Tag: personaldevelopment

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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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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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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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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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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5 years time 

I’ve recently had a couple of meetings looking at my personal and professional development, it’s been refreshing to work with someone who’s never met me before who just sees me for what I am now not what I was 5 years ago, 3 years ago, 6 months ago, sometimes it’s helpful to see how far you’ve come but sometimes it can be hard to move away from that image of me from the past especially as I talk about my lived experiences of mental health problems and how I was in the past in my job.

I’ve never really considered myself to be ambitious partly because I’ve always assumed I’ll fail, something that has been repeatedly instilled in me over the years and left me feeling that ivt’s best not to set goals because if I have no goals I can’t fail. The bar is set so low that it’s almost on the ground there’s no where to fall nothing to achieve or succeed at, no one to see me fail which also means I don’t talk about any ambitions I do have and keep things to myself partly out of fear of failure but also the fear that people will think it’s ridiculous that I even consider having goals in life especially any that may be related to employment or education. 

Being in a position where people expect things of me is scary it’s not something I normally let happen and has at times increased the anxiety and the panic within me yet on the other hand I’ve been pushing for more responsibility feeling restless and wanting more, it’s not that I’m bored but for once I don’t want to settle and I want to move forward and do more, move to a bigger pond and try and find a place in it.

I never want to go back to the nothingness and the isolation but along with the push for more responsibility and more experience is the push to change people’s view of me I may have worked hard to get to the point I’m at now and while it’s still not where I want to be I want people to see me for what I am and what I do now without the comparison to how I used to be.

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