Recovery, Day 9

My emotions are still all over the shop but I can deal with that. The base level of happiness though is definitely higher which is what really matters. It’s hard when the down or the angry strikes but I’m getting through it slightly more easily and returning to a better place afterwards. I never thought I’d get as far as I have so I’m doing pretty well I guess.

Still working on the keeping busy principal. I’m off to Newcastle tomorrow until Thursday to annoy my ickle brother at university. Never really been there so it should be a laugh. He has a posh flat on the Quayside with his girlfriend, so unless the Tyne floods very rapidly I should have fun. The rest of my family are off to Japan next weekend. My mum is convinced that if I’m left on my own for more than a few hours I’ll spontaneously combust or something so they’re paying for me to go to Bulgaria for a week. A family friend has a house there and will be around at the same time. I’m planning to drink lots of cheap wine and do very little else. Woo!

I notice my writing is less fluent and flowing when I’m slightly happier. It’s partly because I’m trying to avoid voicing my more negative thoughts in case they reinfect my brain from the keyboard. I miss Nick so much it hurts, I’ve treated him so badly recently and that hurts too. My mind is spending more time than I’d like dwelling on the ethics of leaving someone who’s sick because although I hate to admit it I am sick at the moment. I’ve been letting the sickness control me and take my personality but now I’m fighting back. I suppose without the impetus of being dumped, I’d never have found that drive but it still bothers me, particularly since I want to restart the relationship when we’re both ready (and if he wants to of course!). It concerns me that if he’d leave when I’m ill now, what’s to stop him doing the same if, for example I have a stroke and need a lot of care. I know it’s a very different set of circumstances and I can’t live on concerns about what would happen “if” but still… It doesn’t stop me loving him, I don’t think anything could do that. Usually I am awful for holding grudges against people for any perceived insult, but in leaving he hurt me more than anyone else could and yet I still can’t feel anything but concern and affection for him. Odd.

Aywho, happy, positive thoughts and vibes to all!

Recovery, Day 6

Today I had an interview for nursing at another university. I was fairly sure I wanted to go to the place I already have an offer for but I wasn’t doing anything else today so thought I may as well make sure. I was pretty unimpressed to be honest. We were told there would be an introduction to the course (which would ave been useful!) but there was nothing of the sort. The people interviewing seemed to think my application was a joke. I know I’m quite well qualified to be appplying for nursing, but if it’s what I want… They spent ages telling me how bored I’d be and when I managed to convince them I was good at finding further reading etc if needed, they switched to telling me I wouldn’t have time for that because the course was very difficult and I’d be busy all the time. I was confused. My car nearly took off on the M1 it was that windy but other than that it was thoroughly uneventful.

Other than that, not a lot to be honest. I’m still coping, far better than I thought I would which is a plus. I miss having someone to share the little details of my life with, someone who understands my sense of humour and odd habits. I can’t believe how  much I’d taken everything for granted and how stupid that was. I’m managing to establish some little routine details that’s giving me some basic stability. Things like getting up at the same time (and a sensible time!) and having breakfast.  It’s not a lot but it helps.

I’m also getting better at identifying some of my more obvious negative thought processes. As long as I’m relatively calm and don’t get too carried away in the instant emotional hit, I can realise when what I’m thinking is unhelpful. But I don’t know how to stop and it’s so frustrating. I can’t stop the stupid thoughts, the self-hatred, the build up of little things until I explode. My emotions build up to epic, damaging proportions at nothing but cooling them down again is another matter. I know that realising something is the first step to beating it, but I can’t see how I’m going to get beyond this. This is what the therapy is going to help, at least I really hope it is.

I meant to sound more upbeat that this. I really am incredibly proud of myself, I just with I could see into the future, to know that everything is going to be ok and that this isn’t just a temporary improvement before another crash.

Recovery, Day 4

I’m still on the right track but it’s hard. There’s a part of me that thinks I’m so comitted to this, why can’t it just be better now? There are enough people out there that believe you can just think yourself out of depression, why can’t they be right? Then and again I don’t think I’d be able to cope with the smug “I told you so” if they were.

I’m trying to keep myself busy so I don’t have too much time to think and over analyse where I’ve gone wrong. It’s too late to change the past now. . Yesterday I went and helped at my Dad’s school to get me out the house. Spent the afternoon building forts outside with reception and nursery children. Was great to be with my intellectual equals I was reminded just how delicate this state of mind is at lunch when I asked for 2 things you weren’t meant to have together and the dinner lady said I could have them but that I wasn’t meant to. I spent the next hour mentally berating myself and felt so guilty and then angry at myself at being guilty. Just ridiculous for something that they probably forgot as soon as it happened.

This brings me on to todays pseudo psychology lesson. I know nothing about this so please discount everything I say and seek opinion from a professional. I was reading yesterday about primary and secondary emotions. Primary emotions are unlearned, they’re a basic human response to an event. These come from a survival response and are useful and functional. For example, feeling joy when something good happens, feeling sorrow when someone you love dies, feeling suprised if someone jumps out on you. Secondary emotions are stupid and pretty pointless, as far as I can figure. They’re emotions about emotions and are learned behaviours, generally from your immediate family while young. For example, feeling worry about happiness ending, feeling angry about crying,  feeling anxious about feeling anxious.

It’s these secondary emotions I seem to have a problem with, they just get out of control. Like what I said above, it was fine to feel embarassed for ordering the wrong thing but then spending the next hour feeling ashamed and angry about it was irrational and served no purpose. Now I’ve just got to work out how to control them and I’ll be fine…! Why do I get the impression that’s going to be the difficult bit?

I’m starting to put right some of the things I’ve done wrong. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, and it’s easy to see now that I was so wrapped up in being in love and then in being ill that I forgot me and the things that are important to me. If it wasn’t for that, I could have started my nursing degree 18 months ago and be half way through it now rather than waiting to start. What’s happened is nobody’s fault and it’s to late to change it now anyway but it feels strange to look back and see where I made bad decisions with the best intentions and then where I stopped making decisionas at all. I’m trying to arrange to meet up with friends I’ve abandoned, get out, see people and do more. One thing I do know is I’d never make the same mistakes again, and I’m still hoping I’ll get the chance to try again and do things right this time.

Recovery, Day 2

Right I’m going to start using this blog to chart my attempts to get back on top of my life.  I’ve no idea how successful I’m going to be but there’s a lot riding on this. Namely my entire future and whether or not I have one. I’m going to need a lot of support and even more red wine to get anywhere near close but I’ve got to give it a shot. At the moment I’m still crying all the time at every little detail. My bed seems big, cold and empty and it seems I have an almost insurmountable mountain to scale but for now I have determination.

I know it seems stupid less than 48 hours in but I’ve already learnt a lot about myself that I’d forgotten. I’ve been wallowing in self pity recently and haven’t really been trying to heal. Just assuming that there’s another disaster around the corner so what’s the point in trying when I’ll just get knocked back again. So, my realisations:

• There’s a difference between want and need. I always wondered why Nick got upset when I said I need him but now I realise that it implies a one way reliance not a two way relationship. I am coming to realise that life would cotinue without him and it wouldn’t all be bleak. But I do want him so much, there’s an empty hole in my chest where the relationship should be and that will not close.
• My parents aren’t that bad. They’ve been wonderful for the last two days and even managed to get a slight smile back on my face. They care deeply and I’ve been treating them incredibly badly. It’s not been a conscious choice but is something I need to rectify.
• Not all my friendships are destroyed beyond all repair. It’s going to take a lot of effort on my behalf to rebuild them but I must do it. I’ve been living in the shadows, I need to get out and live my own life.
• I’m stronger than I even dreamed.

The problem is that I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s tempting to think that with all those profound realisations that I’m already there but that would be ridiculous.  There’s a lot more going on in my head than just an off few months. There are problems in my mind that I’m going to need a lot of assistance to work through but I’ll get there or try my very best to.

I have an emotion control self help book that uses DBT techniques and was recommended to me so I’m going to give that a go. And we’re going to wait for a quote from private psych and see how much we’ll be able to afford. The book is based around 6 assumptions and I’m going to put those here so I can look back and remind myself of them when I’m struggling.

1. At present I’m doing the very best I can in dealing with my emotions.
2. I want to do better and be more skillful in dealing with my emotions.
3. I need to do better, try harder and be more motivated to change.
4. I may not have created all my own problems, but I have to solve them anyway.
5. I am currently unsatisfied with the way in which I deal with my emotions.
6. I must learn new emotion skills and behaviours in all relevant contexts.

I’ve let my life drift. I’ve been such an idiot the last few months and it’s taken a very sharp shock to make me realise. I wish Nick had said he was only leaving temporarily until I recovered but that may not have had the same effect. I do believe I can get him back but only if I can get me back first. Call me stupid for thinking it, but love makes fools of us all.

Wish me luck!

The end. Or is it?

Nick has left me. It’s the shittiest thing that could possibly happen at the end of 9 months of shit. He’s sick of being my carer and of us fighting and doing each other more harm than good. And to be honest, he’s got a point, I’m not a nice person to be around at the moment. I’m devastated beyond all belief, I didn’t know it was possible to cry that much.

But I still love him and I hope, pray and believe that he still loves me but the me I was, not the me I’ve become. I like that old me better too. So I’ve decided I’m going to get better. Not just for him but for my family, for the friends I haven’t alienated completely and most importantly for me. I’ve become defined by what I have, not who I am and it’s time that changed. So on this first day of Spring, I’m looking for a new beginning too.

When I search hard for the bit of future I can stil see, I see it with Nick. I believe in soul mates. In love at first sight. In the one. And to me he’s all of them and much much more.

But right now, this is about me. I need the space and I need the time to heal. I need to be selfish, to concentrate on me because deep down underneath all this shit, there’s an intelligent, happy, carefree girl waiting to get out. I just need to find and release her.

I’m not sure I fully believe that any of this is possible but I want to believe it and surely that’s the first step.

Therapy Part 2

I know, 2 posts in one day, what is the world coming to? Private assessment is done. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done in a long time. I even cried which is rare for me in sessions as I don’t want to seem weak. It continues to disturb me how rationally I can discuss my disappointment at failing to overdose successfully and just how sane I sound while discussing something completely and utterly crazy. There was no couch which I was rather disappointed about but the  location just promoted well being in it’s design, calming lighting, pictures on the walls, everything CMHT wasn’t.

I ranted about how the NHS had failed me so utterly in every respect and psychologist lady had to agree.  And the result: they can help me. Woo! They’re considering either DBT or the Trauma Team (which I’m sure sounds more dramatic than it actually is). I’m more for the DBT route as I’ve read a lot of positives about it and it seems aimed at the sort of problems I experience. The downside is it will be expensive, very expensive.

So other than feeling completely emotionally drained, that’s a result. Or not. It’s me, things could never ever be that simple. Came home and my dearest mother was waiting to question me on the experience. Post hospital she’s been trying really hard and tending to go along with what I’ve been told but in the last few days we’ve come up against a wall. When the hospital shrink diagnosed me with BPD, he said it was a more mild case (ie I wasn’t in and out of A+E every week, I tried to keep my visits to every few months). Now I have a feeling my mum may have been using the internet to research this (and believe me my mum should never EVER be allowed anywhere near Dr. Google). So she’s convinced that I don’t have it and never will and is using what hospital shrink said to back this up, despite the fact she’s wilfully misinterpreting what he said. So the first thing when I got home was “did private psych agree with hospital shrinks diagnosis?”.  Well firstly we didn’t really discuss diagnosis, it’s just a label after all. But she did agree that I had a lot of traits that if we were labelling would result in that as a diagnosis, hence the decision to use a DBT route. Mum’s reply, “Oh so we’re not labelling so you don’t have it then, that’s excellent”. Not what I said.

When I explained mine and private psychs concerns about costs of private treatment particulalry DBT, my mother replied “I know, it’s far too expensive, we wouldn’t be able to afford that”. So even when I get offered this private help, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to take it up due to financial constraints.  I’ve always been the one whose tried to avoid private due to the cost and my parents have been the ones pushing me to take it up, claiming cost doesn’t matter. Except now I’ve been offered a solution, apparently price is all. I’m so angry right now I could scream. Even if it does turn out to be true, why say it then? It’s almost like she was angry that the treatment suggested backs up a diagnosis she doesn’t like and so decided to ruin the little bit of hope I had.

My life really is a comedy of errors. It really shouldn’t be possible for so many things to go so wrong.

CMHT response

So, CMHT phoned me back this morning. This is the conversation, the normal bits are what I actually said and the bits in italics are what I wanted to say and probably should have said.

CMHT: We’ve had our meeting and decided that your needs are better met by psychotherapy. We can’t offer this, but you have your private referral so you should just access that instead.

Me: Right

So, I spent an hour telling you my innermost secrets for nothing. We’ll ignore the fact that your leaflet says that you have a clinical psychologist on your team and that I explained how terrible I feel about going private, which I can ill afford anyway.

CMHT: You have the mental health crisis number if you need it.

Me: Yes

I lost the number post hospital and even if I had it, I am a complete phone phobic. I wouldn’t make the call if my life depended on it.

CMHT: If you feel suicidal go to A+E.

Me: Last time I went to A+E, I got told I probably wasn’t ill, shouldn’t be on medication and got sent home.

My boyfriend had to fight to get the on-call psych to see me, and when she did, all she offered was a referral to CMHT which you promptly ignored. And besides, if I went to A+E every time I felt suicidal, I’d have to take up permanent residence there. Sure they’d love that, I’ll tell them you sent me.

CMHT: Thanks for your time, hope the private therapy helps.

Me: Thanks. Bye.

You lot are less use than a chocolate teapot. Why don’t you just be honest and say you won’t see me because I may be getting help elsewhere and it saves you a couple of quid. Bastards.

Useful or what? That was a waste of my Monday wasn’t it. I will add it to my long list of assessment appintment s with no help offered. Right, better go, am off to private referral. It can’t go any worse, can it?

Referrals are like buses

You wait ages for one and then two come along at once. Not only do I have my private psychotherpy referral on Friday, but today I had a meeting with the joyous bods at CMHT. Now this is a service I’ve heard very mixed reviews of. The idea of community based care is sound but in practice I know it’s not always great – overstretched and understaffed. Given a crisis referral took over 2 months to get me an appointment, I didn’t hold out much hope but I wasn’t doing anything else today so I thought I may as well give it a shot.

The setting wasn’t exactly inspiring. Given they’re dealing with some pretty messed up people, you’d think they’d at least try and make the decor cheery. I buzzed the wrong door to start with as reception was badly signposted which didn’t help in the feeling like an idiot who’s wasting their time stakes. The wating area was horrible – 2 seats shoved in a corner seemingly as an afterthought, with a cardboard box on the floor and years out of date posters decorating the walls. That and the hundreds of “insert condition here, a self help guide”. Given the difficulty in getting an appointment in the first place, I’d have thought the people waiting would be far beyond self help guides, but maybe I’m just being negative.

Anywho, the appointment itself… A student was doing the assessing with the CPN sitting in, which meant two people scribbling down my random rantings. I always find people writing down what I’m saying hugely offputting, so I compensated by looking at the floor or my coat the whole time. Not that I’m much good at eye contact anyway. For once they didn’t want to dwell on the distant past in any detail which made a pleasant enough change. Mostly it was from when I lost my job until now. I was honest. As far as I can see, these referrals are my last chance. If I don’t get something out of these, that really is it.

I think they were surprised at how much insight and understanding into my behaviour I had and yet how little control came with it. I also scared myself, thoughts inside your head are easy to deny but when they come spilling out, it’s hard to continue to hide from just how messed up my thinking’s become. How much my life is just barely functioning on a day to day level until I can find a way out for good. This post wasn’t meant to be morbid, so I think I’ll move on. We talked about the overdose, again they seemed concerned it was a genuine attempt and how much analysis and thought I’d put into it and how disappointed I was with the outcome (AWAY from morbid Ana, away…). On the plus side they seemed to think my treatment by occy health was appalling but it’s a bit late for that now.

And that was it. No conclusions drawn, no firm support offered. They asked me what I wanted from it, I said to be normal. To be able to cope, it doesn’t matter if the disorder, in whatever form it’s identified is still there, I just want to have control over it. To have friends, hold a normal conversation, have a job. It doesn’t sound like a lot but to me, it’s nigh on impossible. Apparently, they’ll take the discussion back to a team meeting on Thursday, try and draw up a plan and get back to me.

So overall, I don’t know what to think. It was good to talk to someone. I’m tired of burdening Nick with all my problems, so it was good to share them even if expressing it so matter of factly was hard. But in terms of long term usefulness, who knows? It would have been nice to have some sort of summing up of what was likely to be offered, but I suppose they can’t do that until they know what resources will be available.

Onwards to Friday… Given the amount a private referral’s costing, I’m hoping at the very least the venue will be nicer!

Anger

Thanks everyone for all your support against internet idiot. I’m going to move on from that. Sufice to say, it’s not big and it’s not clever to pick on someone who is quite capable of picking on themselves.

I think I got out of the wrong side of bed this morning. I am decidedly out of sorts. I am really angry at a photo that I’m probably taking way out of context but don’t really want to go into at the moment.

So let’s consider something else about me. One thing I am phenomenally good at is sleeping, always have been. If it were an olympic sport, I’d be on the British team for sure. Think of the fame and fortune that would come flying my way! Or not. I dream in technicolour, glorious, swirling, exciting technicolour. My dreams are far more vivid than anything I normally experience day to day. When I was a lot younger, I was convinced for a while that my dreams were what was real and what I lived as my everyday life, was when I was actually asleep. I enjoy dreaming. In dreams I am everything I want to be and more, I live a life of happiness and adventure on an epic scale.

Last nights involved a castle town with movable walls and long sliding tunnels that was under attack and from which I had to escape. I was part of the attacking army who’d been smuggled in and had to retrieve the plans for how to make the walls collapse. I’m also one of those rare people who can go back into a dream at the point it left off if I’m woken up, as long as I don’t wake too much. I can open my eyes, hold a slight conversation and then return to the fray. And that’s what happened today, I didn’t want to leave the world of makebelieve, to get up and face a day of pointless monotony. I wanted to scale the walls, swing from ropes, destroy the place from within but eventually it wasn’t to be. So I’ve done the next best thing and written about it.

Now I’ve started, I’ve forgotten what point I wanted to make with this. There was one, but I doubt it was that important. Draw your own conclusions.

Comments

I probably shouldn’t stoop to replying to this, to feel I have to justify what I write. My intention when I started a blog was that it would be the equivalent of the paper journals I’ve kept over the years. Somewhere to write down my thoughts and fears and talk about my life. I never stopped to consider that people would actually read it. I know I’m not a particualrly good writer, I know I don’t have an interesting life but for better or worse, it’s my life and it’s my right to describe it as I see fit. It was never meant to turn into an emo account of how much my life sucks, let me go cut my wrists, dress in black and write depressing poetry. For a start, I’m much more a pink person and secondly my poetry is even worse than my normal writing. Unfortunately, at this stage in my life, I am being ruled by being mentally ill and the problems that is throwing in my path. I don’t want that, I’d rather be able to describe how wondrous everything is, but I have to be honest. It helps me to write things down, I’ve had a lot of support and some very useful advice.