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To-Do List

Posted in 6 year old, autism, Awesome Psychiatrist, bipolar, blogging, children, communication, crying, depression, emotions, Fab Psychologist, Fantastic CPN, hospital, illness, insight, lithium, Lovely Dietitian, mania, manic, medication, mental illness, money, mother, parenting, recovery, social worker, stress, suicide, support, Wonderful GP, work, tagged bipolar, children, depression, Mental Health, mental health, mental illness, mentalism, psych hospital, suicide on September 16, 2011 | 14 Comments »

I think this may be one of those posts on depression I talked about, I’m not sure, I’ll just write and see what happens.

It’s been a funny day- as in not at all amusing in any way shape or form and in fact nothing funny has happened so I’m not sure I can qualify that summing-up. It just feels funny. I’m sure there are many pathological explanations for this- a shift in mood state, the inevitable come-down after a period of elevation, the fact I stopped taking the dreaded lithium on Sunday night? It’s not my area of expertise so I’ll stop speculating.

I’ve had a hard week, again, nothing particularly difficult has happened (especially when you contrast this week with the past 3) and I haven’t actually done anything or been anywhere.

Monday- a social worker from the local children and families team came to carry out an assessment in light of the 3 “child at risk concerns” from the police following my behaviour over recent weeks and contact from the ninja CPN. The assessment was a gruelling affair and ultimately felt like a lynching. I had it all under control for around 45 minutes until the ninja CPN arrived (45 minutes late) and in my words “painted me as a total loony” in her words “told the truth”. Either way the assessment went on too long and I lost it towards the end, partly due to nicotine withdrawal, partly due to being talked about as though I wasn’t in the room and partly due to the social workers insistence on informing me that there may have to be a child protection investigation.

The social worker herself was patronising and clearly had little understanding of mental health. I know I’m not the best mother in the world and I know I don’t always try my hardest but to have to sit and listen to a complete stranger tell me just how badly I was failing was very difficult indeed.

Of course maybe she never implied that at all? I have noticed this week that every interaction I have had with the ninja CPN where I mention something someone else has said, she insists on me recounting it verbatim so that she can point out where I am misinterpreting things, employing magical thinking or just fabricating things. I can’t even trust my own thoughts and impressions any more. I feel stupid, childish and powerless.

I am not surprised or ashamed that my family has come to the attention of social services; I’d be more surprised if we hadn’t. My argument against their involvement is simply that they have nothing appropriate to offer. I was also more than a little annoyed that suddenly they were intruding on our lives when in all the time the 17 year old lived here and his autism wreaked heartbreak and havoc on us all they never offered a service, in spite of being asked. What my family needs in order to function properly is for me to be well- thinly veiled threats about child protection measures aren’t going to help me achieve this. The social worker wants to come back- well at least I think she does, I received a letter addressed to me and the 6 year old, making an appointment to visit the 6 year old and someone else who doesn’t even exist. Clearly just an admin error and my rage over it is no doubt my own fault for being difficult and misinterpreting things but it pissed me off anyway.

I assume the appointment is to see the 6 year old and the 14 year old again. The 14 year old is largely unimpressed with the social worker, her opening gambit of “I know it’s not easy being different, well some people like to be different- like Lady Gaga” sealed her fate with the 14 year old. The 14 year old is a wonderful creature, intelligent, engaging and probably the funniest person I know. She may be a little “old for her years” at times but she can spot a patronising bastard a mile away. I don’t disagree that the 14 year old would benefit from some emotional support, after all if I had cancer others would be falling over themselves to ensure she was ok, I’m just not sure that social services are equipped to offer her the kind of support she needs.

So the intervention of social services has me hell-bent on proving that their services are no longer required, maybe that’s the way it works?

Tuesday- the Fab Therapist visited me at home, she was impressed by my apparent fineness given the horror stories she had been told by other “team members” since our last interaction some 6 weeks ago. I don’t think we talked about much, I’m not really sure but we can’t have done as I don’t recall having a meltdown after she left. It was kind of her to circumnavigate my avoidance by visiting me at home and I expect our next appointment in 4 weeks will only have me moderately filled with dread and fear as opposed to having dread and fear seep out of every pore like usual.

This brings me to the realisation I’ve been generating this week- mental health professionals cannot make me better. I have a great “team” (that makes me want to vomit) an Awesome Psychiatrist, Fab Therapist, Wonderful GP, Lovely Dietitian, Fantastic ninja CPN and even an ok-ish community based psychiatrist (promoted from “dickhead” after he didn’t put up a fight against my discharge from the local bin last Thursday). They are all very knowledgeable, compassionate people that work very hard but there are no magic wands.

At the end of every appointment, at the end of every day, I am alone with the mental.

Part of my problem is I don’t know where I am or what I should be doing. Am I ill? Am I recovering? Am I all better now? Should I be taking it easy? Should I be trying harder? I simply don’t know. The last few weeks have been a kind of perpetual crisis and I knew what I had to do then, I had to fight, fight against the horror that is admission to the psych ward, fight against the intrinsic death that is psychotropic medication. I won both of those fights- my prize?

I’m still mental.

This evening I find myself back to struggling to find the will to live. I am aware I have very few coping strategies for times of “distress” (that also makes me want to vomit) so I’ve had a quick look on some websites to find out how other people do it. I’m still none the wiser. Yes sure I can sit here, in my corner and name all the colours I can see but that won’t help sort out the mess that is tax credits, it won’t help me be able to put up with the simultaneous noise from the TV, the DS and the 6 year old when he is here, it won’t help me be able to sit and enjoy a film and some mother-daughter bonding time with the 14 year old, it won’t get the school uniforms washed, dried and ironed in time for school on Monday, it won’t help me get back to work, it won’t pay the mortgage, it won’t cut the grass or fix the bathroom…..I could go on. When your life is a catastrophe, it’s very easy to catastrophise.

Wednesday- I have no idea what, if anything happened on Wednesday- oh yes, I wrote my last blog post and sure enough as I said in reply to one comment I am still as lost and clueless as I was when I wrote it.

Thursday- again, nothing happened that I can recall but in truth it’s therefore not impossible that there was a zombie apocalypse or a plague of sharks or something, my recall of events is sketchy at best.

Friday- AKA today. Well I think I’ve outlined above where I am today, I’m not sure even if I read it back I will have any idea. I think I’m back at the “must get a grip” stage, I have a to-do list for tomorrow- it has one item on it-

Get washed and dressed

In all honesty that will be a major achievement, wish me luck.

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DSM VI Mentalism Criteria

Posted in alcohol, anhedonia, Anxiety, blogging, crying, depression, DSM, DSM VI, Eating Disorder, emotions, health, insight, insomnia, medication, mental illness, recovery, sleep, suicide, tea, Twitter, work, tagged DSM, DSM VI, eating disorder, Mental Health, mental health, mental illness, mentalism, suicide on July 29, 2011 | 14 Comments »

Told you I’d chucked the blogging rule book! Here is today’s product of my mind, the inspiration for this comes mainly from the person who suggested after my last “extreme” episode that next time I “just didn’t do it” and I realised I was clearly investing far too much time and energy in this whole being mental business. The other bit of inspiration comes from those conversations with you all and the repeated question within our community- mental or normal? I thought I’d clear things up a bit.

Please do not use this extract of DSM VI as a stand-alone tool for self-diagnosis, for best results you should also consult the RMRS©.

DSM-VI Mentalism Criteria

Mentalism (termed Mentalism by the Zoë Psychiatric Association) is defined as a maladaptive pattern of living leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as manifested by three (or more) of the following, occurring any time in the same lifetime:

1. Tolerance, as defined by either of the following:

(a) A need for markedly increased amounts of paranoia, obsessive behaviours, fear, insomnia, inappropriate laughter, social anxiety, generalised anxiety, deliberate self-harm, drinking white wine and lemonade from the same glass, emotional lability, restricting food intake, sterilising food before consumption, foregoing basic self-care, avoiding contact with real people, amnesia, becoming melty when faced with basic tasks, lack of control over household administration, self-induced vomiting, mysophobia, purchasing of large amounts of stationery, having “head music”, hearing voices, wearing protective eye-wear when conditions do not necessitate it, responding to aforementioned voices, fear of abandonment, fear of attachment, anhedonia, continuous wearing of pyjamas, bingeing, over-dependence on caffeine, use of “Wineclone”© or “Winesthetic”©, only having contact with others whose name begins with @, fear of telephones, fear of the postman, crying, suicidal ideation, hypnophobia, ironing sheets, filling rooms with balloons, blogging, losing all track of time and frequent contact with health professionals to achieve mentalism or the desired effect

(b) Markedly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of the behaviours.

2. Withdrawal, as manifested by any of the following:

(a) Sorting paperwork, getting affairs in order, washing and dressing daily, only visiting GP with a physical ailment, ability to have “one glass of wine with dinner”, meeting friends for lunch, having visitors, using a telephone, going out, only hearing music when you’re listening to music, only hearing voices when actual people speak to you, sleeping all night, having or thinking about getting a job.

(b) The same (or closely related) behaviours are repeated to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms.

3. The behaviours are often demonstrated in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended.

4. There is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control the behaviours.

5. A great deal of time is spent in activities necessary to ingrain the behaviours, use the behaviours, or recover from their effects.

6. Important social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced because of behaviours.

7. The mentalism is continued despite knowledge of having a persistent physical or psychological problem that is likely to have been caused or exacerbated by the mentalism (for example, current repeated hand-washing despite recognition of sore, dry skin or continued isolation in spite of loneliness). DSM-VI criteria for mentalism include several specifiers, one of which outlines whether mentalism is with physiologic dependence (evidence of tolerance or withdrawal) or without physiologic dependence (no evidence of tolerance or withdrawal). In addition, remission categories are classified into four subtypes: (1) full, (2) early partial, (3) sustained, and (4) sustained partial; on the basis of whether any of the criteria for mentalism have been met and over what time frame. The remission category can also be used for patients receiving drug therapy (such as every mood-stabiliser, anti-psychotic and anti-depressant on the market with the odd dose of benzodiazepines thrown in) or for those living in a controlled, mentalist free environment.

Wineclone© copyright owned and controlled by @mnicsleepteachr

Winesthetic© copyright owned and controlled by @Zoe_Smith

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Positive Integers

Posted in 6 year old, Anxiety, blogging, children, Eating Disorder, emotions, Fab Psychologist, insight, insomnia, mental illness, mother, parenting, recovery, sleep, the room, therapy, Twitter, tagged eating disorder, insomnia, Mental Health, mental health, mental illness, sleep, therapy on July 28, 2011 | 16 Comments »

It’s been 8 days since I last blogged, I have spent much of the last two days castigating myself for not blogging yesterday. I had decided that in order to be a “good blogger” I had to update my blog weekly- no more, no less. As a result of this self-imposed regulation I have spent much of the past 8 days resisting the temptation to write blog posts when inspiration has struck- I didn’t want to blog too often- after all I did write, illustrate and publish two books in one week, I didn’t want to bore my audience. So yesterday when I hit the 7 day self-imposed deadline I was dismayed to find that in spite of all my scribbled notes and ideas- I had no urge to blog.

It is though I am somehow dissatisfied by the rules imposed on my life by society, principles, time and the law- I appear to have an almost constant need to impose further rules upon myself. This is evidenced in many ways and I have discovered that even abiding by the rules does not bring me fulfilment; I simply make new rules and move the goal posts even further.

I have ripped up the rule book as regards blogging so tonight I bring you the last 8 days in eight numbers- completely random numbers, in no particular order at all.

60-

The number of mg of Tamazepam I have taken in an attempt to sleep- without the nightly horror sleep has become. I witter on about sleep all the time- and I never did write that post. Sleep has always been an elusive creature for me, the only thing I have in common with Margaret Thatcher is that I do not need a lot of sleep; but I do need some. I have never slept well and I have always had trouble getting off to sleep. These days I can’t sleep at all without medication, even then I sleep briefly, wake frequently and early. My nights are filled with an unknown terror, I often wake myself screaming or shouting but retain no memory of what it was that was so horrific during the night. I wake very early every morning feeling unsettled and traumatised.

I’m not supposed to have the Tamezepam; I was prescribed it ages ago, back in the early stages of mentalism when I was still considered responsible enough to be trusted not to abuse prescription medication. I am running out, I can’t imagine the prescription will be refilled. I combine the Tamazepam with double doses of Zopiclone in pursuit of unconsciousness as opposed to actual sleep, sleep brings with it fear and fear is something I’m keen to avoid.

My own unique, personal manifestation of mentalism appears to bring with it the added joy of getting to watch myself “sleep”. It’s as though I stay up all night watching my poor shattered body struggle to stay asleep as my mind attempts to torture it. I feel sad for myself and wish I could help myself but it seems all I can do is watch until morning- very early morning.

2-

The number of people I heard outside my open bedroom window discussing the state of my front garden. I am quite good at gardening, I used to have a beautiful garden at the front of the house and I grew veg out the back. I used to enjoy gardening and was proud of my little patches of green, my flowers and my veg. Since I became unwell and I find it takes me all my energy and motivation to wash and dry my hair, I no longer have any desire to tend to the garden- lawns and privet hedges are very quick to advertise neglect. The only attention the grass has received of late is from the rabbit- he’s a lovely rabbit but very small and there’s only so much lawn he can eat. The hedge was so big it was sucking all the light out of my living room we lived in the kind of gloom befitting a Dickensian novel- a gloom only shattered by the odd beam of sunlight, light that would sneak around the hedge and highlight all the dust hanging in the air.

The last proper gardening I did was last summer- it was the kind of gardening one does with a chainsaw, it saw the removal of an 8ftx10ft privet hedge- which was never replaced with any sort of boundary marker- the neighbours have yet to forgive me. I have the kind of neighbours who only cut “their side” of the hedge so I can only imagine what they thought about the state of my gardens.

When I heard those lovely locals criticising my garden I dealt with it in my usual healthy way. I was already in bed, already in pyjamas all I needed was alcohol and a healthy dose of self-flagellation- so I drank and felt ashamed, then I felt ashamed for lying in bed drinking wine at 5.20pm, then I got pissed, then I woke up two hours later with a hangover. So I have yet again entered a period of abstinence- this one will last until I know I’m not going to sit in my bed with a bottle of merlot feeling sorry for myself.

There was so much I wanted to say to the lovely locals but didn’t- I wanted to be angry and say “fuck off, mind your own business”, I wanted to be pathetic and say “I’ve not been well you know, please cut my grass”, I wanted to be political and say “you have no idea how pervasive mental illness can be”. Instead I said nothing; those lovely locals have no idea of the story behind the state that was my garden. Those lovely locals have no idea the woman that has let that garden run to seed is the same woman they would’ve called for advice on planning applications, double yellow lines, HMO applications, parks, benches, green belt and schools. They have no idea that the very thought of spending the necessary amount of time in my garden required to cut the grass would leave me feeling as exposed and vulnerable as a broken tooth. They have no idea that I was as horrified by my garden as they were.

I called a gardener to come and sort things out, I don’t know his name but I can highly recommend the first gardener that comes up on Yell.com when you put “Gardener St Andrews Fife” into the search box. My garden has been reset and I hope now to be able to “keep on top of it”. It’s not the garden it once was by any stretch of the imagination but it’s not a garden to be ashamed of either.

7-

The number of times the call handler at BT told me today that the proximity of my router to the TV was the reason my wireless connection was either painfully slow or non-existent. I made clear to the gentleman on the phone that the router and TV had shared the same electromagnetic field for some years- the problem with the wireless had only occurred in the last 2 days. My anxiety at being on the phone was overtaken by frustration and irritation at the call-handlers inability to go off script.

I’m not sure how much the non-internet dependent understand the internet dependent. My need for a wireless connection to the internet is even more pertinent than my need for stationery- I would happily sell organs in order to obtain both. Should BT or Rymans ever decide that they will only offer goods and services in exchange for bodily tissues, I will be unperturbed. Fixing the wireless got immediate priority on the to-do list and it was even worth making a phone call for. The phone call lasted 22 minutes and it was possibly the most infuriating 22 minutes I have ever spent on the phone to Bangalore.

I eventually realised that the problem I had encountered (trying to change the channel on the router) was in fact due to Google Chrome and to my relief it’s all sorted now. I besmirched the good name of BT all over twitter today and they apologised for my “frustration”, it wasn’t frustration it was sheer panic at facing a day without the internet. Nothing starts the day better than a cup of tea and the www- after all my day starts at a time when no-one else is around- nobody wants to chat at 4.45am in the real world.

9-

The number of biscuits I have eaten- various biscuits, mainly digestives but with the occasional piece of shortbread or rich tea finger thrown in for variety. The 14 year old put the contents of a packet of ginger biscuits in the biscuit tin so all the biscuits taste the same- faintly ginger- we have a tin full of strawberry blonde biscuits. The number of biscuits is a good reflection on my general relationship with food at the moment- not too few and not too many. I feel a bit like I am discovering many foods for the first time and am actually deriving real pleasure from eating. I am enjoying no longer being leg chewing-off starving before I eat and I am discovering a lot about what I need and what I want. I have my bad days but the good far outweigh the bad and I feel so much better for having regular, decent amounts of food inside me.

My diet tends to be very much centered around poached eggs, mushroom risotto and various breakfast cereals (both generic and branded) but it is a million miles away from the diet I had even two weeks ago. I have noticed a tendency to starve myself whenever the going gets tough but I am noticing it and most of the time rectifying it immediately. I see no reason for this to change and I find myself looking forward to the day when I can look at my own forearms without being repulsed by how thin they are.

3-

The number of things I have rewired. I have replaced the sockets and the light switch in the 6 year olds soon to be bedroom. I have no idea how long I have been working on this room- the preparation and painting has been a painful protracted affair and there is still much to do. I have never liked decorating, mainly because I am very bad at it and partly because it draws my attention to the state my house is in. I have promised the 6 year old that he will be in it for the end of the summer holidays (20 days to go) and I have no doubt he will be but he may well be in it without a blind, door or furniture and without the coving I will need to put up to disguise the horribly inaccurate paint line between the walls and the ceiling. Every day the room renovation throws up a new problem- today’s is that I cannot get B&Q to deliver the coving and the door I need, I can’t fit these items in the stupid car so for today have given up trying to procure them at all. The room is now a standing issue on the daily to do list- annotated by my attempts to persuade myself to make progress-

I have yet to actually list all the outstanding items, preferring to take a haphazard approach and just hoping that I will hit the target eventually. The room is now a vision in metallic blue and “sky”, the (chosen by the 6 year old) bright red blind sits on the floor, mocking me and my fear of being able to cut it correctly and accurately. I have been told by many that I will get “a real sense of achievement” when it’s done- I wont, I will just be relieved and delay even further the decorating that needs done in the 14 year olds room.

17-

The number of years I have been a Mama, my eldest child turned 17 last week. I don’t feel old enough to be the Mama to a 17 year old but at the same time I feel very old. Parenting the 17 year old has been a tremendous challenge from day 1, I am told I have done a good job but in common with most mothers I don’t doubt for a second that I could’ve done things better. In those 17 years I have learned a lot and at the same time remain that unsure, self-doubting creature I was before I even considered embarking on motherhood. I will be a Mama for the rest of my life, 17 years is not a long time in the grand scheme of things- but in 17 years a Mama can find an awful lot of reasons to pick holes in her performance. I was relieved to see that the 17 year old is well and happy; in fact he seems happier than he has for around two years. I am trying to see this as a good thing I have achieved now as opposed to a lot of bad things I have achieved in the last two years. Motherhood is very difficult and it’s very easy to get things wrong, it is a continuous learning curve and there are no prizes for just having done it for a certain period of time. It is the ultimate dynamic role and I often find it difficult to keep up, it’s a role that deserves a post of its own so I will leave it there for now.

200-

The number of times I am tweeting per day on average at the moment. Twitter has become more conversational for me lately so a lot of those tweets are exchanges between me and others- a lot of them are my continued stream of consciousness. Twitter has become the ultimate recording device for me- it allows me to retrace my steps I have a permanent record of what I’ve said and done and where I’ve been. I have days when I use it less if I am occupied by another task and days when I use it more but I always make sure I check in regularly both for my own benefit and to stop my followers from worrying about me. I spend a lot of time thinking about twitter and its ramifications for me, fellow mentalists and the world as a whole- there is an article published by SRN where I talk about it some more. I am impressed that the author managed to obtain such succinct comments from my pages long response to her interview questions about what is clearly one of my very favourite topics.

1-

The number of major breakthroughs I had in therapy. I have being seeing the Fab Psychologist since January- every two weeks. Every two weeks I would go to the local hospital for 11.30am on a Tuesday having spent at least the previous two weeks dreading that hour. That hour, every two weeks felt like emotional evisceration. I have largely spent most of my therapy hours like this and stuck to my old mantra of “leave them smiling and they will think you are fine”. I don’t know what it was but something made me keep going back. I have an almost infinite list of reasons why I don’t like therapy- they range from the valid- “I don’t like to talk about myself” to the invalid- “she moved the furniture” but there is a strange pull I cannot define. I’m not sure if I have made any progress since January, I’m not sure I really tried; perhaps just going back was trying enough?

This week it was different in a way I have not yet managed to put into words- in spite of numerous attempts. I came away from that hour feeling unsettled but curious, scared but optimistic I even think there was a point where I was looking forward to my next session, that feeling has since vanished and been replaced by the usual dread- but I will go.

I feel as though I am finally on that journey everyone has been talking about for so long, I am experiencing the same mix of fear and excitement that I would experience embarking on any journey. I don’t know what my destination is and so I have the added fear the unknown. I fear that my journey will be interrupted at some point and I fear that my journey may be too arduous and I will simply give up. My theme of late has been “feel the fear and do it anyway” so I will carry on, there are no rules on this journey but it is almost certain there will be lots of blogging.

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Reveling in an Alternative Mood Scale

Posted in bipolar, depression, emotions, illness, insight, mental illness, mindfulness, recovery, Revel Mood Rating Scale, suicide, Uncategorized, tagged bipolar, Mental Health, mental health, mental illness, Revels, suicide on July 16, 2011 | 30 Comments »

Anyone suffering from poor mental health will at some point no doubt have been asked to keep a track of their moods- from the simple note in a diary approach which requires rating one’s mood between 1-10 (with 1 and 10 and all the numbers in between being rather poorly defined) to more sophisticated methods such as Moodpanda. I have attempted to do this on a number of occasions but have failed miserably at either A- identifying my mood, B- rating it on the arbitrary scale and C- being bothered to continue doing it much beyond 3 days.

A very brief Twitter based conversation yesterday with Chris O’sullivan (@mentalcapital) and Jennifer Rowe (@thecupcake_girl) gave me that familiar rush of inspiration. Unfortunately the rush of inspiration was fleeting and I was again ensconced in the black sludge of depression.

Today I think it’s back- to the point where I actually went out to get the required materials- this is no mean feat for someone who has been too anxious to go out of their own front door for weeks. I suspect my trip to the shop was aided by the rather large amount of benzodiazpines I have ingested this morning in the pursuit of sleep- figuring sleeping the day away was preferable to another day spent wading through the black sludge. Whatever the reason I present you with an alternative mood scale and a reflection on recovery preferences.

This is a 140g bag of Revels it contains 51 Revels. I purchased it from my local Spar this morning for the extortionate price of £2.35, a price I’m willing to pay if my mind stops racing enough to make this next new project as good as I hope it’s going to be.

I hate Revels- it’s like playing Russian Roulette with confectionery, you never know what you’re going to get- much like mental illness. I cannot control Revels- the closest I can get is spotting the easy ones (chocolate, raisin and to some extent the Malteasers)- the more insidious, complex ones require to be bitten in half before one can ascertain the variety. The parallels with mental health are obvious- some of the symptoms are easy to spot- for others you have to consume half of them to figure out what they are. Both the half-consumed Revels and half-consumed symptoms of mental illness, cause trauma, confusion and leave a nasty taste in your mouth.

So I present you with my Revels mood rating scale-

Revel	Characteristics	Accompanying Sensations	Emotions you may be experiencing	Symptoms elicited
Coffee	Tastes like death	Bad taste in mouth	Disappointment, anger, shame at being stupid enough to select the wrong Revel, grief, anguish and incapability of overcoming the sheer horror of the situation	Crying, shouting, hiding in bed, wearing pyjamas all day, foregoing self-care
	Texture of flesh in the early stages of putrefaction	Bad feeling in stomach	Anxiety	Shakiness, nausea, fast heart-rate, sweating, racing thoughts
	Smells like coffee from a vending machine	Nose invaded by the noxious smell of cheap coffee	Hyper-sensitivity to surroundings	Wearing magic invisibility sunglasses indoors, paranoia, sticker over webcam
	Impossible to distinguish from Orange Revel	Shocked and surprised“*This is not the Revel I want*”	Cheated, disappointed, “*my life is so unfair”,”everything bad happens to me“, “what else is going to go wrong today?” “EVERYTHING is a catastrophe*“	Possible psychotic episode, Suicidal ideation

(more…)

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Going Out, Acceptance and Spiderman

Posted in autistic, bipolar, blogging, children, crying, depression, driving, Eating Disorder, emotions, Fab Psychologist, Fantastic CPN, Fife, friends, health, hospital, hugs, IKEA, illness, Labour, love, Lovely Dietitian, Lovely GP, medication, Mehtheism, Mehtheist, mental illness, money, mother, NHS, parenting, politics, psychiatrist, recovery, relationship, religion, School, shopping, single-parent, social worker, Stolen Friend, suicide, support, tea, therapy, Twitter, violin, tagged bulimia, eating disorder, Mehtheism, Mehtheist, Mental Health, mental health, mental illness, suicide on July 1, 2011 | 17 Comments »

As usual I have so much to say, so much to say I fear I will never be able to pull it together into one clever, coherent, mental illness stigma challenging, hilariously entertaining, educational, accessible blog post.

I don’t know where to start; I could fill the internet with an account of the last fifteen minutes of my life.

Yet again I am in a new phase of mentalism, it’s probably got a name, I think the Fantastic CPN mentioned “acceptance” earlier. I don’t know what it’s called but I know I don’t like it.

Where to start?

I last blogged properly on Sunday the 19^th of June but probably left more unsaid than I actually said and in the interests of sharing every detail of my life with the whole wide world I feel I must go right back to Wednesday the 15^th of June, feel free to stop reading now but I urge you to hang around, it’s going to be good. Anyone reading could be forgiven for thinking I have a photographic memory- I don’t, I have a Tweet stream and a rather comprehensive diary, verbosity fills in any gaps. So get a cup of tea and your biscuit of choice, grab an extra Hob-Nob for me and enjoy.

Wednesday 15^th June 2011

That day I set out to buy a new fridge- in fact I was determined I was going to source, buy and install a new fridge before the day was out, little warning signs of impending mental crisis were evident even then. I was completely uninterested in fridges- that’s not mental that’s normal, fridges, particularly integrated fridges are spectacularly boring objects- I am referring to my inability to stay in a fridge shop for more than 4 minutes, my desire in B&Q (where I purchased a rotary washing line) to climb on to one of the shelves and sit there forever, weeping and rocking, pausing only occasionally to scream.

I carried on.

I emailed the Fantastic CPN and hinted that I wasn’t very well- physically or mentally. As usual I didn’t say enough, the Fantastic CPN urged me to visit the Lovely GP and most unusually I heeded her advice and made an appointment for the following day. I was surrendering, another little warning sign that I seemingly chose to ignore completely.

Thursday 16^th June

I saw the Lovely GP, I’m not sure what I said to her but I have it noted in my diary that she weighed me, I had lost weight again and she was going to contact the Fantastic CPN and the (still haven’t though of a suitable adjective) Psychiatrist and get back to me. I realise now I never did hear back from the Lovely GP. The fantastic CPN visited and again, according to my diary she informed me I was “severely cognitively impaired” and I cried- a lot. An emergency appointment was arranged with the <insert suitable adjective here> psychiatrist for the following Monday (she was off sick) or as I have it in my diary “supposed to see drug-pusher on Mon- not going”. Also have noted in my diary “haven’t eaten a thing since Tuesday, couldn’t decide food/zopiclone, went for zopiclone, sad” and so Thursday drew to a close.

Friday 17^th June 2011

The day started innocently enough, I woke up full of energy, I chose to display this both in real life and on Twitter as a good positive, industrious energy. In truth I could feel myself being slowly mentally poisoned. I had that infuriating urge to run away (see “P” for Paris and “S” for suicide) I had many intrusive thoughts and I knew it was only a matter of time before I snapped completely.

Being the self-aware and self-compassionate kind of girl I am I completely ignored all the massive warning signs that I was teetering on the verge of yet another crisis and I carried on. My first mission was to obtain a spiky thing in which to insert my new rotary washing line. This may come across as a very trivial pursuit indeed but to me this had become the Holy Grail.

The new washing line had come with a spiky thing- I had installed the spiky thing but the ground I had chosen was too soft and the washing line began to list precariously. I requested that the social worker rectify the situation by moving the spiky thing and then the next day (Thursday 16^th June) I demanded that he move it and stood over him whilst he did it- the spiky thing broke. I asked the social worker to buy a new spiky thing as soon as possible to prevent a backlog of laundry or an over reliance on the very expensive to run tumble dryer. The social worker assured me he would see to it and would return from work on the Thursday evening with a new spiky thing. He didn’t.

I returned from Argos (having sat outside for some time waiting for it to open- I was ahead of the game- yet another ignored warning sign) with a brand new spiky thing. I had a go at installing it but for some reason, seemingly unknown to me and certainly not due in my mind to the very early stages of malnutrition, I didn’t have the strength to complete the job. Again I demanded that the social worker install the spiky thing and he did- as I stood over him.

THE BASTARD SPIKY THING HAD A SMALLER DIAMETER THAN THE NEW ROTARY WASHING LINE.

I calmly smoked and requested that the social worker “please get it sorted”. Again he assured me he would………

The social worker and I then set out to attend the 6 year olds school assembly. The six year old did us proud, wore a hat with a beetle on it better than any of the other pupils and read his part, clearly, fluently and confidently. I marvelled at how unaffected by my descent into mentalism my baby appeared and I spared a moment to be grateful for the stability and nurturing he had received in school. I obviously couldn’t take any credit.

I don’t remember much from the assembly but I know I was on a knife-edge the whole time. I chose to ignore another big warning sign of impending mentalist doom- I had hypersensitive hearing and olfactory senses- I Tweeted in typical humorous fashion about the smell of the school (Plasticine, wee and mashed potato) and my general discomfort at being around others. How I didn’t hear and alert others to the alarm bells I have no idea. I was able to sit through the assembly and engage with the necessary small talk that such occasions demand and other than being alerted to the fact I had drunk a bottle of diet coke in approximately 50 seconds by the social worker, I probably appeared completely normal the whole time. Appearances can be very deceptive.

I vividly remember one particular part of the assembly as for some reason it marked the total destruction of what was left of my ability to continue functioning normally.

Hymn books were distributed amongst the audience- I Tweeted about it again humorously and remained seemingly unmental. Inside my head I completely and utterly lost it. I don’t know if I am skilled enough to articulate how I was feeling and what was going on or indeed why but I’ll try.

I am an antitheist, I’d much rather be a meh-theist as I truly believe that mehtheism would be a sensible healthy position to take on organised (or disorganised) religion. I am a vehement antitheist; I could accurately be described as a devout antitheist, a fanatical antitheist indeed a religious antitheist. I have particularly strong views on religious education and activities in schools, I’ll resist the urge to go into them too much here- suffice to say, I don’t like its heavy focus on Christianity. I very purposefully didn’t send my children to a faith school but it appears the Scottish curriculum has some of its roots firmly intertwined with the teachings of the church. I don’t think the practising of religion; any religion has any place in our schools. I am in favour of educating children about religion but would rather schools avoid the insidious, furtive indoctrination.

When those hymn books were handed out I froze, my head was filled with noise and was empty all at the same time, the social worker tried to hand me the book but I recoiled in horror. The chosen hymn number was announced- by the 6 year old- in that moment I was convinced this was a deliberate act by school staff done purely to further aggravate me. I was not angry but I was considerably disturbed and paranoid. The audience rose for the hymn- I remained seated, from that point on I was completely immersed in total and utter mentalism. My brain had turned into a noxious soup of unhappy, incoherent thoughts.

I returned home, the social worker went to work; I embarked on a cleaning frenzy- another sure sign that something is amiss. I despise housework and my enthusiastic doing of housework should always, always be viewed as a symptom. So I cleaned and hoovered and dusted and of course, Tweeted updates. All the while my brain was getting noisier and noisier, by this time the noise was nothing coherent just a general mix of thunderous rumbling, crashing and whooshing- a bit like having Niagara Falls take up residence in my pre-frontal lobes. The only distinctive part of the noise was the repeated instruction and compulsion to “Go Out!”

Going out is an everyday kind of thing for most people as it is for me- I do the school runs and make the occasional trip to the shops/bank/post office when necessary. My urge to “Go Out!” on this occasion was however just my brains lazy code for-

Take massive stash of saved up medication from hiding place in bedroom

Get in car

Drive

Stop somewhere quiet

Take aforementioned medication until death occurs

So I made preparations- I put my stash in a bag and located my car keys.

My hazier than usual memory will now, unfortunately impede the telling of the next part of the story so I think I’ll resort to a handy list format, which might in turn help to make this epic piece a bit easier on the eye for those of you still reading.

-The Fantastic CPN visited, I think she had also called, by this point I was making no sense at all but I think I expressed my vehement desire to “GO OUT!” (my volume increased every time I made the demand) I was instructed to go nowhere until she had visited.

-The CPN came round and there was a protracted standoff in the bedroom where I spent variable amounts of time a) Demanding to exercise my right as an adult to GO OUT! And b) regressing horribly and weeping at the Fantastic CPN.

- The Fantastic CPN laid down an ultimatum- I could go out but she would phone the police. I was able to rationalise that if police involvement were necessary this would probably involve me being touched at some point so I was keen to avoid it. The Fantastic CPN contacted the Different GP and he was on his way. I continued to ask the Fantastic CPN if I could GO OUT. She made a futile attempt to hide my car keys but I snatched them back and put them in my pocket.

- The Different GP arrived and proceeded to bombard me with questions, I dazzled him with my cognitive abilities by remaining folded up in the foetal position on my bed repeating my mantra of “I’m fine” over and over again. I had naturally assumed that he would fall for this and disregard the fact I never looked at him once, spent an inordinate amount of time wailing like a wounded animal and refusing to do anything other than insist I just wanted to GO OUT!

- The Different GP then issued his own ultimatum- be taken to the local acute psych ward in an ambulance or be taken by the Fantastic CPN. The mere mention of the local acute psych ward sent me reeling and I refused to go- I switched the mantra from “I’m fine” to “I’m not going anywhere, no, no, NO”.

- Somewhere in all of this the social worker appeared, until this point, in spite of me telling him otherwise in very graphic detail earlier in the week, the social worker had assumed I was fine. I’m not sure what he was thinking when he launched into his passive-aggressive anti-suicide pitch as I stood determinedly in the bedroom, completely mental with only going OUT on my mind and half a pharmacy in my bag. I now had another reason to GO OUT- the social worker was mad at me.

- There then followed a period of waiting whilst forms were filled out and phonecalls were made, I prowled the house all the time plotting my escape- hence the reason the Fantastic CPN followed me everywhere.

- To my relative relief the Different GP announced there were no beds available on the local acute psych ward- I immediately assumed this would mean I would be given carte blanche to GO OUT unimpeded. A bed was found on a psych ward in another part of Fife. My “I’m not going no, no, NO” mantra returned.

- The fantastic CPN somehow persuaded me to get in her car and to agree not to jump out of her car at any point. I love the Fantastic CPN so would never do anything that I think would directly have a negative affect on her career- just in case they took her off me.

- So off we went to Kirkcaldy and to the scabbiest, mankiest, most unkempt psych ward I’ve ever seen- and that’s saying something. I didn’t want to leave the Fantastic CPN as I feared she was going to leave me there- at this point I still believed I could convince the duty psychiatrist I was fine and should be sent home and given a nice cup of tea. I was prised off the Fantastic CPN and taken to a room to wait. It did not escape my attention that the room was adjacent to the main exit from the ward- from my vantage point I could still see the Fantastic CPNs car so I knew she was still there so I sat and waited.

The next part is such a blur that I will probably have to make it up but in the interests of bloggers integrity I will try and list what I can remember-

- I was offered a cup of tea, I never refuse a cup of tea but when I saw that cup of tea in standard psych hospital issue, green, stained, plastic beaker I couldn’t even bring myself to touch it.

- Various members of staff came to see me at various points and they showed themselves to be far lovelier than any of the staff I’d encountered at the previous psych hospital. I didn’t care though; I had decided that the minute the Fantastic CPN left, should she leave without me- I was off.

- Unfortunately for my cunning plan I was then the victim of a kind of mental health professional pincer action- the Fantastic CPN returned to the room with the duty psychiatrist and another member of staff.

- In an unbelievable, very non-therapeutic fashion that will haunt me forever the duty psychiatrist for some reason came bounding in, ruffled my hair and then physically tried to get me to lift me head up to look at her, she grabbed my head. I lost it and screamed “Stop touching me!” and I think I repeated it under my breath several thousand times in an almost self-soothing fashion.

- The fantastic CPN had to leave- and I was not going with her. There followed a period of my clinging and shrieking “Please don’t leave me here Fantastic CPN (not her real name) I promise I’ll eat and I won’t kill myself, just don’t leave me here” she prised me off and left and I just switched off completely, fully immersed myself in lala land, it’s always much safer there.

-I was assessed by the duty psych who finally realised that I really fucking meant it when I said stop touching me as at one point she patted me on the arm and I said “I really fucking meant it when I told you to stop touching me”.

- I stated repeatedly that I wasn’t staying; I didn’t need to be there and finally after a long gruelling assessment got told the following “you need to agree to stay or they’re going to detain you”.

Now had I been in my right frame of mind or indeed any frame of mind, this clear abuse of the Mental Health Act would’ve been apparent to me and I would’ve challenged it. As it was I was led away, defeated, offered tea and a place to smoke and handed a bag of toiletries (I had left the house with nothing- assuming I would be returning home) and horror of horrors- an NHS nightdress.

I don’t do nightdresses, I do pyjamas, to me a nightdress symbolises helplessness and trauma as they invariably attack you at some point during the night and attempt to asphyxiate you.

I was helpless by this point, completely helpless so I cleaned my teeth, put the nightdress of doom on, got given medication and went to bed.

Saturday 18^th June 2011

I slept for two hours as is the norm these days (I still haven’t written that post on sleep, don’t think I’m going to it’d be incredibly boring) and when I awoke at 2am a member of staff came rushing to my bedside to inform me I was on constant observation as I was “At risk of self-harm and absconding”. Given that I had just woken up and actually at that point had no idea where I was or what had happened all I did was nod and accept the green sheet of paper outlining the details of the constant observation. Basically I was being watched- constantly.

Extract from the 1995 CRAG document Nursing Observation of Acutely Ill Psychiatric Patients in Hospital (revised 2003)

5.9 Constant Observation

The constant level of observation should be used for patients considered to pose a significant risk to self or others. An allocated member of staff should be constantly aware at all times of the precise whereabouts of the patient through visual observation or hearing. The method and purpose of maintaining observation must be clearly determined and stated at the time of review. Respect for privacy should be an important consideration, but a balance should be struck on the side of safety in all matters such as escorting to the toilet, bathroom, or public telephone, etc. In some circumstances the patient may be permitted to leave the ward or other clinical area in the company of an escorting nurse, other informed professional worker or appropriate relative. This decision must be part of the risk assessment process and the comments referred to in the previous section should be noted. Appropriate members of the multi-disciplinary team (generally a minimum of the nurse in charge and duty doctor) should review the need for constant observation at least every 24 hours.

Being under constant scrutiny was a major irritation for me, having someone watch me sleep, watch me smoke, watch me drink tea and watch me lie in a fetid cloud of my own misery was very strange. It seemed like psychiatric overkill but to be fair, I have form. It was unusual for an “informal” patient to be on constant obs though and even the staff were a bit bemused- a fact that, to my delight they shared with me. The psychiatric profession can be very bitchy when they want to be; obviously I encouraged it as it was all fuel to the fire I was building in my mind.

So I had a constant minder, every time I moved- they looked and followed. My minders also watched me Tweet and rushed in every time to ask who I was calling/texting, I couldn’t be bothered to explain Twitter.

Which brings me nicely to the bit in my blog where I gush about Twitter for a bit.

Yet again in my moment of need, Twitter came to the rescue and I received many messages from followers. As is my wont I even created a # tag for my stay (#inthebin) though I often forgot to use it- a good reflection of my mental state during that weekend. This next bit may be very touching and poignant or it may just be quite “sad” as the kids would say.

When I Tweeted my distress call that Friday night Twitter responded in a way I never expected and I received messages from followers who I never expected to care about my mental crises. Something strange happened to me over that weekend, I started to realise that people genuinely did care about me- even people I had never met. I am plagued by a general sense of unworthiness so I’m always surprised when people like me but I actually began to think that maybe for as repugnant as I found myself there was something there worth caring about. A little bit of self-compassion finally started to seep in to my emotionally vacuous, soulless body.

My weekend on the psych ward was hard, they are not good places. This psych ward was far better in every way than the one I spent so much time on last year but no amount of tea and friendly staff can ever erase the utter horribleness that is time spent on a psych ward.

Nothing especially interesting happened that weekend; I spent most of it lying in bed, hopeless, foodless and cold. I was the personification of misery. I attempted to get discharged on the Saturday (in order that I could go home and go out) but was persuaded to stay and have the constant observation lifted instead.

Being in a psychiatric ward always presents one with the dilemma at some point- tell the truth or get out. Nothing makes me want to escape more than being put on a psychiatric ward and told not to leave- leaving becomes my all-consuming focus. I become obsessed with getting away- to the point where walking past the exit gives me butterflies and an urge to flee. I spent much of my weekend deliberating over whether to tell the consultant how I was really feeling or tell him what he wanted to hear.

Sunday 19^th June 2011

I have no idea what happened on the Sunday, I have noted in my diary “still haven’t eaten (5 days) I need to learn how to lie and quick”

Monday 20^th June 2011

Nothing could say it better than my diary entry for that day so here it is-

“Waiting to see consultant, all showered and dressed sane. Fantastic CPN says she can’t look after me at home if I’m not eating. I don’t know what I want; I think I still want to die. Terrified if I tell the truth I will be detained and I know my reaction will be to run.”

Later….

“Saw consultant he said “there is nothing more we can do for you”.

Later again….

“Home now, can’t decide if the social worker is scared or selfish. Ended up going to B&Q for a washing line spike myself. Ate a bowl of cornflakes, feel like death. Promised the Fantastic CPN I would see her tomorrow. Fab Psychologist wants to come round tomorrow but the house is a pigsty and so am I. In bed at 9 need to sleep, want to die. So very hopeless and depressed”.

I have no idea what I said to the <insert very negative adjective here> consultant, so I don’t know what he based his rather defeatist attitude on but all I cared about was that I was out of the hospital and home- even though it is apparent that being at home did little to ease my state of mind.

Tuesday 21^st June 2011

The Fab Psychologist did a housecall, I had therapy in my pyjamas. I have no idea what we talked about but I’m sure it was profound, healing and meaningful.

I saw the Lovely GP that afternoon and I note in my diary- “Lovely GP was lovely, gave me 28 Lorazepam” so it’s quite clear where my focus was that day.

The fantastic CPN also visited that day as promised, in my diary I note-

“ Fantastic CPN came round and gave me a whole heap of shit on bulimia- I AM NOT BULIMIC I AM A FAT ANOREXIC” she’s coming back on Friday”

I laugh at this now, somewhat wryly. As I stated in my confessional post on my eating disorder I do not fit the diagnostic criteria for anorexia or bulimia- the diagnostic criteria are very, for want of a better word, slim.

There is something intrinsically insulting to a “restricter” to be labelled bulimic and anyone reading this up to their armpits in an eating disorder will be nodding, the rest of you will be bemused so I will attempt to explain.

To me, as an eating disordered person, restricting food intake (AKA starving oneself) represents control, utter control over ones body and mind. Eating food in any quantity represents a lack of control- binging on food represents an extraordinary loss of control.

I have had periods in the past where I have binged- this time last year I invested a great deal of my time in ingesting large quantities of food and then vomiting. Now I largely avoid food and tend to vomit when I have eaten anything. In my eating disordered mind this is control and I am winning. When I am being rational (it has been known) I can see how absolutely fucked up this is but it doesn’t stop me. The Fantastic CPNs insistence that I was bulimic was insulting- I was better than that, I could deprive myself of nourishment for days, I never binged, I was in control, I was strong……….

I never claimed that any of this had to make sense.

That evening I drank wine and tweeted- a lot. I’ve just read what I tweeted and I’m blushing so I wont go into it.

Wednesday 22 June 2011

On Wednesday I took delivery of and installed my new fridge – in what I suspect is a Twitter first, I live-Tweeted the installation (#fridge). I enjoyed it immensely and astounded myself with my ability to turn my hand to anything.

I spent the evening with my Stolen Friend, I call him that as he is actually an old school friend of the social workers but he is mine now. For the first time ever I was honest with the Stolen Friend about how I was doing and our evening involved crying, hugging, talking and ultimately laughing uproariously at Stewart Lee (officially the 41^st best stand up ever). I left the Stolen Friend with instructions to obtain tickets for Stewart Lee’s next live performance in Scotland- and he has- 12^th of August in Edinburgh.

I had been mulling some things over for a while and mulled them over further on the drive home from the Stolen Friends house. That day I decided I was going to tell the social worker our relationship was over. I was also going to resign from my job.

In my diary I wrote “Self-compassion or mental and impulsive? I think it may just be the former, Look after yourself Zoë”

I often refer to myself in the third person in my diary, I do it on Twitter too, when I do it on Twitter I somehow know it’s time to step away for a bit, it’s sign of mentalism for me and one I usually manage to pay heed to.

Thursday 23^rd June 2011

On Thursday I saw the Lovely Dietitian, that self-compassion was still there and after all the gruelling talk of food, weight and meal-plans I asked her for a hug and got one.

I’m not sure what I did for the rest of Thursday, I thought a lot about my decisions and I emailed the Lovely Boss to inform her of my decision regarding work.

The decision to resign from my job was actually very easy. I am not ready to go back and won’t be for some time. Career wise now is the time to go back as it’s the start of a new Parliamentary session; having missed so much of last session through illness I have no desire to return part-way through a session again. Having the job there, waiting for me to go back in to it did nothing but allow me to heap pressure in myself to “get back to normal” and encouraged me to declare false recoveries to my care team and myself. That self-compassion I talked about made me realise that I still had a very long way to go before I was ready for full on real life again- and that was OK. I needed to remove the pressure- so I did- and what’s more, it worked.

Obviously at some point soon I will have to deal with the grim, practical realities of being mental and unemployed but I will deal with them when I am ready. By resigning from my job I have indirectly “resigned” from a lot of future opportunities but I have rationalised that when I am really ready there will be other jobs and other opportunities.

That evening I informed the social worker of my other big decision- I didn’t want to be with him anymore and I wanted him to leave. In fact that’s all I said- repeatedly and monotonously.

News of my decision did not please him and there followed a rather uncomfortable standoff in the kitchen- him questioning my ability to care for the children (“everyone knows the mentally ill don’t make very good parents”) and me stating repeatedly and somewhat robotically “I don’t want to be with you anymore and I want you to leave”. He ate a peach, said he “wasn’t going anywhere”; 40 minutes later he was gone. There followed an uncomfortable exchange of text messages before the social workers adult side re-emerged around midnight. He was hurt and more than anyone else on the planet I know that hurt and how hideously painful it is- I was torn between comforting him and shouting “HA TAKE THAT YOU BASTARD! HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW?” I threw him a shred of comfort for old time’s sake and went to bed.

In truth (sorry social worker) I realised I should never have taken him back, I was vulnerable, I was aware that others were concerned about my ability to care for the children and had a huge desire for me to have a “responsible adult” at home. The mental health profession wanted me to have a carer, I needed a carer and he, motivated by love and huge amounts of guilt was there. I have some residual anger that I feel I was forced back into a relationship with someone who had hurt me so badly, I’m not very good with anger so I suspect it will either dissipate over time or fester into something huge and uncontrollable at some point in the future.

I will always love the social worker and we did have many happy times together but I can never forgive him for what he did in October 2009 and where it led me. I don’t blame the social worker for my mentalism but he certainly played a huge part in accelerating the “mental health car crash waiting to happen” that I was. On reflection our relationship was never as good as either of us would have ourselves or others believe, there was an intrinsic toxicity about it and I had to end it before I started actively hating him.

Friday 24^th June 2011

I woke on Friday feeling a strange mixture of liberated and hugely hugely guilty for the pain I was about to inflict upon my children by telling them the social worker and I were no longer going to be a couple. I felt like the worst mother in the world but I still knew I had made the right decision.

The Fantastic CPN visited and I suppose we largely talked about my big decisions.

That evening the social worker and I assembled the children in the living room to tell them what was going on. The 14 year old already knew as I had told her the previous evening after the social worker left. The 6 year old reacted calmly but sadly, stated he was “worried” and I held him for a while as we both cried. The 16 year old reacted in a quite typically autistic way and stated that he was “annoyed” the social worker and I assured him that this was no-ones fault and not done with the intention to wind anybody up. We talked about how things would work from then on. The 6 year old was cheered up immensely by the thought of having two homes again “wow, 2 TV’s, 2 bedrooms, will you get a house with stairs Daddy, I love stairs”. Then we all went to a local restaurant for dinner.

Dinner was lovely, the atmosphere was peaceful and conciliatory, the social worker and I questioned how each other were doing, he assured me he would always be there if needed and I told him to take good care of himself. We laughed a lot that evening and proved that the social worker and I make much better friends and much better parents when we’re not trying to be a couple.

Saturday 25^th June 2011

Again, nothing explains the day better than my diary-

“Ate too much, drank too much, purged too much. Awful self-destructive. Took Zopiclone and 2 Lorazepam, feel guilty, need escape. Bad. Not good.”

So here I was again, stuck in a sneaky hate spiral- directed against myself and not surprisingly, alcohol was involved.

Sunday 26^th June 2011

I set out early on Sunday morning to get the newspapers, I don’t know why I bothered, it took me all of my mental energy to look at the pictures. The Sunday papers used to be one of the highlights of my week but the whole experience now does nothing more than shine a light on my poor level of functioning and general disinterest in everything. I’ve had a few political moments this week- largely thoughts around feeling irritated by a political party that takes £8 a month from my bank account and I feel no longer represents me in any way. I feel another big decision coming on regarding this but I’ve decided to wait for a bit to see how I feel.

The social worker took the six year old out for the day and the 14 year old and I set off on a road trip. I was determined to buy something that day, couldn’t decide between an espresso machine or a small pet of some kind. We ended up at Ikea where various things we didn’t really need were purchased.

I had made a commitment to the Lovely Dietitan earlier in the week to eat a snack at around 2pm every day. Yes that was me in the restaurant in the Edinburgh branch of Ikea- panicking at the lack of food that came with nutrition information. I eventually settled on a children’s yoghurt as it was the only thing available with a nutrition information label. So at least I knew what was in it- even if I didn’t like what was in it. Being a children’s yoghurt it was made with whole milk- that yoghurt was my nemesis. For those of you lucky enough not to have an eating disorder, all of this will be difficult to understand, as I said to the Stolen Friend last night “I wouldn’t understand it myself if I wasn’t in it”. I knew it was the right and proper thing to do, to eat that yoghurt so I did, but that one pot of yoghurt (Strawberry and banana, organic, no added sugar) left me feeling so guilty, so ashamed and so much of a failure my mood dropped and I wanted to do nothing more than go home and climb into bed. That’s my reaction to one small snack, imagine having to go through that much deliberation, that much anxiety and have to risk feeling all those painful emotions every time you eat. That’s life with an eating disorder; it’s a very cruel mental illness indeed. If I was an alcoholic or a drug addict I could quit, I’m good at quitting things. You cannot quit food (well you can, as I have proved but it’s a very bad idea) you have to find a way to both consume food and stay sane; it’s a constant battle and a very long one.

I bought an espresso machine and stole the necessary crockery from a branch of Costa Coffee. Well I say stole, I reckoned that as I’d paid close to £7 for two drinks and a granola bar that cup and saucer were rightfully mine. Though technically I think it’s still stealing. I feel I should add here “I’m not proud of it” or something but I’m not going to, I wouldn’t say I was proud as such I just had a problem and found a way to solve it in my own unique mental way. It’s not something I intend to make a habit of.

That evening I realised that the one thing the social worker reliably did that I would now have to do, the ironing, still needed done. I think this next bit is going to even confuse me so you’re forgiven if you read it and it makes no sense.

I cannot iron.

I had forgotten that I spent 5 years as an RAF wife and I can in fact iron- quickly and really well (creases in sleeves and trouser legs optional). The ironing turned out to be a piece of piss; my body just seemed to remember how to do it. My mind still thinks it is one of the most incredibly boring tasks ever invented and I will still have to try and find ways to avoid it in the future though.

So Sunday all told was quite good, I enjoyed my time with the 14 year old, she is very good company. I spent far too much money on things I didn’t need and I will have to stop doing that very soon.

Monday 27^th June 2011

Sleep was becoming a major issue for me; it’s too dull to go into much detail. Basically I’m not getting very much in spite of minor prescription drug misuse. I’ve cut back on caffeine (that espresso machine was a waste of money) in an attempt to help but nothing has really changed. The advice from the <?> psychiatrist is to take 2 Zopiclone at night- thereby demonstrating the psychiatrists total lack of understanding of a- the problem and b- the way Zopiclone works. But as I said I can’t be bothered to go into it, maybe I will write that post on sleep?

Monday started well, I walked the 6 year old to school and popped into town for bits and pieces and some tea. I had decided that in my desperate pursuit of sleep it was worth sacrificing my beloved tea so I was going to have no more caffeine after10am. Well that’s what I said.

If you read the previous post you will see that the 6 year old was sent home from school that day for the most spurious of reasons. As he wasn’t actually unwell and was his usual boisterous, fun loving, demanding, messy, noisy self- I managed to go 4 hours without tea.

I’m not sure what happened the rest of the day but I know I was feeling severely depressed. I hide it well though (even from myself) and was able to get on with all the things I needed to do. That evening I did an interview for SRN on mental health and social networking.

Tuesday 28^th June 2011

Tuesday was a long hard day- I know that because that’s what it says in my diary, unfortunately it’s rather thin on detail as to why! Maybe that was just a bit of self-indulgent journalling? Tuesday was also the day I started writing this piece, as things stand it’s now Friday 1^st July 2011 and I still have no idea if I’ll finish it, let alone publish it.

The Fantastic CPN visited, I cried at her, we talked about acceptance, I think I get it and I think I am doing it. It hurts- a lot. I was going to resist the upcoming verbal self-pity but it just appears to be flowing from my fingertips so I’ll go ahead.

I don’t want to be mentally ill, I want to be normal. I want to react to things normally, view myself normally, eat normally and lose that latent desire to cease to exist. I have accepted that I am ill and I have also accepted that I am going to take some time to recover- I think that time is currently pencilled in as 18 months, I’m trying not to be black and white about and actually set a date- that’s how accepting I am!

I accept that I have to do things differently and I accept that I will not generally find life easy. With acceptance has come a little more self-compassion but I even find that excruciatingly painful, it is difficult to allow yourself to feel compassion for someone you hate.

I feel as though, mired though I am in self-pity and crippling low mood, that I have moved on in some way, it’s just very difficult to define.

Tuesday evening was sunny and warm so the 14 year old, 6 year old and I went for a walk. We walked to town, the children had ice-cream, I denied myself ice-cream and cried a little inside. I enjoyed the walk, my children are very good company.

Wednesday 29^th June 2011

I woke after 4 hours sleep, I took the 6 year old to school (in the car, in my pyjamas) came home took 2 Zopiclone and 2 Lorazepam and slept for a mammoth 2 hours. I was shattered but the after effects of the Lorazepam helped me see out the day in a mellow haze of warm benzodiazepine fuzziness.

I spent the evening at the 14 year olds end of term concert, as usual the standard was high and it was quite enjoyable if a little long. I adore the sound of violins, in fact stringed instruments in general so was particularly impressed by the Senior Strings Group. I reserve my right to abhor the sound of the clarsach though and sure enough that night I think I found the worst sound ever- “Don’t Stop Believin’” plinked, plunked and dragged from the strings of a clarsach it’s like having little fiery swords of death rammed into your ears. Horrible.

The 14 year old sang with her singing group at the end, they did a great job, she looked like she enjoyed it and she made me very proud, she also looked resplendent in her blazer, shirt, tie, skirt and Converse with rainbow ribbons for laces. She is her mother’s daughter, in all the good ways.

Thursday 30^th June 2011

I took delivery of a surprise trampoline for the six year old and spent most of the morning assembling it. Stopping occasionally to Tweet, smoke, drink tea and shelter from the rain.

I saw the Lovely Dietitian in the afternoon and we discussed my progress. There’s not a lot of progress to be honest but there is some. I have a long way to go and I find it incredibly daunting and scary.

I finally had to admit defeat with the stupid car and booked it into a local garage to get the gears fixed. I can’t afford the car in all honesty but I don’t think I could go without it. I don’t even want to think about it so I’ll stop writing about it too.

The Stolen Friend visited in the afternoon, we drank tea and chatted.

The social worker came to visit, he annoyed me but I’m not entirely sure I’ve figured out why yet. So he annoyed me further by texting to ask if I was annoyed at him and if so why was I annoyed at him?

By 6pm the sneaky hate spiral was back and I fell at the first fence and went out and bought a bottle of wine. I can avoid alcohol easily- when I want to but once I’ve taken that first sip I have committed to a journey on the self-destruction train, it’s a through service, there are no stops- until you get to the end.

So last night involved self-abuse with alcohol and toast (only the eating disordered can self-abuse with toast) but no vomiting! I know most people make it through most days without making themselves vomit so this may not seem like a big deal- but it was and it’s something I am trying very hard to be proud of.

Friday 1^st July 2011

I can’t believe I might actually have almost finished writing this post. Today is Friday 1^st July 2011; I have 2 hours and 8 minutes left before the six and a half week long summer holiday begins.

I have no idea how I’m going to cope over the summer holidays; I confess that parenting isn’t one of my more finely honed skills. I suspect we will have lots of lazy days and that trampoline will get a lot of use (if I ever finish assembling it). I think the summer holidays may provide me with many opportunities and challenges regarding eating so it could be a very healing time. I am looking forward to relaxing a bit and enjoying fluid bedtimes and hopefully some late starts. I have no plans as yet for any activities as such but we have wonderful beaches on our doorstep and provided the stupid car doesn’t die completely and I don’t get a sudden pang of responsibility when I take the Barclaycard out, I presume we’ll have some good days out.

I don’t know what I feel today. I am deeply ashamed of my trip on the self-destruction train last night and have again decided to give up alcohol for a while (I think that’s the third time this week). My mood is low and I feel aimless and a bit jumpy so it’ll have to be one of those moment-to-moment kind of days.

The house is an utter mess so I must be quite relaxed and all I have done today is pop the 6 year old on the school bus and write this post.

I still have that wonderful feeling of freedom but in a bit of a Spiderman moment I realise that with freedom comes great responsibility and I may have to take a quick reality check on just how much freedom I actually have and what this really allows me to do.

So there you go 16.5 days in my life in just under 8000 words. I really should write that book, at least then I might get some money for sharing so much with so many!

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Rambling musings of an apparently recovering mentalist…

Posted in activist, bipolar, blogging, CBT, Fantastic CPN, Fife, friends, health, illness, Labour, Lovely GP, mental illness, NHS, parenting, politics, psychiatrist, recovery, stability, support, therapy, tagged Mental Health, mental illness on May 29, 2011 | 3 Comments »

I realised this week, whilst relaying my week to a friend, via email, that I have been “out of bed, dressed and functioning every day”. So again, I must be “getting better”. Now I’ve been here before at least once, thinking “this is it, I’m getting better” only for everything to then go tits-up and start cascading into another “crisis”. It’s a funny word crisis, it’s one of those words that takes on a whole new power and meaning when your lexicon has its origins in the world of mental health (that is the shittest theme park ever by the way). Again, going back to my love of discussing semantics, crisis is an everyday kind of word- broken washing machine? Crisis. Going overdrawn? Crisis. Late for work? Crisis. In mental health terms though crisis generally means threatening to kill one of your care team (sorry about that fantastic CPN), an unscheduled trip to your psychiatrist, more drugs and the threat of hospital. Well it does for me anyway, individual experiences may vary……. I’m hopeful that this time will be different and I actually think it might be (I probably said that last time too).

So what leads me to believe that this “getting better” may be different? Well…………………………………….. I AM GOING BACK TO WORK! At least that’s the plan, my old job is there if I want it (and I really, really do) and my plan is to go back. What I hadn’t realised is that once you’re certified mental and are “in the system” every Tom, Dick, Harry and GP gets to meddle in your previously autonomous decisions. I announced my intention to return to work to various members of my “team” last week and they all chipped in with their concerns and conditions. There is a general fear that I will rush things, take on too much and in my lovely GPs words “have another breakdown”. Gee thanks!

So what have I done to guard against my (almost overwhelming) desire to go back to work, get back on 15 committees and erm generally just take on too much? Well I’m not going back to work at all for around 6 weeks, even then I plan a phased return, to date I haven’t joined any committees (though I have taken on a little extra work for the one committee I remained a member of throughout my period of acute mentalism) and I’m generally just trying to be sensible.

Being sensible is actually a million miles away from where I was a fortnight ago- my original intention was just to go straight back to work and use it as a handy tool to ditch the world of mental health (very scary rides, no height restrictions, guaranteed to make you throw-up) my cunning plan was to become “too busy with being normal” to bother with therapy, CPNs, GP’s, psychiatrists et al. To be honest I’m still not convinced I can or want to combine mentalism with normality (ooh good example of black and white thinking there for all you CBT fans) so I’m kind of a work in progress. I’m not 100% convinced that I’m the best person to oversee this work but I’m all I’ve got- or am I?

So herein follows a rather boring diatribe about MH care for those of you of a political or parenting disposition, you have been warned. I will do my best to make this part as accessible as possible for those who haven’t paid the (extortionate) entry fee for the world of mental health.

I am fortunate, I have a very comprehensive care team, every aspect of my mental and physical health has a professional to bolster it and I genuinely like them all, they’re all good people- until they try to get me to do something I don’t want to do or disagree with me. I don’t mind being challenged so much- it’s kind of an essential part of getting better but I do so hate to be forced into a corner or told I am wrong! I never expected for a second that my decision to go back to work would be anything other than that- my decision but I realise now that my GP holds all the cards- she has to sign a “fit for work” certificate and now, “thanks” to new legislation it’s not just as simple as a signature on a form, she gets to suggest how long I should work for, what I do and also gets to drag me back in and reassess her initial decision. My last hope was that all I had to do was get her to sign me fit for work and then never see her again. It would be just like the old days and save for waking up finding a limb hanging off I would never need to see the lovely GP at all.

I’m coming back to this post a day later as I encountered a bit of bloggers block whilst writing it and now, to be honest I’m not exactly sure where I was/am going with it. I’ll just keep rambling, do keep reading it’s bound to get good at some point.

I’ve had another good day, in fact it’s been a good weekend, lots of parenting, lots of politics and very little mentalism- so of course I feel that urge to “get back to normal” even more patently now. Again, thanks to recent experience I find myself wondering if it was bloggers block or that “poor concentration” the lovely GP was questioning me about last week. I think the self-doubt that poor mental health leaves one with is probably one of the hardest obstacles for me to overcome. I’m so used to every little nuance being medicalised and mentalised that I question every mood, every decision, every desire. I’m doing exactly the kinds of things I used to do but I see them through new eyes and I’d really rather not.

So all in all, things are good- I have plans (and not the “buy a giraffe, name it Toby, get a tattoo, write a book- no 2 books, take over the world” kind of plans I’ve had in the past) I have interests and best of all I got a lovely warm welcome from all my Fife Labour colleagues when I returned to meetings this week. I feel like I am back.

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>Fixing One Curve, Starting Another

Posted in autism, mental illness, mother, recovery, tagged Mental Health, mental illness on December 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

>This past week has been another learning curve; I’ve learned lots about myself, my condition and my son.

Last Wednesday my eldest son (Calvin, 16) was admitted to hospital to have an operation – (“lower spinal fusion with instrumentation and autologous ileac grafts” according to the consent form). It’s as major an operation as it sounds but I knew he was in the hands of one of the best surgeons so I wasn’t worried about the success of the operation. I was worried about how both he and I would cope with the before and after bits though.

I needn’t have worried about Calvin, he did extremely well, told me he loved me when he came round and declared himself “officially hard as nails” between doses of morphine. Physio started without delay and it was gruelling and painful but he did so well he walked out of the hospital 5 days post-op.

I was staying in accommodation near the hospital so was on hand most of the day and into the evening for Calvin, fetching Yorkie bars, copies of the Guardian and drinks of water. We chatted, mainly about politics, a little about trains and a lot about things to do when he was better.

This time we spent together, though marred by the after effects of surgery, was precious time. In common with most mums and 16 year old boys, we don’t usually spend a lot of time talking to each other- our exchanges are mainly functional “can you go to the shop for milk?” “yeah” “are you going to school today?” “no” that kind of thing. The conversations we had as he lay in his hospital bed were special and cherished; I’ve learned more about my son in 5 days than I think I’ve learned in the previous 16 years.

To cut down on travelling (especially as I can’t drive at the moment) I stayed in accommodation provided by the family support centre. It was lovely but not quite lovely enough to stop me surviving on very little sleep, I went home on Saturday night to get a rest. Once I’d got over the maternal guilt I had a lovely evening at home and returned to the hospital on Sunday morning relieved but not surprised that Cal had survived the night without me.

It had been a stressful few days and I could feel myself losing my grip a bit. It’s so difficult to articulate how I was feeling. I was agitated, restless, tearful and maddeningly tired from lack of sleep. The final warning sign was waking at 4am on Monday. I decided it was in my best interests and Calvin’s for me to head home as who knew what was coming. I’d spent the whole time at the hospital feeling a bit unstable.

19 hours later I was still awake and generally just going loopy.

I managed to do something I never would have managed to do a few months ago- I recognised it and dealt with it (sleeping tablets), 191/2 hours after waking up I was fast asleep.

I’m still feeling unsettled now, still restless enough that Lorazepam seemed appropriate today. Part of the problem is my ongoing irritation at living on the knife edge that bipolar can be. The toxic stress is inescapable and I am furious at myself for not being able to deal with it.

Stress wise there is a lot going on around me- the country has ground to a halt thanks to snow, the children are off school and we’re generally all feeling a bit fed up of each other. I’ve been in this situation before and coped fine so is it any wonder I find myself furious at my inability to cope without Lorazepam and frequent trips through to the bedroom to hide.

My new medication seems to be working, though it’s difficult to tell. I know I have a full body tremor so bad that hugging me is like holding a frightened rabbit. Drugs to combat the tremor are useless (unless blurred vision is what you’re looking for) and I have to avoid doing anything in front of others that involves using my hands. I struggle to even walk down stairs.

I’ve been thinking a lot about acceptance and recovery lately, just thinking mind you, don’t think I’m far enough out of denial yet to blog about it.

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>Recovery

Posted in mental illness, recovery, tagged Mental Health, mental illness on June 12, 2010 | 6 Comments »

>After my reflection on how well my week had gone in yesterdays blog post I received a comment that said “….sounds like you are on the road to recovery….” When the comment landed in my email inbox, I opened it and quickly shut it again.

Today I was reading this article and again was struck by a familiar feeling of unease.

I fear recovery.

Why on earth do I fear recovery? Surely I should embrace it and work hard for it? What’s not to want?

The truth is I’m not even sure what recovery is for me. I don’t think I’m going to be who I was before I got ill and I wasn’t very sure who I was then.

Will recovery mean I can sit still long enough to read, to work, to engage meaningfully in a conversation? Will recovery mean I can sleep without drugs- and if I don’t the only consequence is tiredness? Will recovery mean I can feel sad without it turning into a great deep, dark hole?

Will recovery mean I can return to caring for all of my children all of the time, whilst holding onto my job, being an active member of the community and an active member of the Labour party?

Will recovery mean no more CPN support, no more fortnightly GP visits, no more psychiatrist appointments no more medication? Will friends stop texting, calling and visiting? Will recovery mean no-one cares anymore?

I don’t know what recovery is, so no wonder I am frightened of it. I’m not sure anyone else can tell me what it is either. I fear recovery because it is still too far away and from that I take some comfort.

In spite of my fear, I continue fighting. Today has been another successful day, nothing out of the ordinary but extraordinary nonetheless.

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DSM-VI Mentalism Criteria

60-

2-

7-

9-

3-

17-

200-

1-

Wednesday 15th June 2011

Thursday 16th June

Friday 17th June 2011

THE BASTARD SPIKY THING HAD A SMALLER DIAMETER THAN THE NEW ROTARY WASHING LINE.

Saturday 18th June 2011

Extract from the 1995 CRAG document Nursing Observation of Acutely Ill Psychiatric Patients in Hospital (revised 2003)

Sunday 19th June 2011

Monday 20th June 2011

Tuesday 21st June 2011

Wednesday 22 June 2011

Thursday 23rd June 2011

Friday 24th June 2011

Saturday 25th June 2011

Sunday 26th June 2011

Monday 27th June 2011

Tuesday 28th June 2011

Wednesday 29th June 2011

Thursday 30th June 2011

Friday 1st July 2011

Me*

Comments

Copyright

A Cute Metaphor

Lunatics Lexicon

The Story So Far

C Is For Celebrity

Multiples- Mentals In Disguise

Questions? Here Are Some Answers

My First Award

TWIM Blog Awards 2011

Read These

Email Subscription

Wednesday 15^th June 2011

Thursday 16^th June

Friday 17^th June 2011

Saturday 18^th June 2011

Sunday 19^th June 2011

Monday 20^th June 2011

Tuesday 21^st June 2011

Thursday 23^rd June 2011

Friday 24^th June 2011

Saturday 25^th June 2011

Sunday 26^th June 2011

Monday 27^th June 2011

Tuesday 28^th June 2011

Wednesday 29^th June 2011

Thursday 30^th June 2011

Friday 1^st July 2011