Proud of my 19 year old self…

3 years ago I was in hospital. I have spent a lot of time in hospital over the years so making a post about this admission 3 years ago may not feel particularly notable. However, I got quite emotional thinking about my 19 year old self today. My life is so wildly different and I’m so proud of that scared 19 year old I used to be. I am so proud of them for not dying. I am proud of myself. I feel so different now and the world feels so much brighter. Back then my life revolved around trying to die- if you can call that a life. I am now thriving. I am proud of myself for kicking and screaming through hospital admissions for wanting to die but not dying. I am proud of myself for staying alive and feeling all of those awful emotions for long enough to now be able to feel the wonderful emotions real life has to offer. I used to think that because I wasn’t always the most compliant patient that made me a bad person and that I was doing a bad job. I now realise that that’s not the case, I was doing so well. I was so frightened all the time but I still tried and did the best I could. Even when all that looked like was an upset teenager finding it hard to make eye contact with a staff member. I was trying anyway. Life is still so challenging. Therapy feels brutal without self harm to numb the emotions that are coming up but the fact that I am able to get through this without hurting myself and still maintaining a life alongside therapy is something I never thought would be possible. I am just so proud of my 19 year old self, I don’t want to be angry with them anymore. I was trying so hard and if I hadn’t been that person 3 years ago I wouldn’t get to be the 22 year old I am today. 

Illness, wellness and communicating the in-between…

I am currently at college studying a pre degree course in art and design. It’s a very fast paced course and it’s keeping me busy. One of the requirements of the course is to keep a creative blog alongside all of your projects and this lets you document them as you go in a way you might not be able to with annotation alone in your sketchbook. With that needing at least one post a week it’s left me neglecting this blog a lot but it’s also reminding me how much I love writing about my life and thought processes. Some of the writing I do on that blog isn’t far from the situations I used to write about on here- it’s really just getting some of those thoughts out while they are happening and trying to explain what your next steps are. I am currently doing an illustration based project in the form of a book. I am basing my illustrations on out of context quotes and conversations I have had in psychiatric units. It’s been a really interesting and oddly cathartic project so far. There have been some challenges that I have discussed on my course blog but I wanted to write about them on this blog as well so that I could talk about them in a more emotional way rather than a focused on the practicalities that I feel I have to think about and discuss a lot of the time in college. I recently wrote- “It is interesting how discussing these quotes with friends or tutors who are removed from the scenarios where I had the original conversations that I’m now basing this project around. They are able to be much more subjective and take the quotes on face value” I wrote about how my peers are able to use “metaphors that I have been struggling to see and think about due to being so emotionally invested and at times wrapped up in the very literal meaning and situation that the quote and conversations came from and are based around.” I am finding this to be quite a big thing in my life at the moment not only in this project but as I go through trauma therapy and build a life that isn’t so centred on my mental illness I am realising a lot of my experiences are different from my peers and they see some parts of my life as really sad or extremely strange and its a perspective I haven’t had in a really long time. Sometimes it makes me feel really different to the people on my course. They have had a very different set of experiences in their lives and having so much distance from events that have happened to me makes me feel so blatantly different and sometimes a bit alone. I don’t feel this way all the time but I am trying to allow myself to feel it because it doesn’t feel like a good thing if I just block it out. Plus you can’t get away from the fact that I didn’t have a typical adolescence and my late teens and first two years of my 20s were spent in and out of hospital. Most of the people on this course are 19 and when I was their age my life was drastically different. My stories around that time were not those of nights out drinking and having fun. I was unwell and very unhappy for most of the year I was 19. Things are better now and I’m glad I get to build memories and stories that are different and separate from hospital and acute mental illness but it doesn’t stop the fact that some of my most interesting stories up to this point are based in hospital. Sometimes people just don’t want to hear about what life was like in a psychiatric unit. It’s seen as taboo, strange and it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable I don’t want to put people in a position where they feel like that but sometimes it leave me with no memories to share. I am trying to realise that I do not hold soul responsibility for other peoples social comfort. I can do my best to not share things that might cause issues in conversations but sometimes the silence that comes with not sharing any similar situations are scenarios is just as uncomfortable and it’s not my fault or responsibility to fill the gaps. Some memories are mine to keep and not to share despite them being at times very off the wall, funny and interesting. The balance between then and now is really difficult. Illness, wellness and how people communicate the in-between. 

It’s happening now…

Life stuff has been very full on recently. I am having trauma therapy which is a very big deal, I am going to college and keeping up with work there and a very big thing in my life at the moment is- I have applied to university. I have interviews coming up for that and it’s all quite intense. This is happening all at once and it is so much. Weirdly most of the time it feels manageable and ok, I feel able to think rationally in the moment manage my time and get the things done that need to be done. Other times I just cry and think “I have no idea how I can do all of these thing let alone do them to the standard that I am happy with”. All of these things are so important and have a big impact on my life moving forward so I want to do them all well. I’m trying to pace myself, be understanding and kind to myself when some days, I just can’t do it all. I’m not taking any medication for my mental health right now and I haven’t done for several months. It’s been a very interesting experience living life un-medicated. I am so much more awake, alert and have a clearer mind but I have also realised that I am a hugely anxious person, I was very anxious before I went on medication and I’m now realising how much my medication dulled that anxiety. I know that I have so much going on at the moment that even the most relaxed person would feel anxious at these things. This is real, it’s scary and it’s a huge amount of change. Applying to university feels absolutely wild. It’s strange to me that the process of even writing my personal statement felt so far fetched and when I think back to things I have done to my body when self harming that are so much more extreme to most other people it just doesn’t come close to how unbelievable sending off my uni application felt. It felt so much bigger and crazier than anything else I have ever done. I never thought that I would get to this point. It doesn’t even really matter to me anymore that it’s taken longer than my peers. It used to upset me a lot, when my friends were in their first years at uni I was in hospital and it all felt so unfair I didn’t believe it would ever happen for me. But it’s happening now, I’m here, I’m alive. I am doing it now. 

A different type of Christmas..

Christmas is such a strange time. I Love the festive period and have done since I was very young. I love the lights, giving and receiving presents, the cold nights and the good food. The past 5 years I have spent at least some time in hospital over the festive period and as this year that is not the case, Christmas obviously feels quite different. I am a lot more well than I have ever been and having a winter free from psychiatric and general hospitals, stitches and drips as well as other things hospitals bring is a very nice difference. It’s not as if I haven’t been in hospital at all this year because I have, but all of the time I’ve been in this year has been as a day patient and mostly for physical health (bar a few A&E trips at the first few months of the year which were mental health related). It feels different this year and I can’t fully put my finger on it. It’s so much more than radically less amount of time in hospital. It feels different because I’m addressing health issues that I’ve completely overlooked because they haven’t been as important as fire fighting my mental health issues. I have been diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses this year and I’m able to think about what my body needs to have it become stronger and healthier and I’m not so focused on tearing it down all the time. This Christmas I was 8 months free from cutting. I have hit this milestone several times but this year it is combined with 5 months free from binging and purging and over a year free from suicide attempts. I have never been this deep and dedicated to my recovery. (It feels very wanky to say, but it is true.) I feel kinda proud of myself for the effort I have put into my recovery and I feel like I’m going into 2020 with huge amounts of new knowledge around myself, other people and what it takes to feel well mentally and physically. 

Between the ages of 16 and 21…

I have been thinking about writing this post for a really long time, knowing that this anniversary is coming up and not knowing how to approach the topic online but knowing that I really want to talk about today. 5 years ago today I was admitted to hospital for the start of a long admission. I was over 100 miles away from home which took at least 3 hours each way due to the journey being cross country. I felt desperately lonely and scared. I was a patient in that hospital for the following 10 months. I have made such progress in the past 5 years but my progress hasn’t been linear at all. There is so much I wish I could say about being in hospital and particularly my admission 5 years ago. I learnt so much in those 10 months and I use the skills I learnt in that hospital all the time. I met my best friends in that admission. I let myself feel angry in that admission- and boy did I feel angry. I can’t express the feeling I had when I had everything taken away from me in the name of my safety and feeling so desperate to hurt myself but having no other option but to not damage my body. But even in an empty room I still found ways to hurt myself. I remember being put on 1:1 observations for the first time and I have never felt desperation like it. There is nothing about that feeling I miss. I felt so frustrated, sad and angry. It felt like being thrown in the deep end in terms of kickstarting my recovery. But when people say that you have to want to get better to get better, they aren’t wrong and it took me a while to actually want it, to want something more for myself than my reality back then. Even if that better reality was just the privilege of being trusted to use the toilet without a member of staff watching me. I have started to look back on the girl I was back then and for the first time I feel compassion for her and what she was going through. I’m finally able to say out loud that I am thankful for the staff who saved my life. I’m so grateful that I am lucky enough to have a family who changed their whole lives to help me through that admission and again in the admissions since. I am thankful for the times they spoke with me on the phone when I was homesick, the letters I received almost everyday from them and my friends at home, for the countless hours they spent travelling for me only be able to see them for 15 minuets before breaking down and asking for them to leave again. My mum always told me “we would travel double the distance for half the time with you” that was a promise that stood true through that whole admission. 5 years is a significant period of time and between the ages of 16 and 21 everyone changes and grows a lot as a person. It brings up lots of emotions knowing that many of my pivotal developmental moments in the past 5 years were made in psychiatric units. It can be a hard pill to swallow for many reasons but shame is not one of those reasons anymore. Over the past 5 winters I have had a hospital admission of some kind due to my mental health. But this year is not the 6th.

Finding new ways to cope…

I didn’t realise how hard life would be without self harm. Life without self harm is brilliant and so much easier in so many ways but it is so painfully difficult to learn how to deal with distress and emotions in a healthy non destructive way. My life has been quite full on over the past few weeks and both the good and bad days have given me some very strong emotions to try and work through. And without my old trusty (or not so trusty) partner, self destruction I am not so sure how to deal with these feelings. I completed DBT a few months ago which has been completely life changing in the best way, I use the skills I learnt in that therapy multiple times a day and it has helped me navigate these new experiences and helps me manage my emotions. But I am only now just realising that I have spent so many years blocking out all of my emotions with negative coping mechanisms and now I’m not doing that anymore I’m going to have to learn how to cope with these things a different way. I am letting myself feel things to their full extent for the first time in years and its so hard. Emotions feel like they last so much longer when you aren’t numbing them with an eating disorder or self harm. I don’t want to walk around life being a ball of emotions which are always on the surface and because that’s not how I want to be I have learnt I need to give myself time to notice and feel these emotions but sometimes you designate time to be sad and it refuses to be confined to the time slot you allocate it and you have to go about your day just feeling sad and living with the knowledge that I could hurt myself and make it go away for a while. However that is not an option and I’m not giving into it and going back to harming myself to stop these feeling because I know they are always there ready to be felt again when I’ve stoped hurting myself and as well as the emotions all still be there you now have the guilt and shame of using a negative coping mechanism. It’s complicated, messy and so hard to navigate everyday but I have hope that in time this will get easier. 

Enjoying it while it is here…

I really wanted to write and update about everything that is going on in my life at the moment, because things are getting better and all of the work I have put in and all the help and support I have received is paying off, but I don’t have all that much energy at the moment to think about everything and write an amazing reflective post. It also feels a bit foolhardy making a post saying that things are “better” or that “things get better” because I want to be realistic and I have made many posts like that over different platforms saying things are “getting better for good this time”. I just want to enjoy the time I am having right now. Enjoy that things are feeling better and are so much better than they used to be. I’m in college 3 days a week doing a course that I love. I’m attending therapy once a week which also feels so positive, I have more independence than I have had in my whole life while still being supported by my family in the areas that I need extra help in. Things aren’t perfect but it really struck me how different things are as I was filling out a form in therapy today. It was a form outlining where some trouble areas might be (a form I have filled out countless times over the years) I realised that a year ago I would have given anything to be able to to tick the box that says “no suicidal thoughts in the past 2 weeks”. Right now I didn’t even have to think about it, I know I haven’t felt suicidal in well over 2 weeks. Being suicidal is so draining and takes so much away from your life. It is a beautiful thing to not be feeling like that right now. I am very thankful.

A new part of the story…

I am currently in the process of getting a tattoo sleeve. My left arm is full of self harm scars and it had been a while since I last self harmed there and it felt like the time was right to start getting them covered. I am having them covered in stages for lots of reasons, scar cover ups are generally more painful than normal tattoos so having my whole arm done several long day sessions didn’t seem like a particularly great option for me, after my first cover up my arm became very swollen and the healing process took a fair amount longer than my other tattoos and there are some other practical reasons as well but a big reason is that it has been really emotional getting my scars covered. I love my new tattoos and it feels like they are now part of my journey. I also like that you can still see a lot of my scars and I can feel them there so its not like I’m hiding that part of my past it just isn’t the first thing I see when I look at my arm anymore. My arm is starting to fill up now which is very exciting and I’m looking forward to when my sleeve is finished. I am already planning my next tattoos and saving up so I can get them done. As I have been getting each tattoo I have realised that it isn’t getting any less special or meaningful as the time goes on. I remember the story, the night, the event behind each scar and now having those scars covered in art that I will have me forever is so meaningful. I had the option a while ago of having surgery to reduce the size of some of my scars but that just didn’t feel right for me at all. It felt too much like I was trying to erase that part of my life, I don’t want to get rid of the times that I did these things to myself. I am never going to forget those memories and they will always be part of my body. But by having these tattoos covering my scars I am reducing the chances of intrusive and sometimes upsetting conversations with strangers, I am boosting my confidence and I’m having a barrier between me and the times that I self harmed. I am already thinking forward to having my right arm tattooed and how momentous that is going to feel. Further in the future I plan on having my thighs tattooed as well. These tattoos are all so meaningful and will all have a lot of weight behind them all. My right arm has less scars so by getting it tattooed I will be eliminating the chance of making more on the clean skin that is left. I also have some very strong memories attached with some particular scars on my right arm which will make it emotional when the time comes and I feel ready to have them covered. I am in no rush to have these tattoos as I want to be completely ready even if I am clear on the designs in my head, that is not the point. I’m so happy to have these tattoos and I love them. Each piece of art that I have on my skin is so significant and they are now part of my story.

physically unwell..

Things have been very up and down recently. Since I finished DBT a few weeks ago I have had a bit of a gap in therapy appointments as I haven’t been well enough physically to attend sessions. It has been really hard to not go in for therapy and groups and it feels very strange. I am still having “telephone coaching sessions” with my therapist which are helping a lot to keep me on track. (I see my care co ordinator fortnightly as well)  My use of DBT skills hasn’t slipped at all despite finishing the program. I feel like I’m still learning about DBT skills all the time and always using them and finding out what works for me best. My mental health is ok and isn’t the main issue at the moment. Recently I have been having a lot of physical health issues. I had to have a colonoscopy a few weeks ago and I am waiting on my biopsy results to come back. I also have an endoscopy for a weeks time and I’m extremely nervous about that as the last one I had was not a pleasant experience at all. It took over and hour when they normally only take 5-20 minuets, the sedation didn’t do much for me and I was generally quite unwell before, during and after the procedure.  That endoscopy was an emergency though and I am trying to remind myself that this one I’m having next week is a planned procedure and will be very different. I won’t go into a lot of detail about my physical health issues but I just generally don’t feel very well at the moment. It has been hard to eat properly which is muddled in with my eating disorder making it hard to eat properly as well. I just want to feel better. This is all such a huge leap from what I was doing a matter of months ago, self harming and actively trying to hurt myself in any way I could to now consciously making an huge effort to attend doctors appointments, talk about my symptoms and try to make myself well. The change is hard and it feels very alien. But I am motivated to make myself feel better and live a better life. Just got to get through this hard stuff first. 

18 months well spent…

SO! After a long 18 months I have finally completed DBT! It has been a full on 18 months, I started off really struggling to complete homework and found it near impossible to open up fully in sessions. I didn’t talk about all of my problem behaviours- just the ones that I felt were ‘big’ enough to warrant support with. 18 months later I am so much more self aware, I consistently complete homework, I look up DBT skills in my own time and can handle a crisis so much better. I had my final group session last week and my final individual session yesterday. I am going to continue working with my current therapist while doing trauma work so it wasn’t really a ‘goodbye’ session but more of a round up of the work we have done for the past 18 months. Trauma work is something I am looking forward to but also dreading massively. I hope to update my blog as I start this new bit of work because I have found the online DBT community really helpful throughout this treatment and maybe if I talk about my experience with trauma therapy it might open up a new community that I wasn’t aware. DBT has changed things so much for me. It has helped me in areas I didn’t think it would, not just self harming behaviours but eating disorder behaviours, trauma symptoms, relationships and so much more that I can’t fit into this blog post right now. It has shown me the importance of self care- and not just the bath bombs and face masks kind of self care that you see a lot of online. I am talking about- going to bed on time with a good sleep routine, going to the doctors if you need it, looking after self harm wounds, making sure you shower, brush your teeth and drink enough water. All of these things are for me so much harder than the more ‘seen’ self care activities because it isn’t widely talked about that people with mental health issues can struggle with the absolute basic levels of self care like brushing your teeth. People don’t like to hear about that. @makedaisychains over on instagram has a series called ‘boring self care’ which has been so refreshing to read through out this bit of treatment. Hearing people talk so candidly about the less talked about areas of mental health is really nice (for want of a better word). Like I said trauma work is feeling very daunting but I need to remind myself that DBT seemed very daunting to start with as well and now 18 months later I am in a position I never thought I would reach. Things are not where I want them to be and don’t want to make DBT sound like a miracle cure because it definitely isn’t. It has taken so much work and effort, I have wanted to quit so many times, it has felt scary and unachievable at times and I am sure it isn’t going to suit everyone but for me after two rounds with support from family, friends, my mental health team I’m getting so much closer to the life I want to lead. I am getting closer to achieving goals that felt so far away and I think it has been an 18 months well spent.