So, today I feel like I've made some progress and I just thought I'd share it with you all...
Firstly, I was in the shower when I had a tactile and visual hallucination. I felt a rabbit run past my leg and I got such a shock I fell and my body scrub went everywhere! But, rather than panicking and pressing my patient call as I would have done not so long ago, I looked at the rabbit. Really looked at it and realised two things: 1. it wasn't scary and 2. it wasn't wet from the shower. So, I finished up and went for some paracetamol for the hurt I'd gotten from falling and I asked the Nurse if I should take my PRN anti-psychotic when I was seeing things but they weren't upsetting me. She said to still take it so I did.
The second thing was that I was getting stressed out over this interview for a job I applied for (long story) and then my Mum rang and was telling me what was going on back home with the family and I could feel myself getting anxious and stressed. Now, the thing with BPD is that the symptoms that would usually be deemed 'psychotic' e.g. hearing voices, seeing things etc, are stress-related and so they will happen or worsen when you're stressed. This, was the first time I was aware of it though. I can usually never realise when I'm stressed but I was a lot more aware of it this time. As I was listening to my Mum, one of the voices I hear; Henry, started speaking up. He was telling me that people were listening in to my phone call (Henry's main feature is that he's paranoid) and then he was saying that this e'mail I got to do with the interview was a secret message... It felt like it was spiralling out of control really quickly and I soon realised I wouldn't be able to stick out the full phone-call so I made my excuses and went for PRN. Once I'd took it I went and sat in my best-friend's doorway and we chatted until I was certain that I was safe and then I explained everything to my Mum.
I remember, at the beginning of all this (not the admission, but the hallucinations) I had no idea what was going on and I was dumbstruck and unable to try and explain things to professionals. As time went by, I started to get a better understanding of things and even when I thought I could easily help people to appreciate what was going on in my head, I'm still learning. Just to help readers who don't have these experiences (hallucinations) grasp how difficult it is I'll say this: Imagine being told since you were born that your Birthday is 17th March and then when you're 25 your parents tell you that isn't your birthday at all and it's actually a month later. I'm trying to make this similar to get across the point that your whole life you believe something and then you find out it isn't true... For eighteen years, everything I've seen, heard and felt has been real. And now, I'm seeing, hearing and feelings things that aren't. Since this begun, I question things.
