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. 
Tag: NHS
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.
The mental and the physical…
Things are bloody tough right now. I never thought I would be in the position that food is the thing that is getting in the way of me doing trauma therapy. My eating disorder has always been quietly in the background. It has been there for years helping me cope with things. Every so often it will raise its head and take the front seat. When that happens I need intervention medically and through mental health services to help things to become more manageable. I have never seen my eating disorder as a huge issue as for the most part my blood tests, ECG’s and other test all come back normal and the biggest thing that makes me think that I don’t need to be concerned is that I’m overweight (I know eating disorders come in any shape and size, this is just my mental hang up. You can still be ill with an eating disorder when overweight). Ever since I started reducing self harm my eating disorder has become more prominent. My blood tests are no longer coming back ok and my weight is dropping. It’s hard to decipher things because I have also been physically unwell. I am having investigations to see if I have inflammatory bowel disease which can cause weight loss, loss of appetite, altered blood test results amongst other things. However I am very aware that the eating disorder voice is very loud at the moment. It is getting its grubby little hands in and messing up the lines between physical health and mental health. I haven’t been able to eat properly for several months because of the pain I’m in and my intake is somewhat limited due to what causes digestive flare ups. I also have diabetes so my blood sugars have been somewhat shaky over the past few weeks. My body is just struggling and I am finding it so hard to look after it and give it what it needs especially when there is a lot of pain involved when I eat. My therapist has said that if I continue this way trauma therapy isn’t going to be able to go ahead as you need to be fully aware of your surroundings and able to do the processing that is involved in trauma work. I’m so scared. This feels like so much to get my head around and what I am doing isn’t enough so I need to do more but honestly doing more feels so out of reach. As always I am trying to focus on the here and now and just take baby steps forwards. I’m definitely not just standing by letting myself get more unwell but this is clearly going to take a lot of work.
Things are changing!
Things have been busy! My health isn’t great at the moment and I may write a blog post about that in the future depending on what happens next in my treatment. I’m working really hard in therapy on my eating disorder at the moment which is something very new for me and I am quite proud of myself for opening up about it all. I’m also in my final module of DBT! It is really weird thinking that in less than a month this bit of treatment is going to be finished! DBT has been completely life changing for me and has helped me in ways I didn’t even comprehend when I first started. Once DBT has finished I will be moving on to the long awaited trauma therapy. This feels very scary as I have never been stable enough to do intense trauma work especially outside of a hospital setting. I’m confident that I will be able to use my new skills to work through the difficult emotions it is bound to bring up. I’m aware that there will probably be blips but I’m in a much better place mentally now and I can see that they are just blips and don’t have to be more than that. And the last thing I wanted to update on in this post was that I have completed my first year back in education after a 5 year break! I’m getting my results back in less than 2 days time and I’m very anxious but I’m so proud of myself for going back to college and finishing a whole year in education. The main thing is that I have completed the year and a good grade will be an extra bonus. Thanks for sticking with me through my sporadic posting, I have some ideas for upcoming posts so watch out for those 🙂
Tipping point…
I had a really tough therapy session yesterday. My therapist was quite real with me about how DBT therapy finishes in 3 and half months and the fact of the matter is, if my self harm severity and frequency hasn’t decreased by the time therapy finishes I’m not going to be well enough to go onto the next stage of therapy which is the trauma work I desperately need. I’m scared because once again I’m facing the reality that self harm is something I need to stop if I’m going to get the life I want. My PTSD is crippling and I need to do the therapy to lesson its effects. But I’m so so so scared to let go of hurting myself. It has felt like my identity for a really long time. Letting go of self harm means I’m also going to be moving on from this part of my life. I’m going to be moving on from hospital trips, stitches, operations, psychiatric admissions. I’m going to be moving on from a part of my life that all revolved around my self destruction. Change is scary for everyone but when you’ve been living a certain way for years change almost feels like the enemy. The people around me, the people I trust the most are all telling me that it is time, I am ready to let go of self harm and hearing that makes me want to cry because I don’t feel ready but honestly- I don’t think I ever will. Yes self harm has been a coping mechanism when I didn’t have anything else and was a friend when I felt really alone but I’m realising now that after all this time, it hasn’t fixed anything. Self harm has always felt ‘safe’ but my therapist pointed out that it feels safe but its probably the most unsafe thing I could be doing right now. Something I thought was my ‘friend’ is now stopping me from moving forward in therapy and that reality has really shaken me. All of this doesn’t mean I’m never going to hurt myself again because I think everyone realises that that isn’t realistic but maybe now these are my first steps to moving forward. To moving on. To getting better.
PTSD is tough
I’m opening up a lot in therapy at the moment about my past and the traumatic things that have happened to me. It’s been harder than I ever could have imagined and it feels like we are barely scratching the surface which is daunting to say the least. I come home from therapy and cry because its so hard to be telling someone about these things. But I am so lucky to have the family I have who are so supportive and help me each step of the way. My Mum always reminds me that living with PTSD untreated for the rest of my life is going to be hard and it will stop me from having a life, but if I do the therapy now even though for a while it may be harder and more painful one day I wont be living with the effects of PTSD anymore. Right now I’m holding onto that hope more than anything. I want to have a job where I can help other people, I want to have a partner and have children one day. I want to be okay and not feel like I have to hurt myself to get through difficult feelings. I want to be better and I want to recover. Yes, right now that all might feel very far away but I’m confident that everyday I’m getting closer to my goals.
Thank you 2018!
2018 has been a weird year. I’ve made so much progress despite blips along the way. I wanted to have a year free from psychiatric hospital admissions but I didn’t quite get there, but that’s ok! I went into hospital informally and for the first time ever I didn’t fight the treatment and made the most of the extra support. On the flip side, Ive made huge leaps in other areas of my life. I went back into education which is something I never thought I would be able to do. I’ve started to learn how to drive! I started dialectic behavioural therapy (DBT) this year with a lovely bunch of girls who are so supportive and kind. I’ve opened up so much in regards to trauma which has quite possibly been one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but I think it is starting to pay off. So a very positive year in between some of the darker moments. I am really looking forward to seeing what 2019 will bring!
Two years since admission…
Anniversaries are always a bit of a weird one. It’s been two years since I was admitted to hospital. Two years since I met some of my best friends and grew a second family. Two years ago I was spiralling so quickly into an illness that makes it hard to let anyone in, thinking that I wasn’t sick enough for treatment. Looking back I can now see that I was really very unwell. It was never an easy path to take. Being admitted to a hospital 3 hours away from home so close to christmas, but everyone knew it was the last option we really had. It was that or I would die. I find it so scary that a mental illness is so strong that it can make you think that you aren’t ill at all. Two years on from the beginning of my admission I am still close friends with many of the other patients who I met there. I have an even closer relationship with my family than before and my general outlook on the world has changed. I find it difficult to have gone through an experience that not many other people have been through. But as time goes on I know that difference isn’t bad. The memories from that ward will stay with me forever. The good the bad and the ugly. They have been the product of many a good story! But mainly I’m just happy that I’m still here.
Going the extra mile…
I have been struggling a lot at the moment. It’s really hard to find the light when it all seems very dark but I have met some people in the recent months that have really gone the extra mile to help me. I recently found myself in a bit of a sticky situation where my brother ended up having to call me an ambulance. One of the paramedics that came was particularly lovely, she helped me to follow the emergency treatment that I needed to have. She spoke to me about my blog and writing to distract me from the whole situation. We spoke about writing quite a lot and I gave her the name of my blog so that she could look it up on her break. As I was waiting in A&E a notification came up on my phone of a new follower and new likes on my blog. You guessed it, it was the lovely paramedic who also has her own blog! After silly amounts of blood tests and junior doctors failing with canulas. She came into A&E with another patient but briefly sat next to me to say that she has been reading and enjoying my blog and can’t wait for my next post, so thank you lovely paramedic for going that extra mile to make that shitty situation so much better.
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