Zoom

I have been to see my CC – it went well. I told her about hte funny thoughts I am having, the hallucinations and the increase in voices. I expect a call from the GP tomorrow or Friday – I wish they would leave me alone.

I have lots of ideas but as soon as I think of them they disappear like a puff of smoke in the wind, any ideas I do keep hold of seem to be bad ones and stupid.

I wonder what will happen next?

I can still function OK – I have cooked a nice meal and the house is clean and tidy. I am dressed and presentable, I can tie my own shoelaces and decide between coffee or tea, I can even still write in joined up writing. I will not, however take their tablets or do as I am told. Does that make me mad or lacking in insight?

Yesterday was a different day…………..

Here is a good tune……..

Insight Downtown

I haven’t been doing too well recently, in fact I have been at rock bottom and have almost killed myself. I am writing this post to distract myself from the ghastliness of it all because I am getting beyond distress and to a certain calmness that I don’t understand but that somehow fills me with foreboding – and yes I know that makes little sense. The voices are almost constantly telling me I would be better off dead and I believe them. I am filled with paranoia and there are people out there who are making me think things I don’t want to think. So I write………or more correctly I blog becuase I still am……LOL.

I have been thinking about MH services and the type of service I would like but I get ahead of myself let me first talk of the service I get. I have a Psychiatrist who is kind, intelligent, respectful and diligent, I see him fortnightly. I have a Care Coordinator who is also a Social Worker, she also is kind, compassionate and insightful, she always does what she says she will and if I ring her she always gets back to me, she sees me every week and would see me more, I think, if I let her. I have a GP who rings me up and asks me to go see her when she hears I am not doing too great and when I am better than I am now she sees me every two to three weeks, lately she has seen me twice a week. My GP is kind, respectful and caring but just a touch scary and she will not let me disengage no matter how hard I try. She has listened to me and respects my desire not to be admitted agaist my will. These three people have been the mainstay of my MH service and have managed to keep me alive.

I have been sectioned in the past and the care in the acute unit was abysmal – I would burn down the unit and start again. I would staff it with nurses who actually talk to patients and engage in at least some therapeutic exchange, rather than nurses who are only interested in order and giving out drugs and drinking tea. I would employ Psychiatrists who listen to patients and not just prescribe for them, telling them to be good girls and take their medication. I would make the rooms in the wards welcoming and different rather than like cells. I would make the food edible.

I have met the Crisis Team, who would not know a crisis if it hit them. I would first of all have them learn how to introduce themselves properly. Crisis Teams seem primarily interested in medication – is that all there is? I think not……

I have also had talking therapy which to me seems banal and unhelpful and somewhat contrived – I chose not to talk.

So what service do I want? – I don’t honestly know, there must be better ways to deliver acute care and I haven’t read or heard one good word about Crisis Teams. The good service I have had has been given by individuals who often themselves grimace at the system. I wish I had answers but I don’t – all I can say is that it is the individuals make up the service who count.

So this post like my mental state makes no sense, offers little insight and rambles. To make amends here is a good song…………..

Suicide – Preventing

I wrote a post which I deleted about an hour or so after not because what I wrote wasn’t true or what I really felt but because it was too painful to leave it posted. I still feel the same – I want to die.

I am on a ramshackle suicide watch at the moment seeing my GP at least twice a week interspersed with the Care-Coordinator. I am a hair’s breadth from compulsory admission, saved from it, I believe, only because I display some insight and because I gave my GP good reasons why admission wouldn’t help which she agreed with on the whole.

My mental state is confused and at the same time clear, I vary between being able to sit and write, as now, to being immobile and mute, to being in a restless agitation in which I can neither sit still or concentrate. The voices I hear have multiplied from two (there have always been two) to many, so many I cannot identify them all, none are kind and most just want me to harm myself telling me the world would be much brighter without me. I self harm but even that brings no relief anymore and the overwhelming urge is to end it. Maybe when the confusion becomes less than the clarity I will be sure and find peace.

People ask where voices come from and I am assured by the professionals that mine are symptoms of my distress, I find this difficult to believe and am increasingly aware that instead the voices are from another dimension which reflect all the truth from here. The voices tell the truth.

I wrote a poem which tries to demonstrate how voices are – I reproduce it below but it is meant to be read out loud really so it may just look confusing and pointless.

Voices For Three, Four or More………….

How have you been? Say you’re a twat

I’ve not been too well

I’ve tried my best

But, well, you know

The voices and that….

How are you sleeping? We want you to bleed

Not really that good

It sometimes feels

Like I’m slow

Then I’ll speed

What makes you worse? It’s time you were dead

I’m not so sure

People and stuff

I can’t handle

The things in my head

What makes you better? You’re a worthless shite

I really don’t know

Not sure it’s the pills

I take them regular

Always at night

See you next month You’re a stupid fat cow

Yes, well, thanks

I’ll keep on with these

Maybe they’ll help

But I don’t know how…..

I have to go now my ability to still still and concentrate is waning and the voices are angry because I have written about them. I am reading lots of others blogs which somehow help, I very rarely leave comments because what I write always sounds trite and banal.

I like this track………….

Back Again

Saw my GP today, I had to go otherwise they would have come looking. I am walking a fine line, she did consider sectioning me. I had to agree to see the CMHT again. I hate this. I told her the pills were poisoning me and that I had struck a deal with the voices. I told her I was fine. But I still have to go tomorrow to see the CC, my Shrink is off ill so I have to see the GP every week and the CC as well. It feels like my life is not my own. Luckily they are not trying to get me to go back on the pills.

The voices are terrible tonight, they are angry with me for going back to the CMHT. I tried to tell them at least I am not taking the pills but they won’t listen to me.I watched Masterchef whilst hearing how disgusting and weak I am. The voices are right, I am weak and stupid. The Shrink and the CC tell me the voices are a symptoms of my distress, I know this isn’t true. The voices are from another dimension and can see the truth.

Reasons

The voices which trouble me are a little worse. They have been worse since my last therapy session and they get worse when I see the Shrink too. This is partly why I have discharged myself from the CMHT, The voices suggested it to me and said if I did discharge myself they would leave me alone more, but I wanted to do it myself too, what good is a CMHT that makes you worse?

As for stopping the medication, this was my idea, it dulls and numbs me and it doesn’t stop me feeling bad or stop me hearing voices so there is little point in taking it. Anyway the depression seems to be going now and I tend to think it is the passage of time rather than any medication that has done this.

Discharged

Well I have discharged myself from the CMHT. It went very well. I told them I had stopped the meds and I didn’t want to see the CC or Shrink anymore. The response was in a nutshell “Well OK – you can ring us if you need us” – No thanks I don’t think I will be doing that anytime soon. Like I said before I feel relieved – no more appointments, no more traumatic therapy sessions and no more stupefying, numbing drugs. I don’t feel depressed anymore. I don’t feel manic, the voices do trouble me but I am learning to cope with them so I should be OK without the drugs.

I can go back to being me now instead of a mental health patient.

Balance

I made a list of pros and cons in relation to my mental health and it’s treatment. I took into account:-

• how I am feeling
• the benefits of the medication
• the side effects of the medicationt
• the benefits of the therapy
• the drawbacks of the therapy
• the invasiveness of the CMHT
• the effect on my work
• the time spent on appointments

I came to the conclusion that the cons outweigh the pros and to be honest I think I an feeling worse right now because of the CMHT so I am discharging myself. No more meds, appointments or therapy. As from now I am reducing my meds and I will cancel all appointments on Monday morning.

I am not scared just relieved.

Madness?

A forum I belong to had a posting about delusions, basically it said many Shrinks were deluded by their own sense of self importance, well that’s an interesting point of view and from some of the experiences I have heard about I aren’t going to argue.

But talk of delusions made me think of me and my own particular madness. I know that it has been said I am delusional, mainly about the voices I hear, I have been told that the voices are a symptom of my distress; but I don’t believe this to be necessarily true. I have my own set of beliefs about the voices but I keep my ideas to myself now as it does me no good to start holding forth on what I think as then I am delusional or to put it another way my beliefs are different from the professionals.

To be sane it seems that I (and everyone else) have to fit into a nice safe little pigeon hole and if I don’t fit then I am “mentally ill” “unstable” and “mad”. So the best thing is to keep my beliefs to myself and agree with them. So if I know to do this am I mad at all? What is madness anyway?

Work Again

I am going back to work today. Trouble is I don’t feel too great right now and I haven’t for a few days, however I need to go back so that is what I will do.

Saw my CC yesterday and it was a good meeting as she really does help in that she makes me feel less alone in this morass of mental illness.

Thats the thing about MH issues – loneliness . You can have family and friends around you and also the professionals but ultimately you are alone. Right now I feel very lonely.

A tune that always cheers me up

Ramblings

I can’t really think of anything to write so I will just meander on about nothing in particular. I am excited about my return to work – I have lots of plans – I have been asked to look at revamping a service so it will mean a lot of work when I get back into it. I am going back on a phased return so it will be after the new year that I get fully up to speed. I have a few ideas already and am putting them down on paper but of course when I get in to it I will probably find these plans still need a lot of work.

I feel better than I did yesterday – a lot better I just hope I aren’t going to go all peaks and troughs and that the good days get more and the bad days less. I read yesterdays post and the one about stopping my medication. Right now stopping my medication seems a bad idea still it could all be different tomorrow.

I read another blog about how rubbish services are in other places. I have to say my CMHT does what is says it will when it says it will and it keeps me informed. My Shrinky is very good and my CC is too, but then I don’t really want them in my life that much and they know this – perhaps they are glad about it. The Crisis Team are diabolical though and the local Psyche Hospital is abysmal. When i was in there under section it was awful.  There was a lot of tokenism like daily patient meetings and such but when it came to it you had to take your Lorazepam or else.