Thursday, 25 August 2016

Jumping Through Hoops to Nowhere in Particular

What the actual fuck is the fucking point of making changes when they don't make the damnedest bit of difference?

I tried something new a few days ago.  I asked for what I wanted.

I fought very hard to get what I needed from the NHS (I think the NHS is fabulous, and would defend it tooth and nail - but there are significant failings in mental health services.)  I went to my GP, who referred me to the 'Community Interventions Team'.  Initially things went pretty well - I got an appointment with a CPN, who sent me on to a very good psychiatrist, who decided that therapy would be a good idea and that he would also check in with me every now and again.  I felt supported and listened to.  Towards the end of the allotted therapy (which to be honest just opened old wounds and left me rather frustrated that the main aim was really just to establish what I weigh and attempt to frighten me with a diagnosis I didn't want), it was agreed that I should have a break from it (I agreed with this) and that I could continue to check in with the psychiatrist every few weeks.  I pleaded for this, on being told that I was being kicked off back to the GP (I don't have a regular one - it's a group practice with more turnovers than the pastry counter at Sainsburys), and I thought I had managed to advocate a bit for myself here and get what I needed - a bit of consistency.  My first appointment with him after the end of therapy rolled around, and I had a phone call a couple of days before asking if I'd mind if it was with a nurse practitioner instead, as Dr N was off.  I hesitated, agreed, and made sure I asked if I could see him as well, at a later date.  I turned up for the appointment, was made to feel like a total idiotic waste of time (yes yes, no-one can 'make me feel' anything.  But the outcome, whether my own doing or not, was that I felt like an idiot and a waste of time, so...whatever.).  At the end, I asked very clearly if we could arrange an appointment with Dr N.  Was told I'd get an appointment letter in the post.

A week or two later, someone claiming to be my 'Care Co-ordinator' (CC) who I'd never even heard of phoned and suggested going to see her.  OK, I thought, I'll jump through the hoops.  Met with her, felt it was a total waste of time - having spent half an hour talking about self-esteem issues, how much damage I can do to myself and how I didn't really feel worthy of the space I take up on earth, she looked at me patronisingly and said 'Would you say you're quite hard on yourself?'.  I may have goldfished a bit at this point, and immediately realised this was going nowhere. I made it very clear, once again, that I wanted an appointment with the psychiatrist.  She was non-committal, saying she'd speak to him about it.  I gritted my teeth and explained that this had been agreed  between him and my therapist.  So I waited a few days, expecting to finally get the letter with an appointment.  Nothing.  Phoned his office.  No record of appointments, can't just make one, he has to ask to see you.  'Oh, sorry, I didn't ask him', from above mentioned CC, 'Why did you want to see him?'  I almost gave up at this point, but pushed through and waveringly explained through trying to choke back tears of frustration that I was desperate for some consistency of care.  Finally Dr N phoned me and offered me an appointment.  At last.  It wasn't helpful, but at least it happened.

Fast forward a few weeks.  I'd stopped asking for anything again, until CC rang and said she hadn't seen me for a while and would I come for an appointment.  Turned up, went through the 'no, nothing's changed in terms of mood/behaviours etc - oh except that I've lost my job and am in an even more fragile emotional state' conversation.  CC asks what else I think they can do.  I admit the answer is nothing, really.  She asks me what I would like to do.  I reply that I would like to continue to check in with Dr N every now and again.  She says she will talk to him and see what he suggests.  Phone call this morning (two weeks later, by the way).  'I've spoken to Dr N, and I think the decision is that we are going to discharge you back to the GP.'

What is the point?  Things have changed, admittedly, since I grew a pair and realised that the only way out was to do something a bit radical, and so contacted my former therapist who I had worked so well with, and who, to cut a long story short, offered to help me again in a slightly unorthodox manner.  But what if I didn't have that option, or the sense to notice that I was getting nowhere?  What if the NHS service really was my lifeline?  I shudder to think of how many people have been through something similar and just rolled over and taken it.  I would have done, a few months ago.

I guess the lesson is that asking for what you want doesn't always mean you are listened to - but at least I know I did try to get what I needed, and it was not for want of effort that I didn't.

Wednesday, 24 August 2016

Taking Some Action

Some things I did to get out of my own way yesterday:


  • Ate lunch (tuna salad)
  • Took prescribed meds immediately after lunch to discourage me from eating more/purging
  • Made dentist appointment to address crumbled back tooth :-/
  • Wrote a few paragraphs of a funding application I had been putting off



Inline image 1 


  • This ^^^  A bit of adrenaline without the damage.  Until I fall off, anyway :p

Monday, 22 August 2016

Up, Down and Looking for the Line

It's been a strange few days.  I complained a few months ago that everything was flat, that I missed the highs and could handle the lows, if I could just shake off this infuriating fog of detachment.  Now the big swings seem to have returned and I'm not sure if I do prefer them.  Which leads me to consider the following question:

What am I looking for?

And the answer, somewhat frustratingly is one of these:
- Perfection
- 'Level-ness' - and accepting just OK
- Acceptance of massive peaks and troughs of mood

Trouble being I really have no idea which one. Obviously I would like perfection.  Perfection tends to be my life plan. This life plan, however, is what has landed me in a mess in the first place.  So I have to accept that, along with abso-bloody-lutely everything else in life, recovery is not going to be perfect.  This isn't easy, but in my adult state, I know that my make-up means that I am unlikely to achieve a state where I am generally content with the occasional rush of pleasantly manageable happiness.  I just don't work like that.

Which means I have two choices, really.  Of course it isn't as black and white as I make it appear, but let's just assume there is a spectrum within each of these options.  In the most basic terms, I have a choice between working towards taking out the soaring and the plummeting of emotion, or aiming to remove myself from a rut of 'OK'.

Right now 'OK' seems like the preferable option.  It is truly exhausting peeling myself off the ceiling one minute only to find that the ceiling was much further from the floor than I thought and I forgot to attach the bungee rope.  I can almost visualise hurtling through space into the chasm below and seeing shapes on the wall blurring on the way down.  I can laugh wildly at the speed of descent, watch it from the viewpoint of an enthralled observer, until I reach the bottom with an almost audible splat.  It's kind of exciting.  Even the splat is kind of exciting, until I realise that my face is mashed into the ground and I can barely look up.  It might be simpler if I could identify when something might cause the rush of air that lifts me onto the wings of incredible joy, spot when I'm about to take off and, while not refusing it, because I can enjoy me, dammit, at least note that there will come a point where I need to control the flight in order to touch down without breakage.  It would also definitely help if I could spot the moment when I am beginning to head downward again and make sure I have some necessary ropes in place for climbing back out, if I can't avoid the hole in the floor.  The advantage to this state is that I stay sharp.  It is fast, interesting and frequently very creative.  I both delight in my quickness of mind, and loathe my self-absorption, I can write, plan, run, come up with brilliant solutions to problems with a neat little side-step from conventional thinking, and I make everyone around me laugh and adore my energy.  The trouble is that underneath that energy is a constant mumble of destructive thoughts, paranoia, fear, self-doubt and the uneasy knowledge that it is unsustainable, and it could take just one slip of concentration to miss the ledge altogether and go to a place where I would never be able to climb out again.  It's wild and dramatic.  It is also exhausting and, on a very normal level of annoyance, it means I am careless, avoid anything that looks boring and forget stuff a lot.

Level, on the other hand comes with much less involvement.  I vaguely explained to someone recently that I felt totally flat and dull, and that I wanted to participate in my life again.  It still doesn't sound much of a tangible goal, but I stick by it when I'm in a detached state of 'just ok-ish'.  I plod along in this state, not really noticing much and becoming a little frustrated by my slowness.  It doesn't inspire any kind of strong feeling at all, really.  It's boring, frankly, and I don't feel like me.
Not feeling like me is all well and good when I have summoned enough energy to hate me, but what would be wrong with actually making the most of me when I am being witty and interesting?
The advantages to level are of course a little more consistency, a lot less distraction, and far fewer thuds and abrasions from hitting the deck on a regular basis.

What if I could raise the level of 'level' a bit?  What if there is a place where the line is a bit higher and I can send a little more current along it, resulting in occasional dips and lifts, but generally being tethered to the circuit? I can live without excitement, I think.  I've never enjoyed adventure, particularly.  But I don't want to grovel around in a ditch for the rest of forever, the flat line needs to be at a point where I can see a bit ahead rather than muffling everything to the point where I am just trundling along in the groove that someone else has dug for me.  So my goal is just to raise level a little.  In the meantime, I seem to be overshooting somewhat, but that's practice, right?  A darts player doesn't hit the bullseye every time (heck, I don't even hit the board half the time), they practise and learn to judge their aim.  So I need to keep practising and trying to find the level I need.  I might fall off a few times, or zip a bit higher than planned, but I can always keep coming to look for the line.

Friday, 19 August 2016

Making Contact

Stay.
A shiver of electricity wakes something deeper than I can identify.
A longing for closeness, sheer terror in the face of need.
It is only a hand.  Just a contact.
Stay.
It will not choke, will not entice, will not go beyond.
Just as it supports the physical structure, so it can help to hold the tide of emotion.
It is not demand.  Just acceptance.
Stay.
Do I fear the holding or the letting go?
Because there is no tomorrow, maybe I will be here forever.
And if that is so, I would like to feel the warmth of contact.

Let go.
Not of the hand, not of the body, not even of the mind.
Just loosen the grip, allow another to hold.
If there is no tomorrow, there is no consequence.
So let it go.
It can spill over, washed away by tears.
It is only a feeling. A transitory, fluid state which is not forever.
And it can be gone if I let it go.
Let go.
Do I fear forever or just the now?
There will be a tomorrow, I could choose to be there.
And if that is so, I would like to be a part of it.

Stand.
First with the prop of something stronger than what I believe is there.
And then with just a light contact, tethering me to the ground.
It is OK to be here.  OK to just be.
Stand.
Choke doubt, entice possibility, go beyond requirement.
It is not necessary to stand alone or bend to carry expectation.
I am allowed to ask.  I could accept.
Stand.
Is it wrong to fear the view from above?
To see just tomorrow and all its possibility as a choice for now, not forever.
And if that is so, would I like to stand and have a look?


Sunday, 7 August 2016

Fine

A lot of time and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since my last post.  It has been interesting, reading back over the old posts - posts from a time when recovery was my sole focus, where I was learning to be well.  I was expecting to find my writing childish, inexperienced, the way I always have when I reach a new stage of life and look back at old patterns.  I didn't.  I actually think it is more level, adult and honest than I am being now.

Having had a long stretch of pretty good mental health, things started to slide a bit a year or so back.  I fell back into old habits of keeping quiet, being controlled and eventually lost myself again in a confusing tangle of obsession, blank obedience, and eating, purging and exercising away my emotions.  I went back to therapy.  I had some boxes ticked by the NHS, and I came away exactly the same.  This is possibly unsurprising, given my extremely developed ability to appear absolutely fine, and refusal to show any sign of anything being otherwise.  It's part of what kept me going as a child and a teenager, and I have rarely shaken it off - fine is really the only option most of the time.

Until I started to pull 'fine' apart last time.  Then I discovered that 'fine' actually meant locked and suppressed, and the only real way to be fine was to be not fine for a while when I just wasn't.  In truth, I was a lot more fine when I was managing to say that I wasn't, because that helped me to identify the feeling, the source of it, and either do something about it, or simply remind myself that it was not forever.  I appear to have lost that perspective a little, somehow, though logically I still know it.

So I'm back at a crossroads, having eagerly followed one path down a dead end where some monsters awaited, and where I got stuck for quite a while.  With a little encouragement and a few risky moves, I think I have managed to make it back to the middle to begin to set off down the rather lumpier road that leads somewhere better.  Currently I can say with confidence that I am not fine, and I don't know how to be so.  But that in itself is the first few hand-holds on the side of the rock, so I shall just dangle here for a while as I work out where next to reach for a crack to put my toe in.  It might take a while, but I would like to see the view from the top again.  Patience, persistence, and some risk-taking will get me there in the end.  Then maybe I will be mostly 'fine' for this point in my life.