17:08 – Another useless CPN session

Firstly I’d just like to say thank you for all the supportive comments you guys left on my post below. I have decided to put it on password protect for a while as it’s so personal that I’m not sure I want it available for public viewing. It’s the same password that I use for all my protected posts… if you want it feel free to dm me on twitter or send me an email.

Today I feel much better physically than I have done over the past few days. I think now that it’s been a full 3 days everything is out of my system now and other than being loaded with the cold I’m OK.

I just wanted to write a short post mainly because I’m feeling quite frustrated at the moment. I went to see CPN#2 a couple of hours ago and had decided in my head that I was going to say something along the lines of: “I’ve been feeling really low, I’ve had a lot of thoughts about self harming and even about ending my life, I spent a few days misusing alcohol (there’s no way I could tell her what I really used) and basically I feel like I’m in a bit of a mess and I think it would be helpful to try and work out what it is that’s making me feel so low”.

So that was the little script I had in my head ready to say to her but when I got to my appointment the first thing she did was sit down with her notepad on her knee and ask me what I wanted to put on today’s “agenda” – ARGHHHHHHHH!!! – Yes, this was the reason I didn’t go and see her for so long, this was what I had politely tried to explain to her a few weeks ago that the ‘setting an agenda’ approach just doesn’t work for me, this is what I thought we had got sorted out and clearly we haven’t! I said to her I didn’t know what I wanted to list on our agenda but I was feeling low and could we just talk for a while? Her reply was that it wasn’t helpful for us to focus on ‘negative thinking’ and that by setting an agenda we were setting goals – positive goals – so that when I left each appointment I could think that I had achieved something good that day. I tried again by asking her who exactly I should be seeing if I need someone just to talk about life with? If I need a rant or to vent? If I’m feeling low and scared? Do I just bottle it up? Isn’t it part of her role to listen to me?

She then said she thought the best way to structure our appointments was to have three things each week to talk about. We could spend 15-20 minutes talking about each one. She would prefer all three things to be ‘positive’ things and us discussing how I’m going to reach individual goals but said that on the ‘rare occasion’ if I was feeling particularly low then I could use one of my 20 minute sets to talk about my moods and feelings.

So as none of this was particularly helpful and I was feeling like I just wanted to get up and leave it became increasingly difficult to even try and tell her how messed up I’ve been feeling. I had decided before I got to the appointment that I would say I had been misusing alcohol – I didn’t want the truth written on my case notes, I didn’t want my parents to find out and break their hearts again over 6 days of complete stupidity and so I figured just saying I had misused any substance was good enough as at the end of the day they are all misused for the same reasons – either to make you feel good or to block all the shit out. I’m sure CPN#2 could tell that I needed to vent but she just kept on talking about how well I was doing. She said she has spoken again to the psychologist and I’m now almost at the top of the list so my sessions with her should start back around the end of November and whilst telling me this she said she had told the psychologist how well I was doing in so many areas of my life like with the part time uni course and the fact I’d had no hospital admissions since January 2012 (the last time I saw the psychologist was Feb 2012 when she went on maternity leave). Apparently the psychologist told CPN#2 that she was really proud of me as I’d been so unstable back then that I just could not do any psychological therapies and that she is looking forward to seeing me again and seeing a much more stable me. Then CPN#2 was telling me that she’d been talking about me with her line manager as part of her supervision – where they briefly discuss each of their service users with their managers – and how the manager had been telling her about the first time she met me (when I was being sectioned) and travelling in the ambulance with me to the psych hospital… the mess I was in… the voices I was hearing… etc etc. So when CPN#2 told her too about how well I was doing now she was apparently “extremely pleased to hear it”. She continued to say how it was strange but nice for her to hear from other people about how bad I’d been at my worst but how much better I seemed now (as CPN#2 never worked with me or knew me when I was ‘at my worst’).

The whole time I was just sitting there thinking why are you telling these people how well I am doing when just last week I was suicidal? Why do you never want to listen to the truth? Yeah, I’m all for turning a negative into a positive if possible but fucking hell she was making it sound like I was well and truly on my road to recovery when right now that couldn’t be further from the truth. So I finally butted in and said to her that whilst I accepted there have been some areas of my life that are slowly improving there are other areas that are bad. I told her I’d gone through a misusing alcohol binge last week to block out my emotions. I told her I’d had suicidal feelings. I told her I’d wanted to self harm and instead of cutting I drank myself into a stupor. (OK so I didn’t drink but again, I wasn’t about to tell her what I really did). All she said was “well you must have realised that it was doing you no good as you’ve now stopped” and then tried to move along to the next subject of ‘setting goals’.

She just doesn’t seem to get that I cannot think about what three things I want to think about a week in advance. I can’t even plan for the day I’m on let alone plan three very specific things for a week’s time. She was very clear that she wants us to use our time to set goals and discuss how to achieve them, and then achieve them… and very clear that whilst we could talk about my moods if it was like some sort of emergency situation it would not be the focus of our sessions.

I understand that working with the psychologist has to be very structured especially when you are doing a specific therapy programme with them, but I hate how these CPN sessions have to be so structured as well. Well they don’t have to be because I’ve worked with plenty of staff members at some time or another who do just let you talk but this is obviously the way CPN#2 works and she isn’t going to work in any other way. I wonder if I’m the only one of her service users who finds her so unhelpful or if they all benefit from her agenda setting, goal setting, super positive approach where if we just don’t talk about any of the bad things then we can pretend that they just don’t fucking exist.

So I’m sorry to say but I am annoyed. I wish I hadn’t bothered going to the appointment. I have another one for next Thursday and already I am thinking that I might just cancel it. Also, I got a text from best friend whilst I was en-route to my appointment which said “hi, i’m really sorry but i have no money at all to even go for lunch on saturday”. It’s my birthday on Monday and originally I’d suggested just the two of us going for a couple of quiet drinks or for dinner but she said she didn’t have much money so I suggested we went for lunch instead. It didn’t need to be anywhere fancy, it was more just to spend a couple of hours with her and have a chat. She said yes she could afford to do that but now for whatever reason she can’t. Why am I pissed off? Because it is another one of her friend’s 40th birthday night out the following weekend and I know she is going to that! So she can’t meet up with me, can’t go for a cheap quiet lunch, can’t even manage to go for a coffee and have a chat yet she can go out the following weekend with her other mate. I’ve not missed any of best friend’s birthdays since she has been living back here, nor any of her kids birthdays/christmas/etc. Even when I’ve mentally been feeling like shit I’ve dragged myself along and always bought nice gifts. All I wanted was to spend some time with her, the money is irrelevant, there are plenty of things we could do that didn’t involve money but there was something in her tone in her text messages that said to me she just doesn’t want to do anything with me at all right now. So yeah, truth be known I’m feeling slightly rejected at the moment and pretty lonely as well.

So it looks like it’s going to be a quiet weekend. Maybe I will see if anyone else is going out that I could tag along with. The last thing I want is to sit in the house alone all weekend because I’m scared I’d be tempted to let the emotions get to me and act on them in some way or another that I’d end up regretting. On my birthday on Monday I’m going out for a nice lunch with the parents – we were going to go for dinner but my Mum is working night shift so lunch it is. Looks like it’s going to be a super quiet one this year… as if I wasn’t already feeling crappy at the thought of another birthday being single and alone and having all of those “this wasn’t how I thought my life would be at the age of 32” type thoughts.

Sorry… I believe I said at the start of this post it was going to be a short one… it didn’t really turn out that way… I’m going to try and do some studying for a couple of hours then vegetate in front of the TV for the rest of the evening. Oh what an exciting life I lead.

01:15 – A temporary safety plan

Today I have tried my hardest to start being honest with people.

Best friend text me out of the blue last night asking how I was. I contemplated sending the “fine thanks” reply but decided that no, I would tell the truth, well mostly the truth. I text back and told her I was lonely, that I felt like I had no friends and that my mood was very low and I’m finding myself feeling triggered by the smallest of things. To my surprise she text back straight away and said she was going to come and see me in the morning and true to her word, at 11am this morning she phoned to say she was on her way.

The first thing she asked me was why I was bandaged up, had I been self harming? This was the only lie that I told her. I stuck to my story that I have told A&E and also told my Mum. But all the other stuff I was honest about. I told her I was feeling really low but that there was no one specific thing making me feel this way. I don’t know why I couldn’t be honest about all of the cutting I have been doing recently, usually I can be pretty straight to the point with her. I guess maybe I didn’t want to see the disappointment in her face, as she thinks I haven’t done it since April. That’s probably the reason why I have lied about it this time round, just to avoid dealing with that sad look in people’s faces. I told best friend I was finding it hard being on my own all of the time and that I missed her. I also never see the male friend that I used to spend a lot of time with but that is mainly because the last time we had a proper conversation a few weeks ago he asked me if we could be more than friends – of course I said no. I came up with some shit about just not wanting to be in a relationship with anyone – you know – the sort of thing you say to try and make them not take it personally. Blaming my mental health and saying I would be too much of a burden on someone right now. To a point that is true but I wouldn’t ever be more than friends with him anyway purely because there is absolutely no physical attraction there.

Anyways… back to today. After we’d sat and chatted for about an hour I realised best friend hadn’t just been too busy with her boyfriend and kids, she’s actually had some stuff going on as well that she’s been quite worried about. She had a heart murmur as a baby but it’s never really affected her, however she became quite unwell at the weekend and had to go to hospital where they found something quite abnormal on her ECG and the doctor suspects one of the valves in her heart isn’t letting oxygen in properly or something to that effect. So she is being referred to the cardiologist and is feeling quite worried about that. I then felt a bit stupid and selfish that I thought she was just too loved up to remember to text me but she did say she shouldn’t have left me for weeks with not even a text to say hello. We decided to go for a coffee before I had to go to my appointment at 2pm and I felt slightly better for spending a couple of hours with her and getting out of the house.

I then went to my appointment with my support worker from rape crisis. This is where I was properly honest. I told her about all of the self harming. I told her I’d even been having thoughts again about not wanting to be here any more. I told her about how lonely I feel. I told her about abuser cousin’s daughter having the baby. I told her about all the things that have been triggering me. I told her I wasn’t sure how safe I felt at the moment especially with my parents being away on holiday. I told her about not going to see CPN#2 yesterday and all my reasons why I find myself avoiding more and more appointments. Basically I got everything off my chest. I was talking slowly, every word felt like it was draining me but I got it all out in the end. She asked me what we could do to try and keep me safe. I told her I really didn’t know. I do know that I definitely do not want to even consider hospital, it is not an option. I don’t know that I feel suicidal as such however I did admit to having a cupboard absolutely full to the brim of a variety of medication. Some prescribed stuff and some stuff I’ve bought. I have no idea how many tablets are in there but it’s easily into the hundreds. So after a long chat I managed to identify that I am relatively low risk when it comes to trying to kill myself or taking an overdose even though I have the means to do so. However I could recognise that I am at a high risk of self harming to quite severe levels. This is when lovely support worker said we should think of a ‘temporary safety plan’.

I agreed that if I found myself in a situation where I was beginning to self harm and it was possible that it might spiral out of control then I would do my best to stop for a moment and phone/text or email her. I don’t know how realistic that is going to be should it happen… once I’m in that self harming ‘zone’ it’s very hard to stop and think, I’m too determined just to bleed out all of my pain. She said I should try and make contact with her when I’m at the ‘crazy-head-full-of-self-harm-urges’ stage rather than afterwards when the damage has already been done but that truly is easier said than done. But I will at least try. If she’s being good enough to make a point of being there for me then I should try and make use of that support.

After I left my appointment I decided to try and face A&E to get my stitches removed. As usual the two nurses on shift were nurses that I knew. I made a point of saying this hadn’t been a self harm wound and she gave me a bit of a strange look for a second. Whatever she had read from my notes appeared to say differently so clearly the doctor who put the stitches in didn’t believe my lie or at least expressed some sort of doubt about the story I gave him. She was nice enough though, removed the stitches, made some general chit chat, asked what I’d been doing with myself today so I decided fuck it, I’ll be honest with her. So whilst I stuck to the story of that particular wound not being a self harm one, I also told her I’m not finding my appointments with my CPN helpful at all and haven’t really been going to them. She suggested I mention this to my GP when I next see her to see if there is a way that I could maybe see a different CPN but I don’t know if that would even be possible due to the small amount of staff there are in the mental health team here. Plus it would mean CPN#2 finding out my feelings on how unhelpful I find her.

I also told the A&E nurse that I was experiencing a lot of urges to self harm at the moment. I don’t know if this was partly because I thought that if I told her then if I do end up self harming badly again it won’t come as too much of a surprise to them. Or maybe I just needed to be honest and stop lying. I think it was a mix of trying to reach out for some help and just wanting to tell the truth.

So all in all today wasn’t such a bad day. I talked about a lot of depressing stuff and from all that talking I managed to recognise that I don’t feel particularly safe at the moment and that my self harming behaviours are starting to get pretty bad again. But on the flip side I don’t feel as though I’ve just been left on my own to deal with it all. Even if I don’t make contact with my support worker before our appointment next week at least I know that she is there at the end of the phone or email should I need it. For now there is a temporary safety plan in place.

I am planning on spending some time at the cemetery tomorrow as the new bits and bobs for my little boy’s headstone arrived today. Usually I find it very peaceful to sit up there for a while and talk to him, admittedly I usually have a bit of a cry as well but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I will post a photo next time I write a post of his stone looking all pretty again.

There was just one last thing I wanted to ask you all before I log off (well ask my female readers!) – I got the routine letter through today saying it is time for my three yearly smear test. The actual test itself isn’t the problem. The problem is that obviously you have to remove your bottom half and my legs are a horrendous mess of deep dark scars and the scars are all over them – calf area, front of legs, thighs, all completely covered. For many many years I only ever self harmed on my arms or stomach and it’s only really been in the past few years that I started on my legs. Most of it was done in times where I was really unwell but this is going to be the first time where I will need to expose the damage. There is absolutely no hiding it. I could probably be brave enough to explain to the nurse about my self harming problem or maybe I could ask lovely GP to explain it to her. But I was just wondering really if any other ladies have had this problem and how you managed to deal with it? After my first ever smear at 20/21 coming back abnormal and needing a fair bit of treatment done I never miss them now, I know how important they are. But the idea of exposing all the damage to a stranger is starting to freak me out a bit, I have to admit.

Right I think it’s bed time now. I can feel my medication cocktail kicking in and my eyes getting heavy. I haven’t self harmed today despite the urges being there, I hope I can continue in the same way tomorrow although I do know that going up to the cemetery for a while will most likely cause me some upset. Hopefully I can be strong enough to deal with the emotions in a healthier way.

Goodnight folks.

16:54 – In a pretty crappy place right now

So yeah, I spent the weekend getting drunk by myself. Sitting here pouring glass after glass of wine and drinking it at a ridiculous speed. I don’t know what I hoped to achieve by doing that, I guess I was trying to block shit out. However the reality was that I just got more and more depressed, my mood dropped a little further down with every gulp I took. I did a lot of crying which maybe wasn’t such a bad thing, maybe those emotions had to come out of me, but I’m still having emotional outbursts with no warning signs today.

I continued to self harm Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Despite being under the influence I seemed to manage to have some control over it as the cuts are reasonably superficial. I think I just kept reminding myself that if I just pushed down that little bit harder then it would be time to go back off to A&E again and I’m still sticking to my story with them that the stitches I’ve got were as a result of an accident and not self harming.

I am supposed to be going to get my stitches taken out today but I just feel so low and so miserable that I can’t face going out. I don’t suppose an extra day will make much difference, I’ve had times in the past where I just couldn’t face going to A&E and left stitches in a few more days than they were supposed to be in for. I was also supposed to go to an appointment with CPN#2 at 12:30 today – I got up at 9am and forced myself to go in for a shower, got dressed, sat and watched some TV, let the dogs out to do the toilet, then around 11am took my clothes back off and put my pj’s back on. Sat and watched 12:30 come and go, knowing that I should phone and least concoct some excuse for missing yet another appointment but my brain just seemed incapable of thinking so I didn’t attend and didn’t phone to apologise either.

I think I have come to the conclusion that I don’t find that I get any benefit from my appointments with CPN#2. In fact, I have worked with a number of CPN’s over the years and I’ve never really achieved much with any of them. The ones who have been good are the ones that haven’t stuck around for long. Typical really. So now I don’t know what to do – do I phone and leave a message for CPN#2 and make yet another appointment, drag myself along to it, sit there finding it no help whatsoever, make another appointment, repeat the process over and over again? Or do I somehow try to find the strength to be honest with her? I don’t know if I could do it face to face but the thought has crossed my mind that it might be an idea to write her a letter explaining why I’m not finding these sessions useful, therefore I either cancel them or just don’t attend.

My main problem with them is that CPN#2 likes to work in a very structured sort of way. I go in and she takes a sheet of paper that she calls the ‘agenda’ then asks me to pick two or three topics that I’d like to discuss during our session. If I go off at a little bit of a tangent she quickly pulls me straight back on topic by saying “this isn’t on our agenda, please stick to the agenda” which leaves me feeling like I’m being told off for trying to explain something. I don’t know if I’m explaining this very well? It’s like she wants our sessions to be like business meetings – have an agenda with a few bullet points – discuss them very specifically without really allowing any emotions to come into the conversation. Sometimes you need to go off at a little bit of a tangent to explain things better and when someone is sitting tapping their pen against their notebook it is extremely off putting. Then add to that her latest thing of propping her phone up on the middle of the table with the stopwatch app counting the minutes, constantly flashing, distracting me… yeah… it’s just not helpful.

I understand that she wants to use the sessions to get me to cover the basics of Compassion Focused Therapy until such time that I can see the psychologist again to learn it all in more detail, but surely I should be able/allowed to talk about how I’m feeling as well? Like if I had gone today there is just no way I could have told her about the self harming or about how low my mood has been/still is. We have absolutely no bond/no relationship/no therapeutic relationship/nothing. I cannot open up to her because I’m scared to mention anything that isn’t set on her little business agenda. So I end up not going to my appointments, not engaging with the mental health team, sitting and waiting for a letter to appear in my mail one day telling me she has discharged me as I don’t attend and she could be seeing someone else in my place. Part of me wishes she would just do that, but I carry on clinging to this little bit of hope that it won’t be too much longer now until I see the psychologist again and at least I know I can get along with her and work with her.

So here I am hiding indoors again. It’s now week three of my part time uni course and I haven’t even finished week one’s work. I sit and try to read, try to absorb it, try to understand it but it’s like there is an invisible mental block getting in the way and nothing sinks in. So I give up and tell myself I’ll try again tomorrow. But tomorrow comes and goes and I’m no further forward. At the moment there is still a chance I could catch up but for that to happen I need motivation. Right now I have no motivation at all. I just sit here and cry, cut myself a few more times, cry some more, never really getting anywhere. I can’t even go and sit on my (personal) facebook because I just cannot handle all these pregnancy announcements, baby announcements, baby talk in any way shape or form. Of course I know it’s something I can’t hide from forever but right now it’s all just too triggering for me. My mental state feels pretty fragile like the slightest thing will cause it to fall apart.

Although I fully intended to get drunk on Friday night I actually didn’t plan on repeating it on Saturday night. However, I popped up to see my parents to wish them a nice holiday (they left on Sunday morning and get back Monday next week) and just as I was leaving their phone started to ring. I saw on the caller display that it was my Aunt that I have nothing to do with these days (this is my Aunt who was the mother of my older cousin that abused me for years – he’s dead now for any new readers) and as soon as I saw her name flash up on the caller display I knew instantly what she was phoning for. My abuser cousin has a daughter who has been brought up by my Aunt as he couldn’t provide for her due to either being in prison or when he was out of prison he’d go straight back to his life of heroin and crack addiction. The mother of his daughter was also an addict. Despite who her parents were I still just looked at her like a little cousin and we used to be quite close until a couple of years ago when my stupid Aunt told her about the abuse. I had never wanted her to know about it but my Aunt is an alcoholic and doesn’t think about what she is saying half the time. So, the girl was about 14 at this point and of course she reacted to the news in a very angry way. She splattered messages all over my facebook and I made the decision to write her a long email explaining everything. I wrote about it on here and it was quite controversial to say the least – some people commented to say they thought I’d done the right thing – others said she was too young to have been told about it and that I shouldn’t have sent the email. But that’s all in the past now and sadly I haven’t spoken to her since.

My Mum told me several months ago that the girl is now 16 and pregnant. Firstly the fact that yet another person just accidentally got pregnant at the drop of a hat upset me. Secondly I convinced myself that she would have a little boy and name him after her father (as I think there is a bit of childhood idolising of him on her part even though he was never around as a father to her). I knew the baby was due in September and sure enough that was what my Aunt was phoning to tell my Mum. Thankfully she had a little girl. Even though I don’t see her any more or have any contact with her, I think it would have really got to me if she’d named an innocent little baby after the monster my abusing cousin was. But yeah, just hearing about yet another baby started making my head feel all bonkers so on the way back from my parents house I went and bought three bottles of wine and drank the lot over Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.

So that’s where I am at the moment. Alone, lonely, self isolating, unable to study, crying a hell of a lot, cutting myself, missing appointments and generally feeling extremely low. I have an appointment with my rape crisis support worker tomorrow which I’m going to make an effort to go to as she is pretty much the only person that I can just sit and be honest with at the moment. And if I make it to that appointment and get out of the house then maybe I’ll manage to get to A&E as well to have these stitches taken out. As for the rest of today and tonight I have absolutely no idea how they are going to pan out. If my mood stays like this then it looks like it’ll be yet another shitty night to try and get through. Truthfully I don’t feel 100% safe at the moment and I do feel a little bit worried about where this is all heading. But if I can just get through tonight in one piece then maybe tomorrow’s appointment with lovely support worker will help to calm my crazy brain down again.

17:58 – I don’t think I fit in anymore…

This picture sums up exactly how I’ve been feeling lately. My self isolating world feels black and white. I’ve lost the colour from my world. I look at the lives of my friends and family members and they all seem to have colour and happiness in their life. I feel as though I don’t fit in hence why it’s easier to stay hidden away in my little flat, telling myself that it’s better this way… is it better? I don’t know…

A week ago (last Friday) was the day I wrote about when I was in an absolute mess with the physical symptoms of anxiety. The racing and severe pounding that my heart was doing scared me so much I ran to lovely GP anxious and distressed, not to mention completely convinced that there was something very wrong with my heart. After the ECG tracing showing my heart was OK just beating far too fast I have been trying to tell myself every day since that it’s “just anxiety… get your breathing under control and you’ll be fine”. I don’t know if it was the reassurance from lovely GP or the fact that we dropped my Mirtazapine dose back down to 30mg but I seem to be managing the anxiety symptoms a little better now. The severe chest pounding has finally calmed down a bit although I’m still having the palpitations, the churning feeling in my gut and the panicky thoughts in my mind. In other words, I think I’m now back to my “normal” levels of anxiety.

I saw lovely GP again yesterday (Friday) and she said I was looking very tired. I told her my sleep isn’t great at the moment because I now lie there with the anticipation that the heart pounding could start again at any time. She said I need to get some proper sleep and gave me a few days worth of Nitrazepam which I always find help me get a decent night’s rest. I’d not fallen asleep on Thursday night until almost 4am then was back up at 7am to have a shower and get the dogs walked before my appointment at 8.30am then was up all day as I met my Mum for lunch and a wander round the shops. By 8pm I was completely shattered but wide awake at the same time. By midnight I had been in bed for an hour and was still tossing and turning. By 2am I was so fed up I took 10mg of the Nitrazepam and an hour later I was dead to the world. I didn’t wake up again until noon today so I got a full 9 or 10 hours sleep and feel a bit better for it today. Well better in the sense of not being so exhausted… I still feel pretty shit mood wise.

I also told lovely GP about the self harm urges I keep having at the moment. She said she was really proud of me for not doing it (well, not doing it bad enough to require a visit to A&E) since April. She asked me if I had told anyone else and I said yes, I had told lovely support worker from rape crisis the day before. She asked if I had told anyone from the mental health team, i.e. CPN#2 and I said no. I was supposed to see CPN#2 last Friday when I was in the massive anxious mess but had left them an answer phone message first thing that morning to say I wasn’t well and couldn’t attend. I left my phone number and a message asking CPN#2 to give me a call to arrange another appointment but I still haven’t heard from her a week later. Lovely GP said I didn’t seem very enthusiastic about my appointments with CPN#2 and I told her quite honestly that I’m not. I told her I don’t find the appointments beneficial at all and the only reason I go to them is because I hope I will get back to seeing the psychologist again quicker this way. The only appointments I get any benefit from are those with my support worker.

It’s pretty ridiculous really but sadly not uncommon – the two people connected with the mental health team that I see (new psychiatrist and CPN#2) are useless and I don’t feel supported by either of them. Sometimes they are beyond useless. Yet the two other people that I see who aren’t really connected with the mental health team (lovely GP and my support worker) offer me practical help, a place to unload all of my feelings, medication help if needed and I leave those appointments feeling like my voice has been heard and that I’ve been listened too. And I told all of this to lovely GP and she just gave me a sympathetic smile that sort of said to me that I wasn’t the first person to have said that to her.

The other thing lovely GP was asking about was how the nausea/not being able to eat was now. I told her that I am eating but only my two safe foods – bowls of porridge and bowls of soup. It’s not an intentional thing and I’m not really sure of what it is that I think will happen if I eat other foods, all I know is they seem safe because if they do need to come back up again they will be easy foods to throw up. She reminded me that this was how my agoraphobia started – by avoiding the places that made me feel anxious and panicky until my world finally became so limited there were only a few places that were/still are safe places to go to. I promised her that I would try to start eating some other things but as yet I haven’t managed to do that. So I have another appointment to see her again in two weeks time.

After my appointment I met up with my Mum for a couple of hours. Mum treated me to lunch (I had soup) and over lunch I opened up to her and told her how miserable I’ve been feeling lately. I also was honest and told her I’ve been having a lot of self harm urges but that I haven’t acted on them. Mum was pleased that I’d been honest with her and she tried to encourage me not to drop my part-time uni course as doing it offers me some sort of a distraction. She said she knows this is the time of year my mood usually begins to drop but reminded me that last year I wasn’t hospitalised at all (whereas I was hospitalised in the autumn and winter months of 2010 and 2011 as well as the very start of 2012). I told my Mum that I just didn’t know if I was going to manage doing two modules at once (each require approximately ten hours of study per week) as well as trying to learn this Compassionate Mind therapy with CPN#2 and psychologist and also the work I’m doing with my support worker at rape crisis. That’s like four pretty big things to be doing all at once and I really don’t know if I’ll manage to do it all.

My uni course starts back on Monday and I’ve enrolled on two modules but have also sent my personal tutor an email explaining that I may need to drop out of one of them if I find the workload too much but that I would try for the first few weeks to do both of them and see how I get on. She emailed me back and said that was OK so I guess I just wait and see how things go. Mum has also started a new job recently where she isn’t working such long hours any more and has three days a week off so I’m going to try and spend a few hours each week with her to get me out of the house. To be honest I think I just feel a bit lonely at the moment, even though I did see best friend a couple of times last week that was the first time I’d seen her and the kids in ages. Since she met the new boyfriend in May I’ve pretty much been forgotten about and she no longer texts or calls me. I used to wish she would stop calling and texting when I just wanted to be left alone and now I’ve got what I wanted… but it’s miserable and lonely and I only really have one friend at the moment who I see maybe once a week but he’s forever trying to hint at us being more than friends which is never going to happen. I do care for him as a friend and sometimes we have a giggle but there is no physical attraction towards him, plus, I really don’t want a relationship with anyone anyway.

So yeah… my mood isn’t great, my anxiety levels are still high and pretty much constant, my sleep is pretty disrupted, my weird anxiety surrounding foods is still present, I haven’t heard bugger all from CPN#2 and I’m constantly thinking about cutting myself again.

On the upside I’ve managed to be honest with my Mum and lovely GP and my support worker about how crap I’m feeling. I’ve half sorted my new uni modules (but still need to send the form off to apply for my part time tuition fees to be waived), I haven’t self harmed despite constantly thinking about doing so. Oh, one other nice thing was that Mum also treated me to a new purse when we went for a wander round the shops after having lunch. I didn’t desperately need it but I absolutely love Radley bags and purses but they are sooo expensive and we saw some much cheaper but almost as nice ones in a shop window so I have a nice new black leather purse with a pink doggy sewn onto it and some buttons sewn on, it looks just like a Radley one but at a third of the price!

I think that’s pretty much it from me at the moment. I was hoping the new pretty things for my little man’s headstone would have arrived today so I could have spent the afternoon making it all pretty again but they haven’t even been dispatched yet because one item was out of stock. It’s been pouring with rain all day anyway, so it’s a ‘hiding indoors’ in my pj’s day. And it is so cold all of a sudden! I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to have the heating on but it’s been on nearly constantly the past couple of days – typical Scotland!

Don’t have a clue what I’m going to do with myself tonight, I think my exciting Saturday night will be lying in front of the TV watching some of the new series of X Factor – it’s still the auditions which is really the only bit of it I like watching. I saw best friend had posted on facebook about going out with one of her other friends for a night out tonight but surprise surprise I didn’t get an invite. Not that I would have gone anyway but still… it’s nice to be asked. I barely ever go out drinking these days, it’s another environment that I just don’t fit into any more. I feel so different from everyone else… black, white and fifty shades of grey… I think I might need some colour back in my life… but… I just don’t know how to do it

20:18 – New Year’s Eve: All Alone & Extremely Low

It’s New Year’s Eve again, the last day of another long and challenging year, one which started on a bad note in January and is ending on a bad note as well. I have a feeling this may turn into a long ramble, I’ve got a lot of things to say in my last blog post of 2012.

So usually we go out on New Year’s Eve but this year my best friend is just going to a house party at another friend’s house (to which I was invited but politely declined) and so I am all on my own. It doesn’t have to be this way, I have just been on Facebook and had a couple of people ask me if I was going out tonight, if I really wanted to I could text another girl I’m friendly with and make arrangements to go out with her… but I know I will end up staying in all alone all night. Miserable and depressed. Still struggling to come to terms with the stupidity I referred to in my last post (and no, I still can’t write about it either)…

This might be a silly thing to say but I feel really let down by the CMHT (Community Mental Health Team) – they knew that Christmas was one of the hardest days of the year for me to get through, new CPN had said we would have an appointment on Christmas Eve and then a following one New Year’s Eve (today) so I had support right before what can be very triggering days for me. But we didn’t even get the appointment the week before Christmas Eve because I got a phone call to say new CPN was off sick but someone would be in touch. That was on the Monday and by the Friday nobody had got in touch. Christmas eve came and went with no appointment… no support. Then I got a letter on Saturday morning from new CPN offering me a next appointment with her on the 7th of January. So that is going to be exactly 4 weeks since I last had any support when I next see her. And the reason I said this all may sound silly is because obviously if I need help I have to ask for it, but new CPN knew, she fucking knew how much I struggle to cope at this time of year and whilst she couldn’t avoid being ill she was obviously back in the CMHT building at some point to type up the letter for the appointment for the 7th of Jan. So when she was writing that letter she knew I was sitting with no support, would it have been that much trouble to have maybe given me a little phone call and just told me she was back and sending me a new appointment out and maybe have asked if I was coping OK. But like I say… I guess if I want to try and get any sort of support I am supposed to phone and tell them so it must be silly that I’m sitting here feeling forgotten about and completely alone with my string of crazy thoughts.

Tomorrow (New Year’s Day) I will again be alone all day. My Mum is working late, my best friend is going to her parents for the day, so it will just be me, myself and I, probably sitting here feeling equally as alone in 24 hours time as what I do right now. It would appear that this makes me feel rather sad as I’m struggling to see out of the little pool of tears that are gathering up in my eyes.

Tomorrow a new year begins where I am still in the mindset of wanting to hurt myself, where every day I still feel like I’m stuck in this pressure cooker and with each day that passes where I don’t act on the thoughts I don’t feel proud of myself or like I have achieved anything… Instead I know that when that time comes where the lid blows off the pressure cooker it is going to result in some real damage to myself. I am so scared of that moment coming because I will be completely out of control and yet at the same time I wish it would just hurry up and hit me, make me do it and make it be over with.

My best friend asked me a couple of days ago if I was proud of myself for not “being in that place” of self harming and hospital admissions for so long. I couldn’t explain to her that she couldn’t be more wrong, I might not have acted on the thoughts, but the walls around me are crumbling and starting to fall and the more they fall the more exposed and alone I am as I hide behind them. I hate to say it and for a number of months now I’ve tried to avoid saying it, but I am well and truly in the the throes of Bipolar depression right now. And I feel exhausted from the minute I open my eyes to the minute I go to sleep, the smallest of tasks seem enormous, nothing feels as though it really has a point to it. I am about to enter a new year in pretty much the same place I was a year ago I’m just doing much much better at hiding it from people. I feel as though I can’t admit how low my mood is when people (my parents) have gone out of their way to try and make my flat look like a home again and this just proves how much of a bad person I am because they did all that for me and the whole time when they genuinely believed I was happier it was all fake smiles deep down. They think I’m coping better and after all they have done for me it’s my job to make sure they continue to think that.

If I’m honest with myself this episode of depression really kicked off just before my birthday, so around mid October. It’s been slowly getting worse and worse as the weeks have gone by. That is the really horrible part about mood disorders and similar conditions, the length of the depressive (or manic) episodes seem to go on forever. If I look at my calender it tells me I’ve been in this current depressive episode for about ten or eleven weeks now, almost three months of feeling like shit every time I wake up and realise I’m still here. And usually when a couple of months have passed of feeling so low a “crisis” would have happened by now. I’ve experienced every single one of my early warning signs as detailed in my crisis plan and yet somehow I’ve avoided the crisis being seen by other people (mainly by hiding away as much as possible). It’s like a silent crisis that is killing me on the inside, I know it’s there but nobody else does and what really worries me now is that if there is no admission from me that things are very bad or no actions by me to show things are really bad then the actual crisis part will go by unnoticed… and that means entering that place again that is past the point of a “crisis” and a whole new level of despair that is a truly terrifying place to experience.

Just like last ‘new year’ and the one before that and before that I enter a new year still mental, still single, still fat and disgusting and deserving of badness. I enter another year and know it’s a matter of weeks until my little angel’s 6th anniversary in Heaven. They said it got “easier with time”… they really need to think of a more honest expression because that one is a massive lie. It hurts more and more with every day, every week, every month and every year that passes.

What is it that keeps us going when inside our heads we are hearing (for the millionth time) that this is the way life is always going to be, when something in our mind is shouting at us that nothing is ever going to change, that this is the future and this is the place we are going to be stuck in forever? What keeps us going? And even if we act on it and make an attempt to end our lives, many of us get help (even if it really is at the very last second)… something inside us gets scared – for me it is usually the fear of what the process of death will actually be like, the fear of the unknown – and the sad reality for me and I’m sure for many others is that even though every day of being alive hurts like hell it is a hell we have become so overly familiar with that we almost know it inside out. Plus it is a hell that people around us generally witness and as a result of that they try and offer us messages of hope, promises that things won’t always be this way, anything they can say to make us hang on for another day (week, month, year). And so, with each “crisis” I have had, people have become aware of it and let me break down into little bits and then they help me put the bits back together again and give me a final push back onto my feet until the next crisis happens.

But ultimately what happens is you end up feeling as though you are living for those people who say they have “faith in you” who “believe in you” who “promise” that “things are going to get better” that maybe just trying “one more medication” or “a different type of therapy” will finally give me permanent freedom from all of this. And right now, I very much feel as though I’m living for others, I know I have passed the point of believing there is any point in living for me (ungrateful stupid bitch that I am), I don’t even know if you could class this as ‘living’… it feels much more like I’m just functioning on some sort of auto-pilot and trapped in my own never ending version of Groundhog Day.

The thing is that when I have experienced extreme low’s before I have acted upon them a few times. I know what will happen now if I shovel a few handfuls of tablets down my throat just to ‘make it all stop’ and I know what will happen if I take enough tablets to kill me. And I remember how terrifying it was in that moment where I wanted my life to be over so very badly, where I could not handle another day of being alive, where I completely lost control and swallowed a ridiculous number of tablets. And I remember that moment soon after where I felt extremely physically unwell, very dizzy, nauseas, holding onto the walls to keep me upright and just knowing that if I let myself lay down and close my eyes then there would be a very good chance I wouldn’t wake back up. And that actually scared the hell out of me that time as I frantically hit 999 and begged for an ambulance and cried to the operator that I was getting dizzier and dizzier but couldn’t sit down because I knew that would be it, game over. So I slumped against the wall trying to stay with the woman on the phone, praying that the main door buzzer would start beeping any second so I could let them in and then stop fighting and just let my body do what it had to do. Pretty much everything from then through to the next day passed in a blur but I will never ever forget that moment of lying in A&E and hearing the male nurse shouting that my blood pressure was crashing, hearing the numbers and thinking ‘I might actually die here’ and suddenly being terrified that they wouldn’t be able to save me because it’s such a small hospital here. I truly truly thought that night was going to be my last, when you hear nurses and doctors all panicking and losing their cool around you it is a very scary experience.

So what is the point to all this rambling? I think it was my own way of trying to make sense of why I’m still here. My way of frantically trying to remind myself that there is at least one place that’s scarier than here and that’s lying in A&E having knuckles pressed hard against your collar bone as they shout at you to open your eyes and you actually can’t or when you hear them talking about needing a helicopter to get me to the main hospital asap or hearing the numbers of your blood pressure and knowing those numbers are way too low… knowing that you are now totally dependent on these people saving your life, that very same life that you so desperately wanted to end.

Having bipolar disorder has taken me to some crazy places within my own mind. The mood cycles and their unpredictability of when they will come and how long they will last for are crippling at times, but after the disaster has always come a little hint of stability if even only for a couple of weeks before a new ‘episode’ starts and you go through the whole cycle again. This time I genuinely am trying to avert disaster and find absolutely anything at all to cling onto, anything that will help this to pass and allow me to feel like I’m coping for a little while longer. Because as scary as this is the thought of lying back in that A&E department relying on people to save you or waking up to find myself in the psychiatric hospital again or even just the feeling of being a little bit judged by turning up needing sewn back together after cutting too deeply are all even more scary tonight than just sticking with the familiarity of this current episode, my ongoing version of mental hell.

22:38 – When you just can’t find the words

I feel as though the increase in Quetiapine has made me a bit stupid. I get half way through sentences and completely forget what I’m rambling on about. So then I look double as crazy because not only was I rambling about something nonsensical to begin with I can’t even make my nonsense have a point to it.

Tonight it would seem I can’t find the words to write about what I want to write about. I actually wanted to write a somewhat intelligent post about a question I have swirling around my brain but I don’t know the right words tonight.

Additional to that thought I am also thinking a lot about my angel baby, about heaven, about Christmas without him again… These thoughts are making me feel lonely and sad. Lonely and sad inject themselves into the already ridiculously strong self harm urges. Visually I can picture graphic wounds and I want them so badly. Not the scars, I fucking hate the scars, I always feel ashamed of them and jealous of people who can view them as their ‘war wounds’ – then – maybe they view them that way because they’re winning their war and I’m still stuck right in the middle of mine. At war with myself, that sounds pretty apt. So the scars I know I don’t want, but the release… I need the release… I need to bleed and bleed and feel some of this badness leaving my body. I need that so much, I don’t know the words to express how badly I need this.

So why do I keep saying it but not doing it? Simple. I don’t want anyone to see or know. And I know I would have no control over the severity of the wound if I were to cut with the head crazies present. I have tried letting myself do very very shallow cuts over the past few weeks, barely more than scratches, as I thought by doing this it would calm the more severe thoughts down a bit. But it hasn’t, they are worse than ever.

Sorry, I just can’t find the words tonight to write anything else. My head isn’t in a very good place this evening. I have my weekly appointment with new CPN tomorrow morning at 10am, I have no idea what we are going to talk about. I’m having one of my ‘I don’t want to go to the appointment’ moments and can’t see the point to it at all, maybe I will feel different in the morning.

Then at some point during the day tomorrow the carpet fitter is coming to deliver all the new flooring which he is coming back to lay on Tuesday and Wednesday. So I need to get everything out of the living room tomorrow night and put it in the bedroom so he can lay the flooring in the living room on Tuesday and then somehow move everything back into the living room and all of my bedroom furniture into the living room so he can lay the bedroom carpet on Wednesday. And then move all the bedroom stuff back in there. So it’s going to be a busy few days which I probably need even though it means having strangers in my flat for a couple of days which I sincerely don’t like. It’s most anxiety provoking and horrible. But it will be some kind of distraction I guess. I have also bought new bedding and have decided to move the bedroom stuff around so that it all looks different, and put some nice wall art up as well.

And maybe one day I’ll manage to sleep in that room again. You would think after 10 months of sleeping on a two seater sofa I’d be desperate to get into a nice big double bed again… But no… That bedroom is a total head and mind fuck.

So yeah, I guess I can sum up by saying I’m not feeling too great mentally although I’m starting to feel slightly physically better. I took my 5th tablet (out of 28) today to heal the suspected stomach ulcer and was only nauseous in the morning, an hour or two after taking the tablet I began to feel better and kept my dinner down this evening so I’m glad that the amount of time spent with my head down the toilet is now on the decrease.

Even though it’s only 10.30pm I’m going to bed (to wrap a duvet around me on the sofa)… turn the lights out… watch a couple of new stand up comedy DVD’s that have just come out… and hope I laugh until I fall asleep. If I don’t laugh I fear I may cry and I can’t handle tears tonight.

Goodnight folks xx

01:24 – The calm and the storm

I decided to go to my appointment with my CPN today. I got there at 1pm and literally opened the door and she was standing right there about to walk out. She just looked at me and said “I’m really sorry but as I told you on the phone there is something I need to go to and unfortunately I need to prioritise it over our appointment”. I just looked at her with an extremely pissed off face and snapped at her “fine”. I turned to walk out and she put a hand on my shoulder and said she would give me a lift back home, I pushed her hand away and snapped “do you know what, just don’t bother OK” and I stormed off home in a very bad mood. I felt so let down, right now I obviously can’t talk to my Mum about how low I’ve been feeling as due to all the stuff happening with my Aunt my Mum is going through a ‘life is so precious’ type of attitude (rightly so in the circumstances) – but – MY life doesn’t feel precious, it feels like a total waste of time right now to be honest.

I got back home and burst into tears. I felt like I needed to talk/vent so badly and there was no-one there to listen. My CPN only works part time, two days a week and wouldn’t be back until next week, so I was left feeling like she didn’t really give a damn and I felt like I was going to explode with all these mixed up crazy feelings going on inside me. It felt like she didn’t care, I understood that sometimes she has to prioritise but it was only 1pm and I couldn’t see why she couldn’t see me at all before going home today. So needless to say I sat in a proper shitty mood for the next hour or so and then my mobile starting ringing – it was her. She said the situation she’d had to attend wasn’t going to take all afternoon like she had thought and asked me if I’d like to meet her after another hour. I still felt angry with her but knew I needed the appointment so I said yes I’d like to see her. So two and a half hours after we were supposed to meet I got my appointment.

She picked me up in the car and we went to the marina and got a drink and sat by the sea. I told her how crap I was feeling and how close I’d been to overdosing last night. I was honest with her and told her that whilst I had no more blades in the house I did have a lot of medication in my cupboard. She said that there was no point in her asking me to get rid of them or give them to her because she knew I could just go to the shops and stock up on more. But she did ask me to think about getting rid of some of them (which I won’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to take them).

She asked me what I thought had changed from last week when I seemed so much more positive and I told her I really didn’t know. The only reason I could think of is that I felt incredibly alone at the moment with these really depressing thoughts and didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone because I don’t want to cause my family any more stress. We were sitting in the little harbour area and there were a few small boats tied up. She said to me that when the weather was nice people untied their little boats and went out on them, enjoying them, spending time on them. But when it gets a bit stormy the little boats get tied up in the harbour to protect them from the storm and keep them safe. I knew what she was getting at, and she carried on to say that I’ve been doing well lately just like when the water is gentle and the boats are out being enjoyed, but to think of my mood at the moment as a storm where I need to do what I can to keep myself safe. She asked me if I’d like to go back into hospital until the storm passed and I said most definitely not. I never want to go back to that place. Never.

I just don’t get how my mood has changed so drastically and so quickly. It makes me wonder if my mood really did get better at all or if I just kept smiling because I knew that’s what people wanted/needed to see. I find myself wondering all the time what my purpose in life is – back before I lost my son I thought my future had been decided – my role was going to be a Mummy. Now I have this empty void inside me that nothing can fill. Sometimes I wish I had a career that I loved and could throw myself into and be good at. Sometimes I think maybe my destiny was just to have 30 years in this world and then slip away quietly.

So CPN is forgiven and I see her again next Thursday. I hope from now until then my mood will lift but right now it doesn’t feel that likely. I just keep trying to hang onto that thought of how it would affect my parents right now if I tried to end my life. I don’t think they could cope with that whilst also coping with my Aunt’s cancer. It’s strange, when something happens like a family member being diagnosed with the big C, you automatically think ‘are they going to survive this?’ and suddenly life becomes so very important. I too panicked when I heard my Aunt’s news and the same thoughts went through my head (and still are going through my head) – is she going to survive this? Her life seems important, she is a mother, she has recently become a grandmother, she is a wife, she has so many roles and is loved by so many people.

But what is the purpose of my life? What is my role? What will fill the emptiness, the loneliness, the huge hole inside me? Will applying to college or doing some voluntary work give me a sense of purpose again? I know the only way I will know is to try but today I just don’t have the motivation at all. I know what I would like to have a career in, I just don’t know if I can stay stable and strong enough to gain the qualifications needed.

Sometimes it all just feels like it will always come back to this. Not quite square one, but it certainly feels like one step forward and two steps back. I did feel a bit better in the end for seeing my CPN but I have 8 days now until any other appointments and I’ve no idea if they are going to run smoothly or be one big struggle.

15:08 – Post #560 – The girl who seemed unbreakable; broke.

That pretty much sums it up. I am broken and I have crumbled.

Whether or not the damage is beyond repair is still to be discovered.

For now, thank you to everyone whose taken the time to come on this journey with me.

It has meant so much.

(((big hugs)))

 

Protected: 23:25 – Missing you (so much)

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