HOW I’VE MADE IT THIS FAR | MY NEW BOOK IS AVAILABLE TO BUY NOW!!! | PART 2 OF 4

*This post is the second of 4 which will be posted every day for the following two days!*

Buy You’re NOT Disordered NOW!!

The three most obvious, go-to answers that you seriously just expect to hear when you ask someone how they have recovered from their mental illness: hospital, medication, and therapy. Fortunately – or unfortunately, I guess, depending upon how you look at it – for me, all three are true…

When my mental health deteriorated it did so in the form of auditory hallucinations, which I somehow ‘tolerated’ for around ten days before finally making my first suicide attempt. After passing out at school I was taken to hospital in an ambulance and then I ran away. The Police were called and when they found me when I had almost reached the nearby bus station, they detained me under section 136 of the 1983 Mental Health Act and I was pretty much thrown into their car and driven back to hospital where a Mental Health Act assessment promptly took place in a little room I’d never been in before in A&E. I honestly don’t’ remember much about it, just that I was told the Police could finally go and if I continued to try and leave the hospital then the staff were now allowed to restrain me, sedate me, and force me to finish the necessary, potentially life-saving medical treatment to counteract my suicide attempt.

DISCHARGE AFTER 35 DAYS ON THE CRISIS TEAM’S CASELOAD

“The power we discover inside ourselves as we survive a life-threatening experience can be utilised equally well outside of crisis too. I am, in every moment, capable of mustering the strength to survive again – or of tapping that strength in other good, productive, healthy ways.”

Michele Mosenthal

Having had a horrific psychiatric hospital admission in February this year (which resulted in filing a complaint to CQC and discovering the ward I was on ended up on the news because they had actually been put under ‘Special Measures’ in their most recent inspection) I found myself briefly under the care of the Crisis Team before being transferred to the Step-Up Team. However, I quickly established the realisation that they were actually making things worse – I felt that I was almost feeling pressured to be poorly so as to not waste their time and to feel deserving of their efforts! Apparently upon discharging me, the Step Up Team told my Mum that I self-refer back to them so when – a few months later – I found myself struggling again, I gave them a call, and on August 23^rd I had an assessment with someone from the Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). She validated that my current symptoms and the reasons for my lack of safety are completely different to those when I struggled with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and said she would be recommending I go under the care of the Crisis Team. Two days later – August 25^th – I was put on their caseload…

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

A while ago I joined the North Service User and Carer Forum (NSUCF) which is part of my local NHS Trust who provide mental health services in my locality: Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). At our most recent meeting, we had a Psychiatrist from CNTW’s Crisis Team join us and each Forum member asked questions and put forward ideas. In part of the discussion, myself and one of the Service Users came to the realisation that we really had different definitions of a mental health ‘crisis’ and it inspired me to write this blog post…

DEFINING IT

For me, I deem myself to be in a mental health crisis when I can no longer keep myself safe. Like, if I struggle and feel unsafe, but I can manage it myself and use the healthy coping skills I’ve been taught in therapy, then I wouldn’t label it a crisis or call anyone for help or support. Me calling the Crisis Team or a professional, usually means I’m unsafe and that I feel as though the hallucinations are in control. As though I have no say in whether I self-harm or attempt suicide because if I did, I wouldn’t do those things. When I’m me, and when it is my thoughts that take up the majority of my mind, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to hurt.

One difficulty in having different definitions is the worry as to whether you’re really ‘entitled’ to speak up or ask for help because there’s the concern that there’ll be people who might judge your crisis in comparison with others. And that they might come to the conclusion that it is completely minor and unworthy of any help or support. That in looking at it alongside another person’s crisis, it really shouldn’t be a big deal and it wasn’t deserving of help and support from others, particularly where this meant the use of NHS resources.

FIVE THOUGHTS INSPIRED BY THE THEME OF ‘MENTAL HEALTH FOR ALL’ | WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY 2020 | #WMHD2020

As if it’s October already! For a lot of people, October means Halloween, but for those of us in the mental health industry – particularly mental health Bloggers, October means; World Mental Health Day (WMHD) – probably one of the most important dates in the calendar for me.

This year, the World Federation for Mental Health has announced the theme to be ‘Mental Health for All.’ Inevitably and understandably, a huge inspiration for the theme has been the Coronavirus and subsequent ‘lockdowns.’ I think that one aspect of the inspiration comes from the fact that there’s been an increase in the prescription of anti-depressant medication during this difficult time. That, and the increase on referrals to mental health crisis services, really pressure the already underfunded area.

It took me quite a while (so long that I desperately asked Martin from www.gumonmyshoe.com for his ideas!) to think of what I wanted to say today on this theme around improving access to mental health services for everyone. In the end, I realised that I have a lot of thoughts around various aspects of the theme and that maybe I can’t give them one set category… So, here’s some thoughts that’ve been inspired by the Federation’s theme:

 

“YOU SHOULDN’T BECOME COMPLACENT WITH YOUR MEDICATION” | WHEN THE PHARMACY MAKE A MISTAKE

“When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.”

Paul Bear Bryant

I’ve had a rough few days and unfortunately, to explain why, I need to tell you a bit of a long-winded story…


So, last weekend, I began feeling physically poorly and called 111 (the NHS non-emergency helpline in the UK) to then be asked by a Doctor what medication I take. I went to my dosette box and realized that my Aripiprazole (an antipsychotic medication) was missing and it was really frustrating to find out on a Saturday night because obviously my GP and Pharmacy were both closed so I had to wait until Sunday morning to ring the Pharmacy. When I spoke to the Pharmacist, I really wasn’t expecting for him to say, ‘we haven’t given you it since May!’ Whilst I wasn’t expecting it as a response, it did make sense because I’d been planning to request a medication increase as I’d started struggling again. So, on the one hand, I was reassured that we were able to pinpoint a cause for my deterioration, but it was also frustrating because it was out of my control.

TIME TO CHANGE STORYCAMP 2020 THEME TWO: THREE THINGS

Every two weeks from June 1^st until August 24^th 2020, Time To Change will be giving those who have signed up to StoryCamp, a theme to use as inspiration to create content on. This fortnight, the theme is ‘three things…’ and I couldn’t decide on one topic I’d like you to know three things about so here are thirteen…!!

Three Things You Should Know About Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD)

1.       Having the same diagnosis does not mean everyone with BPD has the same symptoms.

2.       Those diagnosed with BPD are not attention seekers

3.       Even mental health staff have a stigma against those with BPD

Three Things You Should Know About Being Sectioned

1.       It feels like you have a sign on your head telling everyone you’re detained under the Mental Health Act

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2020 POST FIVE | ACTS OF SELF-CARE AS KINDNESS

self-care

[sɛlfˈkɛː]

NOUN

1.       the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one's own health

 "autonomy in self-care and insulin administration"

2.       the practice of taking an active role in protecting one's own well-being and happiness, in particular during periods of stress

"expressing oneself is an essential form of self-care"

There are so many forms of self-care that I had considered separating them onto each day of Mental Health Awareness Week (MHAW) but then I had my other ideas so here they all are in one post. One post about how important each act of self-care is, how I practice and benefit from them, and tips for you to utilize them too!

Sleep

I don’t know about anyone else, but my sleep pattern has gone to complete… poo since lockdown began! I guess because I’ve felt as though I’ve not had any real need to be up and to go to bed and a specific time. Before lockdown, my sleep wasn’t the greatest, but at least I had commitments to motivate me to wake up and go to bed at an acceptable hour! Reasons to set my alarm. Now though, it really doesn’t matter if I sleep through the daytime and have all my energy at night. I think that as long as I can be awake when I need to – like for my phone call appointments with my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) and Support Worker, then that’s all that really matters.

BLOGMAS 2019 – POST TWENTY : BRINGING LIGHT TO MY LIFE | CHRISTMAS AT CRAGSIDE | NATIONAL TRUST | AD

Thanks to a poll on my Twitter back in November, my wonderful followers decided that I should publish a blog post and film a vlog every day for the entirety of December! 

So welcome to December 20th…

I really struggled to come up with content for this post with me never doing the basic ‘today we went here, and we did that’ kind of posts so I enlisted the help of fellow Blogger; Martin Baker!

Cragside, a National Trust site in Northumberland, was the first home to be lit by hydroelectricity which made the Victorian House years ahead of its time with its ingenious gadgets and modern conveniences. This has inspired my post – featuring photos from my visit there – to be about what brings light to my life when things get dark! I won’t lie, I struggled to avoid saying the same things as in post nineteen about what makes me happy, so I’ve been a bit more general…



Love

When my mental health was poorly, I didn’t - for one minute - think that I had the capability to love someone the way I knew that my Mum loved me; I’ve always been very lucky in that way - that I’ve always felt loved by someone special. My Mum has always said that she’d walk over hot coals for me, and I’d always nodded and smiled and felt all warm inside, but I’d never really understood that feeling or felt it towards another person. Of course, I love my Mum and my family but when I was poorly it felt as though I couldn’t love them properly. It was as if there was a range of 0 to 10 but my love could only reach 7 and not because I chose to, but because that’s the most I was capable of. And it wasn’t just love, it was happiness, excitement… all of the positive emotions; as though my mental health had deteriorated so much that I could only experience negative feelings to such an overwhelming degree as a ‘10’.

“I DON’T KNOW IF ‘PROUD’ IS THE RIGHT WORD” | FOUR WAYS TO COPE WITH A HOSPITAL ADMISSION

Last weekend I began hallucinating again and – at their command – I took an overdose. I was in Hospital for over twenty-four hours and the only drama was caused by my veins; and a conversation with the Psychiatric Liaison Team about it, left me inspired to write this post!


As the overdose had been in response to the voices and not a suicide attempt, I took myself to A&E and agreed to have the lengthy antidote treatment known as Parvolex. Ironically, when I actually want the treatment and co-operate, my veins collapse and become generally useless so that it can’t be administered! The Doctors had many attempts and even called an Anesthetist with the ultrasound machine to try to insert the cannula, but they had no success, so my blood test was repeated. It was at this point that my co-operation was tested, and the Doctor made a comment “the tests will be ok unless you’ve actually taken as many as you say you have.” In the past, I’d have taken great offence by interpreting this as him basically calling me a liar! I’d have refused blood tests and treatment and left the Hospital – probably against medical advice and possible chased by security! Instead, I took the attitude that I’d let them do the blood tests and once he saw the results, they would prove I wasn’t lying. And that, would be much more gratifying!


After proving I hadn’t lied, I had to see the Psychiatric Liaison Team before I could go home and I told them that I wasn’t sure if ‘pride’ was the right word for it but that I was glad there hadn’t been any of the usual drama of me running away or refusing treatment. They told me that I could say I was proud of myself for it and that it shows that even though I was there for overdosing, I had come a long way over the years and could still be counted as being in recovery. But I don’t think the peaceful admission was due to my mental state; I think some of it came because of the things I’ve learnt that help me during a hospital admission.

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE BEGINNING OF POOR MENTAL HEALTH? (AND TIPS ON COPING WITH IT)

Earlier this week I met with my Psychiatrist for a review and to make plans on my medication reductions. She told me she was proud of how I’d come and that I’d managed my safety even though my anti-psychotic and mood stabilizer medications have been decreasing over the past month or two. It got me thinking just how much things have changed since the early days of my mental health deteriorating in 2009 and I thought that it’s worth recognizing that my readers with their own poorly mental health will be at different stages in their mental health journey. Not everyone is going to be in the same place as me and I think it’s important to produce content that can be helpful for everyone. So, here’s a little post about all of the initial aspects in the beginning of a person’s mental health deteriorating:

The initial panic & other emotions:

I guess that my mental health started to deteriorate before I started hallucinating in 2009 because when the abuse began in 2006, I had suicidal thoughts and began self-harming. I would imagine jumping out of a window in the building I was abused in or swallowing tablets, because I thought that was the only way to stop what was happening to me. I had no hope that it would ever end. I started self-harming when I developed the anger. The anger at the fact that he thought he had the right to hurt my body and I believed that I should be the only person who had the right to do that. So, I harnessed that anger and used it as energy to self-harm.

“I DIDN’T PRESCRIBE THEM; YOU DID!” | A DISCUSSION ABOUT PSYCHIATRIC MEDICATION

I remember being discharged from the Psychiatric Hospital after my first admission in 2009 and it felt like everyone thought I was better now, and I would never try to kill myself again. Of course, I knew that wasn’t the case; because I could feel that darkness inside of me and I knew it wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. So, when I attempted suicide again and refused the medical treatment for it, I wasn’t really surprised. What did surprise me, though, was when the entire Mental Health Act assessment team came to my Mum’s house to section me!

My Mum had tried to convince me to go to A&E for the antidote to the paracetamol overdose, but I’d refused, and she’d called the Crisis Team. I just remember professionals sat around the living room asking me questions and then I went to my bedroom and the next thing I knew the Psychiatrist from my first admission was there and telling me that he was going to sign the section papers. I remember him sitting in my very pink bedroom and saying; “I think it’s time we start some medication for you at my Hospital.” I joked that it wasn’t ‘his’ Hospital and he led the way downstairs for me to watch the papers be signed and eight Police officers filed in to take me to their van to go to A&E for the medical treatment first. When we got there, there were four support workers from the local Psychiatric Hospital ready to make sure I had the treatment (a drip that takes over twenty hours to administer) and right from the offset I was medicated! I tried to run from A&E and was given a sedative injection and as soon as I’d woken up after it, I was trying to tear the drip out and was given another. I think it took about five injections for me to complete the treatment and be transferred to the Psychiatric Hospital to begin an anti-psychotic medication.

MY ASTHMA | IN COLLABORATION WITH ASTHMA UK | WHAT IT IS, ATTACKS, & ADVICE | AD

*Some of this information has been taken from www.asthma.org.uk (with their permission!)*

With it being pollen season, I thought it important to chat about something that affects 5.4 million people in the UK!

Asthma is a long-term condition that means you have ‘sensitive’ airways which are inflamed and react to particular ‘triggers.’ One in every twelve adults and one in every eleven children are currently receiving treatment for Asthma – that’s around 5.4 million people in the UK. Asthma in children affects more boys than girls but in adults it affects more females than males. It can run in the family but being diagnosed with mild Asthma as a child will often mean that it will improve as you get older.

Because everyone’s Asthma is different, diagnosis can often take time and involves tests (such as blood tests, a chest X-ray, an ECG etc.) that your GP can both do and refer you for. Here’s some symptoms to look out for:H
·         Coughing that won’t go away or keeps coming back and is especially there after being active
·         Wheezing which can sound like a whistling when you breathe
·         Chest tightness
·         Shortness of breath

 


I was a child when I was diagnosed so I can’t remember the entire process, but my Mum said that from a young age I would wake up coughing during the night but it was intermittent so Doctors didn’t think I had Asthma initially. My Mum had to try everything to get me diagnosed and eventually I had a Bronchoscopy and allergy tests to be told I sounded like a ‘creaky gate.’ After being diagnosed, I was put on inhalers though I initially struggled to use them at such a young age, I’ve now mastered (I think!) the technique. My Mum attended talks on Asthma to do everything to understand the intrinsic and extrinsic triggers (which ranged from pollen to excitement!) that led to my worst asthma attack when I was rushed to Hospital and put on a nebulizer. 

FIVE PIECES OF ADVICE I’M GLAD I DIDN’T TAKE

(You can find a similar post here)

So, I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy (I’m onto Season 10) and there’s a point where these Surgeons who were once best-friends are now going into two completely different lives. In this one episode, one of them said that the other has turned into the type of person they used to admire and the other said that the other had turned into the type of person they used to laugh at. And it made me think about how much can change – how much a person can change – from the different things that happen in life. What these things can do to you. And I began to wonder about all of the things people have said to me to try and change my life – all of the things that I’m so glad I didn’t listen to!

Also, to avoid bitching, I’m not going to be disclosing who said what!

1.      “YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY STAY BLONDE”

I’m naturally, like, white blonde! I always get told this story by my family about when we first went to see my Auntie living in Dubai and everyone would crowd around me because they thought blonde hair was incredible! Then, when the abuse ended, I wanted to change as many aspects as possible about me. I changed the spelling of my first name, I took my Mum’s maiden name, and I decided to dye my hair. I wanted to distance myself – as far as possible – from the abuse and the person I had been during it. And it was much easier to do this physically than it was psychologically. I think that, inevitably, others struggled to understand my motivation for change because at that point; no one knew what I’d been through. There came a point in my admission at Cygnet where I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and I wondered whether I was now well enough to go blonde. Turns out, red had become my ‘signature’ colour – especially in terms of being a blogger and for social media.

HOW I MADE IT TO 28 | THE FIVE THINGS THAT HELPED SEE ME THROUGH

I’ve been thinking a lot about how grateful I am to still be alive and able to celebrate my 28^th Birthday (yesterday).

The sad thing is that I’m not being dramatic when I say that a lot of people thought I’d be dead by now. From when my mental health really deteriorated in 2009 to my long hospitalization in 2012, my records showed that I’d taken over 60 paracetamol overdoses. And even though not all of those overdoses were suicide attempts – sometimes they were just a desperate bid to silence the voices that commanded me to take it – they all could have ended in death. At the age of 21, I could have died more than 60 times. So maybe it’s understandable that I’m a little bit emotional about making it this far!

Now I know that I have a lot of readers who can identify with those very dark days and I’d like to think that in doing so, they might find some hope in the fact that I’ve managed to recover from that time. So, I thought I’d put together a little post with the top five things that I think have gotten me to 28!

HOW IT FEELS WHEN THE VOICES HAVE GONE

re·lief

[rəˈlēf]

NOUN

1.       a feeling of reassurance and relaxation following release from anxiety or distress.

2.       assistance, especially in the form of food, clothing, or money, given to those in special need or difficulty.

3.       a person or group of people replacing others who have been on duty.

4.       the state of being clearly visible or obvious due to being accentuated in some way

I don’t know if anyone can remember but I once wrote a post when I’d been struggling with auditory hallucinations and I talked about how it feels after I’ve taken Lorazepam and it kicks in and the voices go. I explained that before the medication it was as though there’d been stormy seas in my head and when the sedative had kicked in, the waves were calm and quiet, and everything was peaceful.

FIVE LESSONS MY MENTAL HEALTH RELAPSE HAS TAUGHT ME

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,

A LENGTHY MEDICATION CHAT

I remember in 2009 lying on my bed in my Mum’s home and listening to the whispered conversations downstairs between my Mum and – what felt like – every member of NHS staff! (Realistically, it was a few people from the Crisis Team, two Social Workers, and two Psychiatrists!) When there was a knock on the bedroom door I didn’t expect to see the six foot something Psychiatrist wearing running trainers with his suit! I sat up on the bed and he came into my abnormally, barbie-pink bedroom and sat on the futon in front of me. And then he said one of the sentences that has remained a pivotal moment in my mental health journey and you know, actually… my life! He said: “maybe it’s time we start you on some medication.”