HOW TO COPE WITH THE TRICKIEST MOMENTS FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH WHEN YOUR PET IS POORLY | IN PARTNERSHIP WITH GRACIE’S WAY

“The kindness one does for one animal may not change the world, but it will change the world of that one animal.”

Unknown

Wondering where the content has been for almost one month? My youngest bunny; Evie, who I literally just got in November 2025 after Gracie died on November 1^st (you can read my blog post about Gracie’s death here and the post about getting Evie, is here), was diagnosed with Gut Stasis (the disease that has taken both my first rabbit; Pixie – whose death you can read about here – and Gracie from me) at the beginning of the month. In a bid to raise awareness of Stasis, I published a piece of content over on the website for my pet bereavement project: Gracie’s Way (which you can read here) and on its Instagram (which you can view here). In creating that content, I started to think about myself and how my own mental health had been affected, and it is those thoughts that have inspired this post in which I’ll list the most difficult moments for your mental health when you have a poorly pet and I’ll obviously also add some advice and tips on ways to cope with those instances…

"I HAD BEEN HOSPITALIZED BY PEOPLE THAT WERE SUPPOSED TO LOVE ME" | A GUEST POST BY PETER MCDONNELL

I saw Aimee’s recent post about her experiences with suicide which I found insightful and I’m sure it will help lots of people. It got me thinking that if I could write a similar article about my own experiences then maybe it could help people too. 

It is not really a grey area for me at the moment. I drive my car underneath the bridge I chose to jump from in 2002 many times a week and it doesn’t affect my mood. If people around me are discussing suicide stuff I feel like I have something to add to the conversation but I’m lucky in that it doesn’t trigger anything negative, although driving underneath the bridge is a bit weird to think “Wow. I jumped off that once.” 

I jumped from a 25-foot-high road bridge in 2002 with the intention of killing myself. I broke my back – three lumbar vertebrae, and both wrists, and spent ten weeks in hospital. I had to lay still for eight weeks and after 12 weeks I was completely recovered, though I have an increased chance of arthritis in later life. One of my colleagues I worked with at a mental health training and consultancy company 2007 – 2011 did the same thing and has been unable to move from the neck down ever since. So, I do feel quite lucky. 

“MENTAL HEALTH COMES IN EPISODES” “MINE FEELS LONGER THAN A MOVIE!”

S

So, I’ve talked a few times now (here and here) about the news I got that the person who abused me now has a higher role in his job, but unlike most things I’ve blogged about, I still haven’t seemed to have worked through it. I’m having the same view on it as I did with the actual abuse; I could talk about it until I’m blue in the face, but it won’t make it go away. It won’t make it un-happen! So, I’m left with ‘well how do I cope with it?’

Through my mental health recovery, I’ve gotten used to moving through things by talking or writing about it and using my Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skills effortlessly. So effortless that I’ve not had to make a conscious decision to use them or a choice as to which I do use. They’re just there!

Understandably, this new thing has really thrown me off balance, because all of the healthy coping strategies are no longer so easy to come by. And I guess that’s why I sort of fell apart on Saturday (02.03.2019). I self-harmed and called the Crisis Team. They were brilliant, but then they said they’d have to send an ambulance I ran away, and they called the Police.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE SLIPPING THROUGH THE NET

“We are billions of beautiful hearts, and you sold us down the river too far, what about us? What about all the times you said you had the answers?”

-          P!NK – What About Us

Once upon a time, I was one of you…

I remember the very first time I overdosed and all of the professionals (Doctors, Nurses, Psychiatrists, Social Workers etc) were so concerned because from the outside, it came from nowhere. No one knew about the abuse. No one knew about the voices. No one knew why I would overdose. No one knew why I would want to be dead. So understandably, everyone panicked, and I was immediately sectioned before I’d even gone through the A&E process! The initial concern and panic lasted for about two more admissions/overdoses before they replaced it with the ‘she’s-such-a-time-waster-and-attention-seeker’ attitude!

“IF YOU CHOOSE TO KILL YOURSELF AFTER THE TREATMENT THAT’S UP TO YOU” | LEARNING FROM MY RECENT MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

TW: discussion of suicide

On Saturday I woke with a start. It was sudden. And just as suddenly, I knew something wasn’t quite right in my head. Ever since it came about, I’ve struggled to explain it to people… which is really challenging to me because – as some have said – I’m quite an articulate person so being at a loss for words is particularly difficult.

After taking an overdose I finally made an attempt to explain things to the Doctor in A&E the following day (Sunday) and completely botched it up! It felt like I was flailing around the dictionary and decided on the world ‘alien.’ I knew before I said it that it wasn’t the right word and I knew how it sounded… you know, I go on about mental health stigma and not being ashamed to talk about anything  but the first thing that came to mind when I heard myself use this word was that I sounded ‘crazy.’

MY CURRENT FEELINGS ON THE ABUSE

A little while ago a reader asked me how I’d come to terms with the abuse – how I’d come to accept it and it got me thinking…

Can you ever ‘accept’ abuse?

And what does it mean to have ‘accepted’ it? Does it make it ok?

I think that what the reader meant by ‘accept’ was how I’d moved on from it. How I’d come to be unstuck from the flashbacks and memories.

Being in ‘recovery’ is – I think – about being safe with your emotions. Having the power to resist any thoughts or urges to self-harm; because it’s not that you don’t have them anymore. It’s that they don’t control you. Your life. Your relationships with loved ones. Your hobbies and free-time. Your work. Your confidence. So, I think that becoming safe with my thoughts and feelings has had a huge impact on my ability to move on from the abuse because it’s allowed me the opportunity to feel all the emotions, I’d been either blocking out, or overwhelmed by, since it started in 2006. And over the years, I’ve learnt – with the help of professionals – that a lot of my hallucinations come from pent up thoughts and emotions. It’s almost as though my brain becomes so overwhelmed with all these secret feelings that it just breaks and that creates a hallucination! I think I’ve become safe with my emotions around the abuse because of two things; medication, and sheer hard work!

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.

ABUSE IN FIVE LOST QUOTES

I love writing posts like this! They’re so simple yet so enlightening. It’s comforting to have the ability to relate to someone or something. Even if it is a TV show and the quotes are scripted! And when they enable you to talk about thoughts and feelings in a way that is easier for others to understand. And that’s what this blog is all about; gaining a better understanding on all the different sides of abuse.

Quick thanks to Becky for lending me the DVDs!

Something I’d say to those who were in my life at the time:

1.     Hurley: “I thought it was kind of obvious. I mean, who couldn’t see that coming?”

MENTAL HEALTH IN 5 DISNEY QUOTES

1.     “Now we just have to survive this blizzard” – Frozen

Sadness and suicidal thoughts are cold. They make you cold towards others because your insides are so overwhelmingly freezing that you can’t help but let them spill over when you’re interacting with other people. It doesn’t matter who those people are. When your insides are so cold that you’re in an internal, permanent blizzard; you don’t care – no! It’s not that you don’t care… there’s no choice about whether to care or not. It’s not like you’ve decided not to! It’s more about it not being there at all. That warmth is gone and some days all you can do is breathe. Survive.

“SO THERE WAS THIS ONE DOCTOR...” | MENTAL HEALTH STIGMA IN A&E

This post may come as a shock to some of you because - for some reason - I decided against talking about my most recent overdose. I haven’t even wanted to talk about it with close friends, family or the Doctors and Nurses. I’m not fully sure why I made this decision but I think a big part of it came from me wanting to just block it out and, mostly, pretend it hadn’t happened.

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,

GUEST POST: AUTHOR, PETER McDONNELL | THE BENEFITS OF TALKING ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH

I am lucky – I have shown a very good recovery from my mental illnesses.  I was diagnosed in 2001 with “cannabis induced psychosis with delusions of a grandiose nature” and in 2004 I started having serious anxiety and panic attacks.  My psychosis made me think I was the messiah, the modern day Jesus Christ, but after many years struggling with it I began to recover.  Since 2005 it has been slow but steady progress towards wellness, healthier thinking and in present day I am pretty much over it.  Both the psychosis and the serious anxiety.  I still deal with the remnants and my problems are still with me at about 10% of the intensity that they were when I was seriously unwell.  So I am doing well and I have been left with a keen interest in all things mental health.  It’s my favourite conversation topic.  I talk about it all happily and at length when I get the chance.  Almost everybody else has something to say too, often the people I find myself chatting about mental health with have a friend or relative with mental health issues.   

TW: RAMBLINGS OF AN INPATIENT | AN UNFOCUSED POST

I’ve just gotten to the ward from A&E and separating myself from the voices is hard.

That’s probably an understatement – it is near impossible.

But I can do it. When they aren’t horrendously loud and I’m not massively tired; I can do it.

Being in Cygnet Hospital (Bierley) for two and a half years taught me a lot; and one lesson I did learn was to always try my hardest to fight these auditory hallucinations. Cygnet gave me new, safe, and healthy coping skills and I use all of them. Sometimes they’re enough. Sometimes they are not. But I try. The point is, I try. I don’t – though it might seem this way – go straight to the paracetamol and self-harm.

In a – perhaps twisted – way, this is a bad thing because it makes me feel enormously hopeless when all my new coping skills don’t work. And I feel like maybe it’s time to rely on other people to keep me safe and to help me to quieten the voices. I can only do so much myself and if others can’t give me that support, then I worry – and genuinely believe – I will die.

HOW TO SURVIVE HOSPITAL | FIVE TIPS TO MAKE IT THROUGH ANY HOSPITAL STAY

A little while ago one of my medications was increased and with the increase, came a change in the tablet’s appearance. Of course the dormant voices jumped on this and convinced me that it was poison and they reasoned that Doctors were trying to make me more poorly so that I would need them more. Naturally, their thunderous voices were no match for my own and so I stopped taking my medication (which included two anti-depressants, one mood stabiliser, and an antipsychotic).

THE 'US' VERSUS 'THEM' DISCUSSION

Cat and Mouse Games

I remember after my very first overdose when the Nurse in Accident and Emergency (A&E) told me that if I were to run away then they’d be calling the Police and immediately I was struck with the sense that I was now in a battle and it was me against them. I think it had to do with the feeling of now being in a game of cat and mouse; they were chasing me. They were trying to find me. Now there was a game to win and perhaps it’s natural, especially for someone who’s normally competitive, to be desperate to win any kind of ‘game.’

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.”

MY RECENT MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS, RESPONSIBILITY & FEELING HOPELESS

I haven’t spoken publicly about this yet, but on Monday I went into a mental health crisis.

It started, believe it or not, with a tummy pain!

I was in my sitting room when the pain came about, and, in agony, I collapsed. Onto the coffee table. My shoulder and arm instantly hurt and with the beginning of the bruising, I made my way to the local Urgent Care Center. I could feel my head getting fuller and fuller… it wasn’t so much the voices at first. It was more thoughts and feelings. As though my thoughts were too long and too detailed to fit inside my little head, and my feelings were too intense and too huge to fit into my little body. And I think that all of this just crowded me and the, all to familiar, feelings of being over-powered and completely overwhelmed led to the voices.

FROM CUTS TO CARLISLE | HOW I CHANGED MY MENTAL HEALTH AROUND IN A WEEK

*Note: This post contains talk of self-harm*

Last Friday (15^th June) I had a complete mental health crisis in the form of two dissociative episodes within hours of one another.

One minute I was at home watching Netflix and the next thing I knew I was staring at a huge cut in the palm of my hand, blood dripping from it and covering the floor; which was littered in pieces of a broken cup. I still can’t for certain that I smashed the cup on purpose and cut myself but since I’ve done that in the past it seems like the logical explanation(!) I think that the only thing stopping me from accepting that as the case is the fear that comes with it. If I’m capable of completely switching off from the world and self-harming without knowing it, then what the hell else am I capable of doing?!

THREE WAYS TO RESIST SELF-HARM | ENGLISH HERITAGE AD

*This post is part of a partnership with English Heritage

You can buy a membership pass for free admission to all English Heritage sites across the country here: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/join/

I wasn’t sure on the title for this post… I didn’t know whether to call it ‘commands’ or ‘urges’ but then I had a conversation with my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) about how the night times are getting tough again. Unbelievably, it seems, that I’m still surprised to hear that not everyone can hear the voices that I do. When I talked to my CPN about the feelings of self-harming or overdosing I kind of assumed that she knew those feelings were because of the hallucinations. And it wasn’t about the fact that before two weeks ago I hadn’t seen her for over a year.

MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK 2018 WITH I'M NOT DISORDERED | POST FOUR | HOW DO YOU COPE WITH STRESS?

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/mental-health-awareness-week

How do you cope with stress?

@loydall_stefan

I manage stress by going for walks around places I have never been so it occupies my mind when I get a little lost

@RichSpecials

I manage stress by talking to my family who are able to give me advice & a different view on things








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I confide in friends