggressive (passive aggressive maybe) more that my tendency to over share increases as my inhibitions decrease adding this to a habit of using humour as a way of making light of difficult subjects it can be awkward at best and messy at worst.

But this isn’t really about alcohol, to quote thirteen “being drunk doesn’t change who you are it just reveals it” I recently did a support plan at work about supporting my mental health including triggers, what I can do to support myself, how work can support me and what signs there might be that I’m struggling. One of the things I included here was changes to my relationships with colleagues, I feel I have some good relationships with some of the people I work with and we tend to have a laugh and joke about things including each other it’s banter but if I’m struggling or not in a great place mentally I can take that too far past it being funny or harmless.

The problem with banter is when mixed with anxiety and alcohol and a loosened tongue the less fun parts come out, I’m not incapable of being unpleasant or bitchy I’m certainly no saint but it’s not always just to be a dick it can and recently was in reaction to hurt, those annoying attachment issues rearing up again at unplanned social interactions with someone who was once a source of support who then let me down and lied to me more than once. I’ve struggled with change and boundaries but I’m not oblivious to them and I’m not naive I don’t need people to lie to me and give me false hope only to completely go against what they said, the worst part is although I’m angry part of me still misses them but I don’t want to not that I particularly want to be angry either but it would be easier to just be angry.

It would be better if I didn’t have to see people who let me down or at least have some control over the interactions but that’s not always possible and while the banter may have gone a bit far and the anger crept in aided by alcohol it didn’t messy and there were no close encounters with the toilet or trips to a&e.

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It’s personal

I’m clearly no stranger to sharing my life both online and offline, if I was this blog wouldn’t exist and you wouldn’t be reading this now but offline I’m starting to get tired of sharing my story and talking to people about my history and mental health. I’ve spoken to so many people in different settings from pop up cafes to fundraisers, funding bids for work and over 1000 young people through volunteering on the youth service I now run and although logically I know it’s not true it does feel as though there must be a shortage of people who haven’t heard my story by now.

Today I’m running training with my new volunteers on writing their personal story and although no one is forcing me to I don’t feel like I can avoid telling it again it doesn’t seem fair to ask them to share theirs and me not share mine, I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks and Im still not entirely sure why I’m so against telling it now I think it’s partly that I’m tired of hearing it and then the fear of being judged and the shame of not really having achieved much in my life. I really do enjoy my job and it’s not that I think it doesn’t count but I’m in my 30’s and just getting started in career where most of the people around me are younger than me and more qualified. I don’t feel like an inspiration or someone to look up to, hearing other people’s educational backgrounds and qualifications reminds me of what I don’t have and what I’m not clever enough to ever achieve, maybe this is internalised to an extent but I also know the reality of my experiences in education.

When you’re known for one thing or people see you a certain way it can be hard to break that view no matter how much you change or try to move on you’ll still be seen the same way, I’ve talked about my past so many times as a volunteer and although not in great detail there’s a high chance that I’ll be meeting people in my new role that have heard my story, I don’t hide having mental health problems and it’s not like I even could if I wanted to I’ve made sure of that it’s something I’ll never be able to fully hide but even though it’s my own fault I wish I had a choice.

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There’s nothing more to it, I just get through it

My motivational coaster at work

My motivational coaster at work
A brightly coloured coaster saying punch today in the face

I’m struggling. As a mental health blogger you’d think that would be easier to say than it is, it’s probably a combination of reducing my Quetiapine, a new job and being utterly exhausted but either way I’m not feeling great. I admitted I was struggling at work yesterday and told my manager that I spent last Friday crying at my desk because I felt so isolated being alone all day, i probably work in the most understanding organisation for someone with mental health problems and despite a fuckton of therapy I still find it hard to admit that and ask for help.

I don’t feel that I’m hard on myself I just think I should be able to manage though of course my brain is now telling me this was all a mistake and that I knew I’d fuck everything up it was inevitable that I wouldn’t be able to cope blah blah blah. It’s one thing when these thoughts are conscious because then I have some control over it but this is like a running commentary in the back of my mind it’s not me deliberately putting myself down but it won’t stop and I don’t know what to do to shut it up. I’m still working out boundaries and what is the right amount to share with people, I feel like I overshared yesterday to someone who isn’t my manage who doesn’t need to deal with my mental breakdowns and now I simultaneously want to crawl into a hole and die and also apologise repeatedly (not sure if this is a mental health issue or just being English).

I do have targets to meet I do have things I need to do and achieve but I’m not under pressure these are things I have a year to do and everyone keeps reminding me it’s only been three weeks so it’s not that. I have a psychiatrist appointment in just over a week and I’m hoping things have levelled out a bit by then, if I’d known it would take several years to come off this medication I might have thought twice about taking it though not everyone has such difficulty with medication adjustments so how would I even know this would be so hard.

Attachment issues are naturally coming out to play because I feel low and I want to cry constantly (which is actually really unlike me) so once again having thought I was feeling ok about someone I suddenly miss them again.

This was disjointed rambling but I wanted to actually start and finish a blog in one go rather then going back and making sure it was post worthy because my head is disjointed rambling right now and I need somewhere to dump it all, I guess one positive is I have no desire to self harm and I’m still over 5 months free.

I just keep on keeping on

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Working 9 (30) – 5 (30)

A photo of me at work wearing pink glasses and a black top with my chin resting on my hand looking stressed

I took part in a photo project on Facebook for people with chronic illness a few months ago and balance was one of the prompts that stood out for me, people talk about a work life balance and having a life outside of work but another type of work life balance for me is the balance between how I’m seen as a member of staff and a person with mental health problems.

My mental health isn’t a secret it couldn’t be if I wanted it to be not just because of this blog or the very obvious signs all over my body including my hands (big regret) but also because I came into the organisation as a service user which is something I make no secret of but at times it’s hard to know how others see me. This may be my own internalised anxieties or not feeling good enough but I find it hard to know whether at times of stress I’m see as a stressed or frustrated member of staff like any other or if I’m seen as a person with a mental health problem overeating as a result of their mental health.

Again this may be internalised anxiety and probably a generous dose of feeling like I don’t deserve help or that I shouldn’t ask for help and should be capable and prove myself (probably mostly the last part) but because I feel like I should be able to cope and I’m afraid of being seen as incapable I find it really hard to say I’m struggling at work. I know I keep going on about how scary it is that people having expectations for me to live up to but Friday afternoons seem to be the time my brain likes to have a breakdown and I even got left off work early for being mental today, being overtired and alone all day meant I spent more time crying at my desk than actually working.

My mental health and volunteer experiences help me support my volunteers but I worry that I’m seen as less professional especially because of my self harm and the fact that I don’t cover my scars or that people will think I’m not capable; as it is I’ve been judged by professionals when I’ve attended consultations or panels as a person with lived experience or service user rep, metaphorically patted on the head or had things I’ve been dealing with for years explained to me with a patronising smile and yes some of these people may do it to everyone but when you’re trying to prove yourself or been seen as more than just a token or a tick box to satisfy a requirement it’s that bit more frustrating. I keep being told that everyone experiences anxiety at the start of a new job and it’s normal to have doubts but again this is where the difference lies because I always feel I’m waiting for people to see through me and tell me this was all a mistake.

This blog is a bit all over the place but what (I think) I’m trying to say is that the balance between work and life is more complex for me than just work and outside work.

This existential crisis was brought to you by caffeine and chocolate.

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Fake it till you make it

Tonight* my brain is spiralling down into doom and failure convincing me that I’m a fraud just waiting to be caught out and that I’ve someone convinced people into believing I’m something I’m not, that people will soon realise this and see right through me and that giving me a job, responsibility and letting me run a service is a mistake. I’ve had the talk about imposter syndrome with someone before, someone I respect who to most people would never appear to feel this way I even bought myself a print of the picture used in this blog to try and convince myself that actually I’m not the imposter I think I am.

The feelings of responsibility and expectation are once again terrifying me, for a long time I’ve believed that if I never try I can’t fail and I can’t screw things up but I’m restless and wasn’t feeling stretched anymore by the things I’ve been doing. I’ve spent a large amount of this evening crying as my thoughts continue to spiral and snowball collecting more and more until it becomes and avalanche (sorry for the naff metaphor) anxiety has been creeping in recently and I’m trying to tell myself that it’s normal to feel some anxiety about a new job.

It doesn’t really matter what people say because my brain won’t listen, I know I’m not the only one that feels this way and I also know that I did well in my interview but facts and emotions don’t mix and the fear is strong. I wanted this job so much and I still do but the loss of security and increased responsibility and the worry of everything going wrong is very much on my mind (and in my dreams).

Today I have my induction with two other new members of staff and I’m hoping that I’ll just be treated like any other member of staff and not have to hear everyone say I know everything and that I’ve been here forever because this is still new to me and there’s a lot I’m going to have to learn.

*I started writing this last night

Image credit to People I Loved screenshoot from Blurt Foundation on instagram

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