*This post is the second
of 4 which will be posted every day for the following two days!*
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You’re NOT Disordered NOW!!
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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.
With nothing more being explained, I wasn’t fully aware of the
fact that after finishing the treatment and it being labelled ‘successful’ in
saving my life, I was being transferred to a psychiatric hospital where I could
be held against my will for up to 28 days (it can then be extended by being
transferred to section three) for a period of ‘assessment.’ I was an inpatient
for around two weeks before I started considering going to College to enrol on
a fashion course and the Psychiatrists saw this as a good sign that I was
thinking about having a future and so I was discharged from the section and
allowed home.
My second admission lasted slightly longer and came to an end when
I finally told the psychiatric hospital staff that I had been raped and
sexually abused over a six-month period when I was 15 (I was 18 at this point).
I think the Psychiatrists saw it as both a step forward and a step onto earning
the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder where hospital admissions are
not recommended; unlike the diagnosis they had been hesitating about giving me of
Schizophrenia. I guess once you reveal you’ve been through a trauma, that
completely eradicates the possibility of there being any sort of chemical
imbalance or basically any illness that doesn’t rely upon going through a
trauma to be diagnosed with it!
My third admission was the second longest at a few months and I
have always found it ironic that it lasted that long, but actually hadn’t even
come off the back of a suicide attempt! I found myself being transferred
between different Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICU’s) and restrained and
sedated so many times that they had to call an optician onto the ward because
the muscles around my eyes were almost constantly relaxed and so my vision was
going blurry!
After my discharge, I spent the following three years (2009 –
2012) almost constantly in and out of both psychiatric and medical hospitals.
When I made my third suicide attempt in the summer of 2012, my records
apparently indicated that I’d had over 60 hospital admissions in that
three-year period. The professionals most involved in my care from the
Community Mental Health Team (CMHT) used this as evidence so that when I came
off life support from the attempt, I was given funding to be sectioned and
transferred to a private psychiatric hospital over 100 miles away from home. My
Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) and Psychologist claimed that the number of
hospitalisations was evidence that they didn’t have the right help or
supportive services in our locality to manage my presentation of my eventual,
final diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).
Initially, the admission to this hospital wasn’t really proving to
be useful beyond the fact that because I was sectioned, and the hospital was
named ‘medium secure’ (which meant that it was locked so tight I literally
broke my foot trying to kick the doors open when I first got there!) it reduced
my safety risk with the chances of me self-harming or making another suicide
attempt being made a fair bit more difficult. However, after finally starting
the recommended treatment for my BPD diagnosis; Dialectical Behaviour Therapy
(DBT – yes, there are many acronyms in the mental health world!), I finally
found myself making some progress.
Even though before going to the hospital I had known that the
average length of admission there was listed as 12 – 18 months, I had remained
convinced that the staff would give up on me as I felt so many others had done
and just discharge me and leave me to my own devices. And so, in finally
starting a Therapy programme that was typically described as requiring one year
of therapeutic sessions to complete and benefit from it, I had recognised that
they were going to keep trying to save me and so, on January 6th
2013, I had a 1:1 with my Key Nurse and I agreed to begin writing about the
abuse and to show the staff my notes so that they could gain more knowledge and
a better understanding of what had happened to me with her telling me the
belief that it would leave them better placed at helping and supporting me. I
remember coming back to my room from the 1:1 and seeing my laptop lying on the
bed… We were only allowed them after our therapeutic timetable groups and
Reflection meeting had finished and even then we were only given them if we
asked. The staff had learnt, however, that I would always ask so if I was busy
or talking to someone when they were able to start taking them out, they would
just get mine automatically. So, coming into my room with it sat there and
having the burning thought and desire in me to do something that would allow me
to begin documenting the recovery journey I finally felt I was embarking on; it
was almost destiny that I turned the laptop on and found myself setting up a
blog…
It's kind of funny because now, when I give talks or write posts
full of advice for starting a blog, I recommend that people put so much thought
into it. I encourage budding Bloggers to give massive consideration to even
just the thought of blogging and do their research into the ins and outs of it
to ensure they make an informed decision as to whether they feel capable of
going ahead and creating a blog. I also suggest people brainstorm title ideas
for their blog and pay consideration to the general aesthetic design for it and
particularly to developing/having a colour scheme and/or logo. I, however, didn’t
pay any mind to literally any of that! I mean, I had no real idea what I was
getting into in starting to blog – and whilst I very obviously never regret blogging;
I do wish I’d perhaps researched what I could expect so that I felt more
prepared and forewarned.
However, one thing in that very beginning of I’m NOT Disordered
that I don’t regret, or wish had happened differently in any way, and which I
honestly believe that despite not brainstorming it; I still thought it through
– was in the naming of it! It was born from the notion that I’m not just my
diagnosis; that it doesn’t and shouldn’t define me nor be one of the first
things that is said about me if someone were to ask who I am. I also wanted the
‘not’ to be in capitals not just to empathise the word and its meaning, but
also because I thought it seemed a bit childish and with the abuse having
happened when I was 15, professionals have voiced the idea that it’s really
prevented me from aging normally and that a part of me is stuck in that age
because I disassociated for a lot of the abusive instances.
So, in addition to the hospital leading to the start of my
blogging career, the other ways in which I benefited from the admission was the
general fact that it meant I was safer than I would have been if I were at home
for the entire two and a half years, I was an inpatient… Unfortunately, though,
a massively common and popular misconception of being in a psychiatric hospital
is that it’s the safest place in the world. The reasons leading to you
self-harming can still be valid and present and with the ward rules banning
certain objects, you become more inventive and creative in coming up with a new
means to self-harm – which, can sometimes end up being more dangerous that your
usual methods. I remember one girl being admitted to the ward with no self-harm
scars or wounds because she abused her insulin medication as a means of
self-harm… By the time I was being discharged, she needed plastic surgery to heal
some of the wounds and to mend the damage they had caused to her tendons and
nerves etc.
Fortunately, seeing this whilst going through therapy meant I had
a more balanced, positive, and productive view of that situation and another
incident that occurred which I will never forget... One of the inpatients snuck
a blade back onto the ward after her leave and everyone passed it round each
other until the staff realised people were coming to them with very similar
injuries and eventually someone handed it in.
We were all made to sit in the communal sitting room whilst a
lockdown and search were carried out of literally every nook and cranny in all
our bedrooms and throughout the rest of the ward. I seriously couldn’t believe
that these girls I’d come to know, and love could be so dangerous and harmful
in basically providing each other with a means of self-harming and having the full
understanding that in passing this blade on, that’s what the other person would
do with it. In addition to recognising the sheer wrong-ness of this action,
therapy also helped me to have not been involved in it at all – the lockdown
was genuinely the first I had heard of it; no one had passed it to me… And I
believe that was likely because they recognised, I was doing so well that I
would likely speak up about it.
Another positive impact being in the hospital had been after the
second time I managed to escape… I knew that if people didn’t come back from
their unescorted leave on time, the staff would drive around the area looking
for them, so I booked a taxi from a nearby shop. Then, on my leave in the
grounds, I climbed over the boundary fence, over the fence of the elderly care
home next door, and then walked out of a person’s side gate and jumped in the
taxi asking the driver to take me to the nearest train station. I got a train
to another city, bought the things I needed for a suicide attempt and boarded a
bus to god knows where so that I had some place warm to continue to make my
attempt and so that I was on the move to avoid any Police (being sectioned and
going AWOL, the psychiatric staff are legally obliged to call the Police).
By the time the Police found me back in the train station, my
attempt was complete, and they called an ambulance but were told that it’d be
far quicker for them to take me to the medical hospital near the psychiatric
one on their lights and sirens and have the psychiatric staff meet us there. I
remember racing through the traffic and thinking ‘I wish I wasn’t poorly so I
could enjoy this instead of it just making me feel even more sick!’ When we got to the hospital I refused the
potentially life-saving medical treatment for the suicide attempt, and I
vaguely remember my favourite Psychiatrist (the one below my Consultant) coming
to the hospital and saying to the Doctors and Nurses “this isn’t like her at
all, just do it.” Next thing I knew I was waking up from life support a while
later and the treatment had been administered and my organs stabilised because
apparently whilst I was out my blood tests turned bad and I had to have
additional medication for a while.
When I was allowed back to the psychiatric hospital a ton of the
staff came to take me from Intensive Care to there and I screamed and cried
when they started guiding me upstairs to the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit
(PICU). The Unit was above the ward I’d been on for over a year by then, and I’d
heard the screaming and alarms through the ceiling/floor, had been told horror
stories of how patients were treat up there and what it was like, and then –
believe it or not (but it’s still on BBC news online if you google) – a patient
killed another patient by suffocating them. So, needless to say, I panicked and
sat on the floor so that the staff literally had to drag me onto the PICU and
into my new, empty bedroom. I spent the following two or three days alternating
between sleeping, vomiting from all the medication and anaesthetic/sedation, crying,
and – at one point – I ended up feeling like I just had to have a shower
despite being on ‘eyesight’ observations (meaning a member of staff had to have
me within eyesight 24/7)!
There came a point when I was being sick that I remember crying
and thinking ‘it cannot get any worse.’ I felt like I’d hit absolute rock
bottom – something which, to be honest, I actually thought I’d already
experienced years ago! – and I found myself literally desperately begging the
staff to move me back down to the ward where I now thought of four of the girls
as ‘best-friends.’ When they finally agreed, I was put in an empty bedroom and
was told I had to have a period of stability to begin earning the right to go
back into my bedroom. I talked to the Ward Manager though and said that despite
the risk and worry of me thinking I’ll be viewed as superficial, I wanted her
to know that being with my own things, having them around me, would be the
thing to make me feel better and the longer I was away from those things, the
more upset I would become.
Thankfully, she told me I’d made some valid points, and I was
allowed back in my room, but the entire ordeal didn’t stray far from my memory
for such a long time after that. This ended up being a good thing though, because
it provided me with a harsh reminder of what my life would become if I continued
to not put in enough effort in DBT sessions. It was a huge motivation to
cooperate more with staff and to try so much harder to take some real notice of
all the safe and healthy coping skills we were being taught and encouraged to
use in Therapy and to actually start really trying to apply them despite when
everything in my body was telling me not to and instead, to self-harm or make a
suicide attempt or run away. I finally saw that I didn’t want this to be my
life. I didn’t want that to be the way my life actually ended, either.
Partaking in weekly group and 1:1 DBT sessions for over two years
was incredibly challenging and sometimes felt like I’d imagine climbing a
mountain or something might feel – like every time you think you see the top;
you get there, and before you can even breathe, you realise that there’s still
so much further to go! I think that the first hardest part to the Therapy was that
it basically meant tearing all my reasons to keep quiet and not talk about my
experiences, my thoughts, and my feelings; to pieces. So that everything was
coming forwards and I was finally able to talk things through to a point where
I got the strangest, and most unexpected sensation that I could properly
breathe now. It felt as though all this time, I had been holding my breath and
just waiting for the inevitable explosive relief that I somehow just knew would
come with blurting everything out. Getting it all off my chest.
The second hardest thing with DBT was that literally every single
coping skill you were taught across the four modules (Distress Tolerance,
Interpersonal Effectiveness, Mindfulness, and Emotion Regulation) were things
which I couldn’t believe I hadn’t already thought of trying to do myself. Things
like writing or mentally doing a pros and cons list before acting or making
decisions in order to ensure they’re balanced and healthy, using distracting or
self-soothing activities to detract or counteract from unsafe, negative, or
self-deprecating thoughts and feelings. I mean, how could I not have thought of
these things? How could I not have wondered if these much more healthy and
productive methods would help more so than self-harming or running away? It was
frustrating, but the staff reassured me – and other inpatients who were
experiencing similar thoughts and feelings – that they recognised and
appreciated that when you’re so poorly and your mental health is so unwell; thinking
things through straightly and reasonably can be really tricky, and unbalanced and
ill-thought-out actions and coping mechanisms can engulf any ideas to do
anything safer and more positive.
Finally – for this part, at
least! – medication! Prescribing medication for me or for most others diagnosed
with BPD; is a fraught, friction-worthy, and debatable issue amongst all in the
mental health industry – even if they’re people who can’t actually prescribe
medication! Being in that psychiatric hospital though, there wasn’t a single
inpatient who didn’t take some kind of psychiatric medication and so it was
there that I was prescribed my anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, and mood
stabiliser.
After being discharged, I had to register with a new GP in my
local town and I remember my first appointment with them I ended up crying
because the GP said that he wanted to stop all of my medication because “it’s
too much medication for one young person to be on!” I was so terrified because whilst
I appreciated and recognised how helpful DBT had been, and how being sectioned
in the hospital had helped with my safety and risk levels, I also believed that
my medication had been hugely beneficial too. I felt that it had helped
stabilise me to a point where I was able to begin Therapy and able and willing
to actually follow any advice or new coping skills I was taught. Whilst I had
been in hospital for over two years, I hadn’t forgotten everything I had gone
through in those three years before that when my mental health was really
poorly… And I couldn’t risk having that happen again – I felt that I’d just
scraped through by the skin of my teeth (is that even the saying?!) and that if
it were to all go backwards, I wouldn’t be so lucky. I wouldn’t make it out
alive. Ironically, being in recovery meant that I had now seen the positives in
life, and I had my blog… So, I really no longer wanted to die, but I felt fairly
convinced that my medication was a huge part of this positivity and hopefulness
too.
I can’t remember how, but the medication drama was sorted and I
continued to take what the hospital has prescribed with the only major changes
being when I was on caseload for the Crisis Team and they added another anti-depressant
to the mix which I took for just over a year, and then the more recent fiasco
with my anti-psychotic medication… Earlier this year – in February – I was sectioned
again and admitted to a local psychiatric hospital where I spent probably the
worst five consecutive days of my entire life. The entire admission was as
complete disaster that actually resulted in me having to put in a formal complaint
to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) who oversee such wards and services. The
complaint was resolved in a 12-page report which literally listed that the
investigator had found evidence the upheld every single instance and issue during
the admission that I’d complained about. It was full of apologies and ‘actions’
of tasks and duties that would now be carried out to ensure these things didn’t
happen to another inpatient – which had been my goal in making the complaint –
it wasn’t about looking for a ton of apologies (though it was nice and
appreciated of the Trust to issue them) – it was about making sure the staff
learnt from their wrongdoing because perhaps the next person to go through it actually
wouldn’t cope with it the way I had done. The way where I had managed to
survive all of their failings and shortcomings.
After the admission, I met with a community Psychiatrist who
absolutely refused point blank to increase my anti-psychotic medication –
despite the psychosis being the reason for the admission! She kept talking
about how she’d read my notes dating back to my first hospitalisation in 2009 and
that there was no evidence that medication had helped me. I continued trying to
point out that the fact that after the new anti-depressant was at an effective
dose and when my anti-psychotic was last increased, I had actually been completely
discharged from services for over a year. In the end, she gave me some sleeping
tablets and a mild sedative medication! For me, this was useful but because of
the risk of addiction to these tablets, it wasn’t really a long-term answer at
all!
When, a few months later, I ended up under the care of the Crisis
Team again and they arranged for me to see a different Psychiatrist who
immediately offered (without me asking or even suggesting!) an increase to the
anti-psychotic medication, it felt like a complete ‘told-you-so’ moment. A sad
one, obviously. But still, it was hugely validating and helpful; it was just
difficult to hold onto that when the majority of me was wondering whether I
would have been doing so much ‘better’ by now if that first Psychiatrist had
done the increase. However, I knew that I couldn’t change that, so I just had
to focus on the fact that at least it was being done now.
Asking for help from professionals and taking medication for your mental
health is often – and wrongly – seen as weak and as though it’s an illustration
that you’re not strong enough or brave enough to find your way through, and out
of, this by yourself. To me, this leaves the implication or assumption that to
believe this means that you think that to ask for help and support is ‘easy’
when really, I’d say it’s incredibly difficult, takes an enormous amount of
strength, resilience, determination, and purpose, and that for someone to do it,
they should be seen as utterly inspirational and a force to be reckoned with!