FIVE SONGS HELPING ME THROUGH MY MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

I won't live inside your world

'Cause your punches and your names
All your jokes and stupid games
They don't work
No, they don't hurt
Watch them just go right through me
Because they mean nothing to me

-          Grace Vanderwaal – Clay

The huge catalyst for this recent ‘blip’ in my mental health was the news about my abuser’s new job role. It brought back all the old feelings about him – the anger, frustration, sadness… it all came flooding back, overwhelming me and taking over all of the positive thoughts and feelings. To come through the blip, I’m trying to regain some control over all those negative feelings and bring them in check so that they’re manageable and aren’t influencing my thoughts to self-harm or cause me to feel suicidal. Instead, I’m trying to adopt the attitude that no matter what he says or does, I’ll just get on with my life. I have to.

And if I'm flying solo
At least I'm flying free
To those who'd ground me
Take a message back from me
Tell them how I’m
Defying gravity

-          Wicked – Defying Gravity

There’s a lot of people who have said – since I first got poorly in 2009 – that I wouldn’t make it through. Every year at least one person (usually a professional) would say that they didn’t think I’d see my next Birthday if I continued to self-harm or attempt suicide at the rate that I was. During this blip, I’ve believed that they were all right. I was destined to kill myself. Now, I’m trying to turn it all around and find some sort of determination to prove those people wrong and show them that I can do this – I can overcome these obstacles.

This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm alright song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care if nobody else believes
'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me

-          Rachel Platten – Fight Song

A professional recently said to me that it ‘must be so easy’ to give up on my Dialectical Behaviour Therapy skills and revert back to old, unsafe, coping strategies. I told them that nothing about mental health is ‘easy.’ Human instinct tells us to do whatever it takes to survive so to go against that natural intuition takes a whole lot of strength and power. ‘Giving in’ to urges to self-harm or the commands of the hallucinations, doesn’t make you weak.

I don't live the way I want to
That whole picture never came into view
And I'm tired of getting used to
The day

So, I will try

-          Mandy Harvey – Try

A friend was talking to me the other day about how someone they knew had made a comment that a drug user chooses to be addicted. We talked about how no one wakes up one day and decides ‘I know what a good idea will be! Let’s get addicted to heroin.’ And I think it’s the same for mental health disorders. No one chooses to start self-harming – it seems like it’s the only way to cope at the time. Or at least, that’s one reason; everyone has a different rationale. But after three hospitalizations for overdoses and three bouts of self-harm in just over a week; I’ve – inevitably – grown tired of all the needles, beeping machines, dripping bags of fluid, judgmental Doctors, patronizing nurses, mental health assessments, rude Police… and basically just all of the consequences that come with an overdose or self-harm. In the past, I was so numb that none of these things ‘bothered’ me – they just became my life. That’s not going to happen again.

Now I'm a warrior
Now I've got thicker skin
I'm a warrior
I'm stronger than I've ever been
And my armor, is made of steel, you can't get in
I'm a warrior
And you can never hurt me again

-          Demi Lovato – Warrior

I’ve found that the best way to look at a ‘blip’ is to think that it can make you stronger. The more my recovery tested, the stronger it becomes so that eventually, it will withstand more and more obstacles.