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.
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.
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.
One day I’m going to be sued for my constant use of song lyrics
2015 Georgiesaurus speaking about being a Youth Wellbeing volunteer
Recently things have been relatively OK I’m not saying it’s all wonderful but mentally I’ve been reasonably stable; I’ve had my first medication increase of Lamotragine and it’s hard to know whether it’s helping or not as this is probably the first time I’ve not been in crisis or extremely depressed when changing or adjusting medication, to add to this today I got a letter from the mental health team offering me an appointment in March with the recovery and support team presumably following on from the referral the psychiatrist I saw in December made. Yesterday I saw a friend I haven’t seen in a while and was telling her that I’d stopped going to the group I’d been attending due to it being a toxic and unsupportive environment that made me feel worse not better so with the recent mental stability getting the letter about the mental health appointment has just added another decision the think about, if I’m offered more treatment will it make things worse? Do I want it? Is it suitable or would I be better off considering something else I’ve been looking into?.
Life doesn’t come with a manual, I’m still trying to find out who I can complain to but for now I have to try and work things out myself and try and decide what the right thing to do in certain circumstances or what decisions to make when opportunities come along. One of the problems is that opportunities don’t always come along at the right time and that’s without the complication of not knowing when the right time is. For 7 months I’ve been working and earning on top of my benefits (all legit please don’t report me for benefit fraud) and it’s been the best, most intense, stressful, exhausting and rewarding 7 months, it certainly hasn’t all be smooth sailing with days where I was going solo bobbing up and down desperately trying to stay afloat and times when I was drowning and having 4:30 Friday meltdowns which involved texting my manager and almost quitting.
But 7 months in the grand scheme of things isn’t that long and in a perfect world I’d have more time to prepare and put myself in the best position to take on more not just skills wise but mentally too and feel as stable and secure as I can and ready to take the next step in moving off benefits another struggle here is my chronic illness I cannot manage full time and even if I was in perfect mental health I couldn’t physically cope on full time hours. I feel that so much of my self worth recently has been tied up in this job I’m told a lot how good it is that I’m working and being payed but as much as I’m enjoying having more money it’s more the feeling of being an equal on the same level as staff and things that come with it such as socials or attending the staff away day.
2017 Georgiesaurus running a Youth information stand for Time to Talk Day
Sometimes I think I do too good a job at treating my mental health as something separate that I’m almost lulled into a false sense of security that comes with stability when realistically I still have to fight the urge to tell my manager everything I’ve done each day if he’s not in, let him know I’ve uploaded it onto the shared drive and where so he knows I’ve been working, of course I know that not only does he trust me to work alone but he doesn’t want to know every email I’ve sent or every webpage I’ve read for the workshop I’m writing. I’ve had a few relationship anxieties too despite MBT helping me with this it’s hard to explain to someone without mental health issues that people I’ve been close to or very attached to weren’t just people I worked with and that although they have moved on it’s still at times a struggle for me.
Although I’m handling it better I’m still not a fan of change and if anyone knows where I can hand in my resignation of adulthood please let me know until then I’ll be building a pillow fort.
A purple banner saying you can talk about mental health anywhere even here
*mentions medications, doses and side effects and self harm
Let’s talk about medication; the world and his wife and their depressed friend seem to have an option on the subject, the internet is full of memes about going for a walk in a forest and you know the Daily Mail will have something to say on the matter but the reality isn’t just popping a pill and everything is better it’s much more boring, frustrating and often unpleasant. I’ve been on and off medication almost half my life and I’ve been on some form of medication consistently for around 10 years. I’ve tried almost all the common antidepressants – citalopram, venlafaxine (made me throw up so much), sertraline (no effect but made me sick when I took myself off it), citalopram again (worked well then stopped working), seroxat – the scary one from panorama (worked well then stopped working, made me very mental coming off it), duloxetine (still on this the most effective and long lasting though I’m now on the maximum dose) I’ve also been on and am still on an antipsychotic quetiapine.
Enter a captioThe top picture shows a forest with the words this is an anti depressant. The bottom picture shows a green and yellow prozac tablet with the words this is shit.
I loved quetiapine it helped me sleep, it lowered my anxiety and evened out those wonderful BPD mood swings it was great until I decided maybe I didn’t need it anymore that I was tired of being tired, I wasn’t in love with it anymore but it didn’t want to let me go. When I first reduced my dose the withdrawal was horrendous I remember the nausea that made me late for college because moving made me want to throw up, I lay on my sofa and cried for a day before breaking 6 months self harm free and phoning my care coordinator begging for diazepam instead they gave me promethazine this took me to three types of medication.
After this I increased the dose twice and things were ok until I tried to leave quetiapine again and it let anxiety and depression came back in, at this point I was just starting my new job and was also suicidal from the medication withdrawal, this then led to an increase of my antidepressant duloxetine now up to the maximum dose, the anxiety was unbearable so propanolol a beta blocker was added; 3 little pink pills a day.
A referral back to the mental health service and a medication review with a psychiatrist i’d met through my work with commissioning groups and we decided to try lamotragine an anti epileptic but not until I’d had a blood test to check my liver and kidney function oh and watch out for a rash because this can suppress your white blood cells.
My view on medication is that I’m neither for or against it, for some it’s a life saver and others it’s poison that dulls the emotions and sedates people into compliance but I do think people need to be more aware of what they’re taking and how it could affect them. Medication and the side effects are one of the reasons people with enduring mental health problems die on average 20 years earlier than the general population many of the health initiatives around weight loss and stopping smoking aren’t helpful to people who’s mediation has ground their metabolism to a halt or has increased the effects of nicotine on the brain and that’s not even looking at the social side of eating or smoking amongst people with mental health problems.
The top picture shows a forest with the words this is an anti depressant, the word antidepressant is crossed out and underneith it says an amazing way to spend a Saturday. The bottom picture shows a variety of medication with the words this is shit, the word shit is crossed out and underneith it says prescribed medication that literally saves lives
Medication has and continues to help me in combination with the therapy I’ve had it helps me do my job which in turn benefits my mental health, had I known more about the side effects before I was put on an antipsychotic maybe I’d have decided not to go on it but even if I’d made the same choice at least I’d have had all the information needed to make an informed decision.
There’s still a lot of stigma around being on medication and those memes about taking a walk in a forest really don’t help, there’s no shame in being on medication so please take your meds.
A picture of a shark rucksack looking anxious wih the caption “my face when people ask what happened to my arms”
*For the purpose of this post i’ll be using the word disabled to mean people with a physical impairment, I do consider mental health problems to be a disability but for clarity i’ll refer to mental health seperatly.
So my brain whirred into action last night thanks to an Instagram post by the amazing feeding of the fox. There’s a type of self harm that’s rarely mentioned; self neglect comes up in the context of depression but even I’ve never seen a discussion around the connection between disability or chronic illness and self harm or disabled people deliberately not taking care physical needs as a way of self harming. There are times when I say yes when I should say no, times when I will push myself because I don’t deserve to rest, times when I don’t take painkillers because it’s an indirect way of inflicting pain on myself, going to places that aren’t accessible or doing things when I’m not well enough.
Any disabled person will also tell you there is a big divide in the treatment of physical and mental health problems the two rarely mix and the mental health services are not always good at recognising the impact that physical disability or chronic illness can have on mental health or that the things that could benefit you mentally aren’t always possible physically (like going for a walk or having a bath), being told I should do more exercise after I’ve explained that I have chronic pain and chronic fatigue can result in me feeling lazy and making myself do things that result in pain or injury and an increase in fatigue and related symptoms. This is where the lack of understanding or knowledge of the connections between mental health and physical impairments is such a problem because for me it can be an increase in symptoms but for others it can be much worse.
Then there’s the other side the health services who treat your body as if your mind isn’t a part of it, although I’ve always been disabled to some extent in the last couple of years my mobility has got worse and I’ve been using mobility aids and dealing with more pain and fatigue.
At the beginning of 2017 I tried to access psychological therapy for long term health problems. I wanted help accepting my chronic illness and dealing with no longer being able to do the things I used to and things people my age can do, I wanted some support in balancing my physical health and mental health. It took several months for them to tell me that they don’t offer support for chronic pain, between that they rejected me because I was under mental health services (I was in the process of being discharged and they were completely different services), they then said my self harm made me too much of a risk and they said they didn’t think I’d be able to manage classroom based psychoeducation (thanks for that).
Last time I checked neither my body or my brain can function without the other yet services treating each are still very separate and mental health services are often not accommodating for people with physical impairments and often aren’t accessible there’s also an assumption that if you’re disabled and have mental health problems then of course you’re depressed because you’re disabled because who wouldn’t be?
Ableism unfortunately is still well rooted within the medical profession and the even within the disability communities there is still too much separation of physical impairment and mental health issues.
A rather appropriate Christmas card I saw last year
I don’t like Christmas, call me Scrooge or the grinch but i really don’t enjoy it. Christmas can be a really difficult time for so many people there’s a big emphasis on joy and happiness, being around family and friends but the happy family isn’t a reality for many, my family diminished over the years with elderly members moving into nursing homes and dying and now I have no contact with my immediate family though the family Christmases I did have often were rarely happy ones.
My mental health tends to deteriorate around this time of year the run up to Christmas really makes me stressed and anxious despite knowing rationally that the day itself will most likely be fine and that I’m actually going to spend it with two people (and two cats) that I’m choosing to be with. One of the struggles I have with Christmas is that most of the things I do to support myself aren’t an option, I’m off work for two weeks, there’s a big reduction in public transport so as a non driver I’m limited on how much I can get out, health services are reduced as are most other things like council services and housing association (not that my housings are any use when they are in) it feels like the world shuts down and the prospect of over a week with nothing to do doesn’t feel me with joy but anxiety.
I need routine and structure to stay relatively sane (emphasis on relatively) though this structure is mainly external as left to my own devises I tend to spend too much time in bed or watching YouTube but the idea of days with nothing to do and falling back into bad sleep patterns reminds me of when that was all my life consisted of endless days of nothing stretching out ahead of me with little point in knowing what day it was when they were all the same, where I’d stay up half the night and sleep half the day (this was mainly a way of reducing the amount of time I had to spend around my mother) although how ever much I need routine I’m not missing getting in at 8:30 to prepare for volunteer training.
My attempts at festivity fairy lights wrapped around my crutches and stick
Christmas is also shortly followed by new year and the thought of change and reflection, I’ve been reflecting a lot recently especially on relationships as I mentioned in my last post, I’m tired of missing people especially people who don’t miss me who made promises they didn’t mean I don’t want to miss them anymore. In January I’ll be once again going through medication changes in an attempt to finally get off antipsychotic medication something I’ve been wanting for a while.
Disability, chronic illness and mental health problems don’t go away for the holidays it just means different challenges and things that can affect pain or fatigue and trying to manage pacing while still enjoying the day.
To anyone struggling this Christmas, with isolation, pain or mental illness you’re not alone this dinosaur sends love and solidarity. If you need support during the Christmas period the Samaritans are always there and comedian Sarah Millican will once again be doing #joinin on twitter for the 7th year running, have as good a Christmas as you can a big Christmas RAWR from The Perks of Being a Dinosaur.
The back of one of my pink smart crutches with a sticker saying coping admirably
*clears out the tumbleweed*
Long time no blog, I’ve had a few semi written posts on the go but most of them seemed to get stuck half way.
There are lots of changes going on around me and in general this year has been full of them, I’m not normally a fan of change and prefer to keep a tight grip on familiarity instead yet it seems to keep happening despite my complaints. I don’t like uncertainty yet I’m bored; as ever my brain is a contradiction, I often feel as though I’m stagnating seeing people move on around me people I was in the same position as a couple of years ago have bypassed me it’s no coincidence that as I write this young people across the U.K. will be getting exam results and finding out where their future path lies thinking about my own education and career tends to leave me teetering on the edge of an existential crisis.
I’ve develop a habit of doing all the things I feel like I need to make up for lost time and lost years to catch up with all those ahead of me. Since joining Mind there have been many staffing changes and several younger members of staff have joined, people younger than me which as well as the problems with attachments to people who have left has brought some resentment and shame at being a volunteer managed by people younger than me; there are volunteers older than me but most of them have had lives already and at 32 I’m only just at the start of any kind of career.
One thing I’ve been trying hard to do is be honest and open more, in some respects I guess I’ve had to as I no longer have one person I can go to and no mental health support has probably forced me to do this. One thing they don’t tell you in therapy is how long things take to have an effect I finished the main MBT treatment in 2013 and sometimes it feels like my brain is only starting to process it, I’ve said since it finished that the ways it helped me aren’t so obvious as the main issues I have such as self harm haven’t gone away but expressing my feelings and telling people how I feel about them is something that although still a work in progress is probably the biggest change and recently I’ve surprised myself with these changes by telling people that I feel I’m trying to make up for lost time and compensate for the years of not doing anything.
The downside to doing all the things is I’m currently lacking direction, life doesn’t come with a map it’s more like a badly programmed sat nav that has you going all the way across the country for a pint of milk instead of 5 minutes up the road and right now I feel like I’m sitting trying to find the right direction but I’m not sure exactly where I’m going and I’m not sure the address is right but I sort of know where it is just not exactly. What I know is I want to work in mental health in a way I can use my lives experience, I know I enjoy working directly with people (oh how 16 year old me would have laughed at that) I also enjoy delivering training but I don’t know whether I want to work with adults or young people or what sort of project or service I’d like to work on. Sometimes I think life was easier when I was catatonically depressed, if anyone knows how I can resign from adulting please let me know until then I’ll be building myself a pillow fort.
A picture of my legs in the air, both are bandaged
This Post is likely to be triggering please read with caution.
I was running a youth wellbeing session last week, it was a drop in so a much more scaled back and basic session than I’d usually do. We had a small power point which contained an animation about depression by Time to Change. The video shows an illustrated woman swimming in a blackness that surrounds her, trying to come up for air and not knowing which direction to go in, that’s how I feel about self harm.
It’s a complex issue like many mental health problems or behaviours that come from them; I only know one person other than people online who actively self harms who I think understands the way I feel and who I can relate to. To me it’s not necessarily something that always has a precise trigger there isn’t always something that’s happened to cause it, there can be a million reasons or none sometimes I just need to cut.
I think I related to the video because my feeling can be suffocating and when I cut it’s like coming up for air or letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding as if my whole body breaths a sigh of relief and I feel calm and still. Unfortunately it rarely lasts long and it always builds up again it’s a cycle I’ve not managed to break, the build up will come again and there is a limit to how much I can distract myself or keep busy it often feels like I’m just delaying the inevitable.
When you don’t like or value yourself it’s hard to find a reason not to give in to something that has made you feel better so many times despite it being damaging and harmful. The experiences in a&e are often not positive with many Drs short on time and energy angry at treating someone that has inflicted an injury upon themselves, treatment is often less than ideal with the quickest and easiest option taken, it can be painful, distressing and even humiliating I’ve been treated in ways that I find hard to believe I’d be treated if it were an accident.
The question of whether self harm counts as an addiction or not is often debated in the mental health community but whether it is or not I believe it has a strong hold over me one that holding ice cubes, snapping elastic bands or talking about has never quite been enough for me to come up for air and stop drowning.
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.
