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…………..

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.

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.

Somewhere Else

I had an intense session of therapy and it has made me feel particularly bad. Ideally I would like to self harm but I am trying very hard to break the cycle of self harm, self harm make me feel clean again for a while and at the moment I feel especially dirty. I feel that I am worthless and disgusting, I write this not to seek sympathy or to feel sorry for myself but simply as a statement of fact – That is what I am. The voices I hear reinforce these feelings. I have tried a lot of the safe coping strategies I have (of which blogging is one) and they have helped me refrain from cutting myself.

Next week it will be more of the same therapy and I am a little afraid but I feel that the therapy is getting me from where I am to where I want to be. Most of what I do is to get me from this place to somewhere else.

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?

Still Here!

I had a nice Christmas – I enjoyed it. I was with my family and it was good to see them all. Christmas is over commercilised and I really aren’t religious but if it suddenly disappeared I would be sad.

I have had my Lithium increased as well as my anti-psychotic and you know what? I feel a bit better, it has been a pain sticking with the medication and several times I have nearly stopped them but now I can put my hand on my heart and say the medication helps. Now I aren’t wanting to become the poster girl for medication because it has taken me a lot of false starts to get here and some of those false starts have been very painful but right now the drugs do work!

The medication seems to have taken the edge of the voices that plague me and also the therapy is helping me to handle them a lot better, once again I have to say that the therapy hurts a lot of the time; it drags up stuff which sometimes I think would be better off left buried, but looking back I am in a better place than I was three months ago.

All this sounds positive and to be frank it is. Don’t get me wrong I am not about to burst into song and I think I have a long way to go, no doubt I will falter in the times ahead but right now I am still here!

Nothing

I have had a quiet day today, not many voices and I feel pretty much in limbo. neither bad or good – I am just here. I haven’t spent my time gazing at the walls either but I can’t really identify anything concrete I have done except for a spot of washing and ironing.

I did spend sometime thinking about what I covered this week with my CC, it was pretty heavy going and left me shattered after it, so shattered that the Shrinky commented how tired I looked the day after. Talking therapies are OK but sometimes I wonder if they stir up too much, the old adage about sleeping dogs is true. But then again my dogs are barking so loudly I can’t sleep for them without the aid of the chemical cosh, so maybe I should listen when they bark and see what disturbs them so. So it is blah blah blah with the CC and to be honest with the specialist type of help I am having it seems to a point to be working.

Another day has been and nearly gone, I took my Lithium and nothing happened as predicted. I haven’t grown wings or horns, I don’t feel bad or good just indifferent. So I will carry on regardless.

(I resisted the temptation to put up “Who Let the Dogs Out?”)

Therapy-itis

I am therapyed out. Not having a session next week which I am extremely glad about. Don’t get me wrong the therapy is helping but it leaves a mark and gives me nightmares during the day. Talking is good but sometimes silence is golden. Enough for me today.