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…………..
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 went for my bloods doing today, I was also weighed as the Shrink needs to work out the correct dose of Lithium for me I have been thinking about medication a lot and why I take it. I take it because it is better than the alternative which is a psyche ward. Of course I do get suicidal, and I am teetering on the edge of feeling that way again, so I guess death is an alternative too. But it is far more likely I would go off on some acutely psychotic episode raving about voices and trying to cut myself to ribbons.
I have been on a psyche ward against my will before and I won’t let that happen again. I was sectioned because I was suicidal and was displaying a distinct lack of insight. Poor Shrink didn’t really have a choice he knew I would kill myself if he didn’t send me in. Being held against your will is not fun , it’s is frightening and totally disempowering. I was coerced into taking mind numbing medication when I didn’t behave, told when to go to bed, told when to eat and told when I could shower. I don’t want to have to go through that again so I take the medication.
The medication helps, it numbs the pain down slightly and it makes me less liable to hallucinate or become manically depressed. The medication doesn’t stop the voices, it doesn’t really stop me being depressed and it doesn’t take away a lot of my other symptoms such as flashing lights and stuff. It all has side effects too; a tremor from the anti-psychotics and a fuzziness that lasts till the afternoon, when I come off them I will have to do it slowly. The Lithium can damage my kidneys and make me hypothyroid. I have no doubt I am addicted to the sleeping tablets.
So for me it is a bit of a balancing act – demons or medication.
The other day I had a Mental Heath Day, I saw the Psychiatrist, the Social Worker and went to the Self Help group for Hearing Voices. Afterwards I felt worse than I have for along time. It wasn’t so much what anyone did more the thoughts and feelings invoked by the contact with them. I am pretty used to handling thoughts and feelings, we all are, mental health problems or not, it was just that these thoughts and feelings were so powerful, so damaging that I really wanted to get them out of my head and the only way I could think to do it was by killing myself.
That all sounds a bit overblown and melodramatic I know but it is true. I have been suicidal before, I have had a couple of failed attempts but nothing matches the power of how I felt then and to some extent how I feel now, but I didn’t try and kill myself – I am not sure why. Perhaps the truth is that I don’t really want to do die, perhaps it is the idea that suicide is somehow wrong is so firmly ingrained in me that I cannot bring myself to do it, maybe it is a morbid need to see what happens next that keeps me here, most likely it is that I don’t want to leave my family with the fallout that suicide brings, I don’t know and the more I think about it the more confused I become.
I self harm, I am a cutter, it helps and I think it has several meanings for me, it helps to express the pain I feel, it is a form of release and it is an act of self preservation, a bit like an animal which chews off it’s foot to escape the trap, so I have cut myself to preserve myself.
Posted by p3bbles 
Posted by p3bbles 
Posted by p3bbles 