Back Again

Sometimes, you just do what you can to keep yourself ticking along. For me, it’s writing…or cheese.

We are currently amidst a time of big change in many ways (don’t mention Brexit…don’t mention Brexit…) but notably a time of change surrounding mental health. I’ve dabbled with (well, many things) but blogging being one of them. I’ve shared then retracted posts about my own mental health (stay tuned) and then I often experience a pang of panic and worry that I’m sharing too much, or portraying myself in a certain way. Each time I feel a sense of doubt about writing, I think of a few people, and one in particular, who contacted me following a particularly personal blog post and had said that they could really identify with it and that reading it had made them feel less alone.     So fuck it.

A whole new community of people is emerging, more willing to openly talk about the realities and challenges in life, helped along by high profile people such as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their ‘heads together’ campaign, which aims to work toward eliminating the stigma surrounding mental health.

We’ve come a long way from beliefs that mental illnesses were the work of evil spirits and hiding people suffering with mental illness away from society in ‘bins’.

I’ll happily say I’m no expert in any one particular area, other than my own experience in dealing with some, at times, pretty poor mental health. I like to try to find humour in most things, something that my psychiatrist would probably call a ‘coping mechanism’, which I’m quite happy with as, yes it is just that. It isn’t laughing at or belittling/making light of a serious issue, it’s just that, it’s finding a way to deal with it and looking at it from another angle.

I would be as bold as to say that every single one of us has suffered in some way with poor mental health. Navigating life can be tough. It’s bloody brilliant, but let’s be honest, sometimes, it can feel a bit shit and kick the stuffing out of us. Not all of us, thankfully, will experience severe mental illness or be diagnosed with a mental health problem but I think that any of the ways I have learned (and continue to learn) to help myself could be used by anyone to make life just that little bit more pleasant.

Social media can be damaging, agreed, yet it also opens us up to an absolute wealth of resources from expert professionals to ‘mere mortals’ doing the same as me and sharing their own personal experiences and therefore doing a teeny-tiny bit to add to the airing of some previously taboo topics.

Even since last blogging the ways in which I’ve changed and the things I’ve learned are monumental, which gives me even more gusto to keep blogging.

I’m quite visual, so I love Instagram. Some absolute nuggets of joy can be found on there talking about similar issues. My absolute fav (and current girl crush) being Laura Belbin @knee_deep_in_life who never fails to have me snort laughing watching her escapades following a pretty serious bout of post-natal depression.

Poorna Bell @poornabell is excellent, and talks about her navigation through life following her husband’s suicide. Richie Norton @thestrengthtemple for some delicious stretching and breathing exercises (yoga/pilates and generally stretching about has become something that I love to do) More hilarity can be found with the Scummy Mummies @scummymummies and Fearne Cotton, whose books ‘calm’ ‘happy’ and ‘quiet’ are well worth a read.

I myself have always struggled with fairly ‘low level’ anxiety and (lack of) ability to handle stress. As an adult, adulting and all that entails meant that my fairly low level mental health issues evolved into full blown mental illness. Mine was triggered after having children and the phenomenal physical and emotional shit storm this entails. I don’t for one minute regret having my children they are absolutely everything to me, but pregnancy, birth and all that jazz definitely detonated a mental health ‘bomb’ that I suspect had been ticking away for some time.

In 2014 I had severe post-natal anxiety and OCD after having my first baby (who is now 5) which I never really got over, nor dealt with before having my second (now 3)

I experienced full blown post-partum psychosis including hallucinations (both visual and auditory) delusions and paranoid delusions (which to me at the time were absolutely, unmovably true) swings from mania to severely low mood (often in quite a short time span) Extreme paranoia, erratic behaviour that was completely out of character and impulsive, such as bursts of extreme rage. In efforts to gain some control I often pushed myself to absolute physical limits, on one occasion being visited by a paramedic at home after collapsing following an episode of particularly physical mania coupled with not eating, drinking or sleeping for days.

The paranoid delusions and erratic, impulsive behaviour meant that I would frequently hurt myself, both intentionally and unintentionally. One particular paranoid delusion being that I had something ‘bad’ or ‘evil’, like some kind of chemical in my blood, that I had to ‘let out’. Yeah…You can imagine.

I was taken to the mental health crisis team in A and E where I sat and unknowingly scratched the skin off the back of my hand whilst talking to one of the mental health assessment team. Surprisingly (jokes…not jokes) it was decided that the safest course of action was for me to spend some time as an inpatient at a psychiatric hospital.

This time was not pleasant, but I can appreciate it now for what it was, a means of keeping me safe at a time when I wasn’t able to do that for myself.

Once released back into the wild I suffered a series of seizures over a period of a couple of weeks, which landed me in more physical harm through hitting my head/injuries during seizures, a trip to rhesus and a stay in a general hospital where they diagnosed me with epilepsy. I was given epilepsy medication alongside the spicy cocktail of anti-depressants, anti-psychotic and mood stabilising drugs prescribed by the psychiatric doctors. As you can imagine, I was off my tits.

My driving licence (and to me, a lot of my freedom and independence) was taken away, at a very inconvenient time (I say in jest) when I already felt that I had very little independence or control.

I smelled a rat over this and started to look into the link between these seizures and the bout of mental illness I had been (and was still) experiencing. After months of hospital appointments, neurologists and investigations, I went to see a private neurologist. This doctor actually listened to me. The seizures were looked into further and re-diagnosed as non-epileptic.

The neurologist described these seizures as being ‘after shocks’ and can be described as dissociative seizures, whereby the body just holds its hands up and goes ‘nope…had enough now’.

Since 2014, I’ve had lots of helpful, lots of unhelpful, interactions with various mental health services. My psychiatrist, whom I have been seeing for a few years now and is fantastic, has helped me a lot. I was ‘officially’ diagnosed with bipolar affective disorder only a few months ago. This is obviously something that takes a long time to diagnose through observing patterns of behaviour, responses to medications etc.

Writing primarily is a selfishly cathartic thing for me. Putting it ‘out there’ and thinking that someone might take even a little something from it, is good.

A few weeks ago I deleted my old blog posts. I worried that people would think of me in a certain way, or that my kids wouldn’t thank me when they’re older, or that it would come across as negative, but there is a small anecdote that I wrote about previously which always reminds me that sharing is caring. I’m going to add it in (as if this post isn’t already long enough) it seems to fit.

We’re all human, we all go through some shit in one way or another, and we’re stronger together. Being able to share these experiences does enable me to reflect on them, realise how much I learned from them, and even though I’m not going through the worst of it right now, there will be other people out there who are. It isn’t permanent. Nothing is guaranteed except change.

Here is said anecdote…

It gets me right in the feels man.

On my last day in hospital, after I’d gathered my things and been told I could go home, back to the ‘real’ world. Feeling both elated and scared shitless. I walked down the corridor to a flurry of excitement. Some of the younger patients were excitedly gathering other patients together and telling them to go out into the garden.

Let’s call her Hope.

“Come on everyone! Hope wants us in the garden! She’s got something she wants to say!”

Confusion.

Hope was one of the hardest patients to live with. She had suffered unimaginable abuse as a young child, which haunted her. She would, what I can only describe as, wail, each night. Work herself up into an absolute state each evening, crying out in her first language. Her brain re-running those horrendous experiences. Every single night. It must feel like absolute hell. To be tormented like that.

She never said anything. She would never speak during the day, except sometimes quietly to herself. She never wanted to join in with any of the group activities, she would only emerge from her room for meal times, yet she had a kindly, calm and child-like vibe about her.

As more and more of the female patients gathered in the garden, an organic ring of people had emerged. Everyone interlocking arms and standing in a large circle. That feeling of ‘we’re all in this together’ had never felt more powerful. The sheer breadth of experiences of the patients, the vast array of mental health problems that these women were experiencing. Yet there they were, stood with arms interlocked in a circle. I know, you couldn’t write it.

I remember being desperate to get out of those doors, but being so drawn to what was happening in the garden. I put my bags down and joined in. A few patients were scanning round and sussing out who was there and who was missing. When everyone was there, a link in this large circular chain, eagerly awaiting what Hope had to say, we all looked at her.

Her eyes were full of sadness, and I could see her face was a mixture of the tears that were welling up, and the courage she was building up to speak in front of everyone.

“I just have something that I want to say everyone” She said in her fantastically thick accent (she wasn’t British)

We waited. And she smiled.

“I wanted to say…”

She changed her tone of voice and half sung, half spoke, her next sentence.

Brilliantly, and surprisingly, in the words of Bob Marley (one of my favourites) she said/sang…

“Let’s. Get. Together. And. Feel. Alright”

A round of applause & giggles from everyone.

A-bloody-men sister.

God bless her tormented soul. And I love her for that memory.

I leave you with that.