1. To ‘self-soothe’ more
Self-soothe is probably one of my favourite – and most used – Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skill. For so many years I was hard on myself and blamed myself for everything that went wrong in my life. Even the abuse. I thought that I was a bad person and had deserved all of these bad things in my life; the abuse, the bullying, the self-harm, the hallucinations… everything! For a while, I believed that I didn’t even deserve to be alive. So – perhaps – understandably, self-soothing was a particularly difficult skill for me to put into practice and even harder to eventually master. But being nice to myself felt so good that I fought the voices in my head that were trying to convince me that I should be hurting myself and not helping myself. I told them that I’d punished myself enough and that after all these years of self-harming and attempting suicide, I deserved to enjoy simple things. And that’s what my self-soothe techniques are; simple things. Like, lighting a candle, having a shower, doing my makeup or my hair, playing with my pets, spending time on The Sims, writing, reading, watching America’s Got Talent on Netflix… little things like that can sometimes make all the difference when I’m struggling with voices telling me that I’m useless and worthless and deserve to die.
2. The importance of medication
The catalyst for this relapse has been that I stopped taking the medication I’m on for my mental health (Mirtazapine, Lamotrigine,
3. To appreciate the people
around me more
I
began hearing a new voice. Sally. Sally tells me to hurt other people and my
pets. To give you an idea of just how over-powering voices are: my pets were
actually removed from the home to ensure their safety. The Vet who took them
was very understanding and told me that if anything, it just showed how much I
love them that I’m prepared to put myself through the heartache of losing them
if it means that they’re safe. I was also really grateful to one of my best
friend’s in this relapse as she visited me every day in the psychiatric
hospital. And then there’s my Mum. I don’t even know what to say! There will
never be enough words in the world to thank her for all that she has done for
me.
4. That there’s still
miscommunication in Services
I’m
not going to lie; this relapse has been a bit of a nightmare with
miscommunication between Services! I feel like me or my Mum have constantly
been on the phone being the go-between for everyone. There was an instance
where the Crisis Team had prescribed me some medication but when I was admitted
to the medical hospital their Psychiatric Liaison Team didn’t realize and
refused to give me it. I think it’s unfair to have put my Mum through all of
the fuss of ringing around repeating herself to everyone when they could have
just read it in my notes. In my work with Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS
Foundation Trust, I’ve stressed to staff the importance of communication
between different Services because often, when someone is in a mental health
crisis then a few different Teams need to be involved in their care and this
can’t be done efficiently when those Teams aren’t communicating with one
another.
5. That there’s still mental
health related errors in Northumbria Police
I
was unsure as to whether to write this one or not but as you know, I’m NOT
Disordered is all about transparency and honesty and the fact that I work with
Northumbria Police shouldn’t mean that I don’t talk about anything they do
wrong. So, the incident was that I’d collapsed after an overdose and was in the
Ambulance refusing to go to Hospital. I’d been reported as a missing person, so
the Police came along and I was told that if I were to get off the Ambulance I’d
be arrested for Breach of the Peace! I asked how me silently getting out of an
Ambulance would be Breach of the Peace and the Officer said, “because we’ll
restrain you and you’ll fight back.” I told him that I wouldn’t, and he said, “you
will because we’ve been in this position with you loads of times.” I asked when
we’d met, and he told me that the last time he’d seen me was about two years
ago when I facilitated the mental health training for the new Police recruits.
It was one of those situations where; if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. So, I
laughed. I told him that either I hadn’t done a good job, or he hadn’t paid
attention because I would never advise using Breach of the Peace when a Section
136 is clearly the most appropriate course of action in a mental health crisis.
And in all honesty, it made me wonder whether this is why our statistics are
improving – that the amount of 136’s is dropping because they’re arresting
people instead of sectioning them…? Just a thought.