Month: March 2018

The Frustration At Not Getting Better From Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 22 Comments

I like to think of myself as a fairly calm person (watch as my anxiety laughs hysterically in the corner), but lately, I have found myself getting angry, like proper smoke coming out of the ears angry, and the same is happening with my mum. Nay, maybe angry is the wrong word for I am not exactly angry right now but frustrated, and this frustration is aimed entirely at my mental health and the fact that no matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, my mental health is not improving/is sliding further and further into the abyss of insanity, and now even the professionals are at a loss as to what to do.

You see, ever since I left inpatient, things have been going in a downward spiral, and I am finding myself becoming hysterical and requiring my “emergency” medication to calm me down practically every night. Hell the other night things got so terrible that even my mum took some of my emergency calm down medication just to stop her from going completely bonkers herself and all in all it is getting out of hand. We have been phoning the crisis team almost daily in our attempts to manage my latest series of breakdowns and it has just got me asking, staring up at the sky and shaking my fist asking why, why is all of this happening?

It isn’t even as if I am one of these people who thinks life is supposed to be fair, far from it, I am one of those people who, when others protest “life is so unfair” ask them “my dear, who on earth ever told you that it was?” but this is ridiculous. I just don’t understand it. I have been in mental health treatment for almost 15 years now, 15 long years. Think about how many hours of 1:1 sessions with psychologists that includes, think about how many months as an inpatient in hospital that involves, the number of different medications tried (so many that when you shake me I rattle like a bottle of tablets and a leaflet of side effects falls out of my left nostril), and all for what? For me to still be completely insane…IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE.

What frustrates me is that I know how lucky I am and I know how grateful I am and should be for all the help I have received over the years. There are people across the country who have been suffering for as long as I have, maybe longer and they have not been given the support or access to help that I have been blessed with, they have not had the supportive family that I am lucky enough to be a part of, so logically I should be ok. Logically I should be doing better than most people out there, but I am not and it has me sitting here feeling angry and asking what the hell is wrong with me. What is it about me that seems so untreatable and why are my mental health problems so resistant to every form of treatment?

I think when you live with mental health problems you are expected to feel sad about them and to be fair I have felt sad about my sorry state of affairs many times but this anger is new, this rage at the fact that I have been ill for such a long time with no improvement and I wonder if this is an experience common to people with mental health problems out there. I have to ask, is it? Are there other people out there who, like me, have stopped feeling despair at their situations and have started feeling angry? Angry that no matter what they do or no matter how hard they try, their brains will not co-operate?

I have heard it said that it isn’t until you get angry at your disorders that you can actually get better from them because you need that anger in you to fight, but at the moment this anger doesn’t feel like it is doing anything constructive, rather it feels like a block that is holding me back in my therapy sessions and appointments. Rarely do I meet with a psychologist now with an open mind, now it is always a case of me going in enraged that things haven’t improved after the last session and show no sign of changing any time soon. I think I wouldn’t mind this anger so much if somebody else knew what to do with it, but I find I am dragging it around with me in a bin bag wondering where on earth to put it and the professionals don’t know either.

Today I went to an appointment with my ED support worker and the rage was bubbling, so I asked her what to do. I asked what we could do to treat me, where we could go from here, what new treatments we could try over the next few weeks to see if they help, and you know what she said? “I don’t know” or to be more specific “I don’t know what to do with you at the moment”…She doesn’t know what to do with me? Doesn’t know what to do with me? What am I supposed to do with that!? What is anyone supposed to do with that? Indeed, what on earth is one supposed to do when even the professionals are at a loss as to how to help or resolve the situation? What do you do when the person with all the answers tells you that they do not have any more answers, or even rough guesses, to have a go at answering your question? When I left that appointment I felt like a grocery shopper who had gone to a bakery and asked a baker how to make bread only to be told that the baker had no idea. What use is that? What use is a baker who doesn’t know how to bake? What is the point in a baker who just slaps flour around the place and wears a funny apron and chef’s hat? Sure it may be entertaining to watch someone slap flour about (for we all know that much hilarity can take place when a person is gallivanting with flour), but what use is it?
What do you do with that?

I think the main thing that is frustrating me however is the fact that whilst other people don’t have the answers, I don’t have them either, and if anyone should know how to help a person it is the person who understands the problem better than all others. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I would say I understand my mental health problems pretty well, I have explored them so much over the years that I am familiar with every nook and cranny (particularly the one in the far left…damn that is a tricky cranny), yet I am no more familiar with how to solve my problems than anyone off the street who has never spoken to me a day in their life.

Truth be told here, as I am writing this I am starting to think that maybe I am not angry, maybe my mother (who has also been getting frustrated at my current decline – not angry with me you understand, rather like me angry with the fact that no matter what we try we are not seeing any improvement) isn’t angry, maybe we are just scared because we cannot see the answers and when you are being stared at in the face by a pretty massive problem it is scary not being able to see any way around it. It is scary to be stuck in a vice getting tighter and tighter by the day with no sign of relief and hell, maybe some of that fear is what I am writing about rather than anger because in reality I don’t think I am angry with anyone in particular. I am not angry at my psychologist for not knowing what to do with me at the moment, I am scared, I am scared that if she doesn’t know what to do then nobody ever will and I will be stuck like this forever. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I have friends who have received the same levels of treatment as I have, who have been to the same hospitals as I have and they have recovered and that is another thing that scares me. If I have had the same treatment why have I not had the same outcome? Why am i different? Why do the answers for one person not serve as the answers for another? Is there something wrong with me or am I just one of those people who is doomed to never get better? How will I know? Will I ever know or am I just going to find myself sitting here asking these same old questions for years until I am blue in the face (and then indigo followed by a vibrant shade of violet).

To be honest I feel I have lost track of what I am even talking about and barely know what I am saying anymore but I had to get this out, this anger, this fear or whatever this is that is bubbling up inside me like the contents of a witches cauldron. Everyone knows that living with mental illness is sad, but I think today my message is that sometimes, when you don’t have the answers to your problems, that sadness turns to rage or maybe fear. Who knows, like I said I am confused myself, but I at least wanted to write about it in the hopes of finding some sense in all of this. Maybe I haven’t made sense here, maybe I have, but either way if anyone has the answers to any of my questions or feels the same as I do now, I would really appreciate knowing about it. I hope you are all well and know I am thinking of and supporting you all.

Take care everyone x

Frustrated

Advertisement

6 Tips For Managing Your Self Esteem On Social Media

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 3 Comments

Recently, because I am struggling a lot with my mental health, I have not been posting much on social media, and the other week I went a full fortnight without posting on everyone’s favourite photo sharing app: Instagram. In the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal at all, but in my head, after fourteen days still with no photo to post, I was in a right panic and felt like the apocalypse was bound to begin.
As much as I hate to admit it, my self esteem rests a lot on what people think of me in real life and online, and therefore a large portion of what I think about myself comes from things like social media. I know it is unhealthy, unhelpful and perhaps a little bit silly and I am ironically the kind of person to shake my fist at the sky when people get upset about the number of “likes” on their selfie and cry in dramatic anguish “The number of likes doesn’t matter and doesn’t dictate your value as a person”, but in the end I cannot help it.
After two weeks of not posting a photo I managed to convince myself that everybody hated me, was furious at my inability to post a reasonable selfie or a witty hashtag and so I resigned myself to the fact that this was the end. Solemnly I sat in my lounge and listened for the sound of an approaching mob, preparing myself for the hoards of villagers to arrive with their flaming torches and their pitchforks. After four hours of anxious worrying however, no angry villagers, no flaming torches and no pitchforks had arrived which was both a nice surprise and quite a shame as I had bought a nice bag of marshmallows to toast on those terrifying torches for a little snack before the riot started and I had a lot of hay and straw that needed tidying (according to Wikipedia: “clearing hay and straw” is what a pitchfork is used for…handy little farming fact for you right there…ooh and in other farming fact news, chickens lay eggs and sheep say “Baa”).

Turns out I may have got a bit carried away with the catastrophising (which is odd and so unlike me…), and I would imagine that there are some other people out there with buckets of anxiety and no buckets of self esteem who have been in similar situations. Therefore today I thought I would try and help my fellow pitch fork, flaming torch fearing, mentally ill pals out there which is why I am here to offer a few tips as to how to manage the anxieties that can be caused by this 21st century obsession with social media accounts and how to help keep your self esteem and the way you think about yourself away from that..

Tip 1: Know that trolls exist – Twenty years ago, the word “Troll” was used to denote a creature that likes to live under bridges tormenting billy goats. Nowadays though, if someone speaks of “trolls” they are more likely to be referring to those hate filled creatures on the internet (otherwise known as humans who have nothing better to do), who spend their time locked away in computer filled rooms spouting as much hate as they can to torment all the innocent people they can find (like the original troll definition they also are known to torment billy goats if they come across them, although billy goats are slightly harder to come across using the internet due to their lack of opposable thumbs, laptops, Wi-Fi and their preference of crossing bridges to googling cat videos.) Basically, these are people who are going to potentially post negative or offensive comments on your uploads regardless of what they are and the key here to remember is that it is NOT your fault nor is it personal. If you find yourself getting hate online do not simply accept that it is hate you deserve and be aware that as well as cool things and nice people, some real idiots exist on the web, but whatever they say is no reflection on reality. Seriously, if people want to be nasty they will say anything just to get a reaction and that reaction is all they are looking for rather than a desire to state the truth about you as a person. I once saw a troll commenting on a video of a penguin saying that “penguins suck” which I think perfectly illustrates my “some people are idiots,” as clearly penguins do not suck and I think we can all agree are waddling miracles of nature who deserve much love and respect. If you ever get hate remember that penguin hating troll and with that remember that some people just want to be mean for the sake of it, so don’t take any negative comments you might get to heart.

Tip 2: Remember that interactions are open to interpretation – One day years ago, my mum and I were buying a new microwave and in asking for my opinion of which one I preferred, my mother asked me “if you were buying for your own house which one would you pick”. By this she meant “I know nothing about microwaves. Do you have a preference or opinion you would like to share to help me?” What I heard however was “how long are you going to live in our house for? Please start thinking about buying microwaves and other appliances for your own place and start the process of moving out of the family home immediately.” I guess the point I am making here is that I can often read too much into comments made by other people, or indeed read them as meaning entirely different things to what the speaker intended, and I think people often do this online in social media where comments and likes are flying all over the place without the correct tone or specification of the meaning perfectly portrayed. Therefore whenever reading a comment or interpreting the meaning of a “like” online, always remind yourself to not get carried away with interpretations and that it is unlikely that a simple statement such as “I do not like penguins” on a photo of you and a penguin means something dramatic like “The entire foundation on which you base your life is wrong, please jump off a cliff”…

Tip 3: Be aware that people do things – There are periods of time when people use social media. Logically then, this means that there are some periods of time when people don’t use social media and it is vital to be aware of this fact if you, like me, often find yourself relying a little too heavily on social media as a source of self esteem. Every time I post a tweet, photo on Instagram or a blog on this delightful website you are currently visiting (cheers for that), unless it is well received within the first five minutes I am in despair about the fact that everybody hates me/nobody likes me anymore and that I am a terrible human, without realising that there are multiple reasons for silence on one of your posts, one of these reasons being that people haven’t seen it because they are not on social media. It isn’t as if people sit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week staring at your account in anticipation of your next post, ready to react seconds after it is uploaded, they do stuff and live their lives. If you ever find yourself panicking about the lack of likes on a post a few minutes after you have submitted it, try not to assume this is because you are hated and get carried away thinking all of the negative thoughts you can about yourself. Maybe some people won’t see your post at all but that is fine and the lack of interaction is more likely to be down to that than some flaw in your character. Whenever you get no likes just remember, people need to leave social media to do things like pee (an activity they are hopefully not doing whilst using their phones…)

Tip 4: Think about the long term – Life is unpredictable and none of us can be sure where we will be in ten years time even if we make very organised plans for our lives over the next decade. One thing I can predict however, is that any interaction you have on social media today (yes…even commenting on this blog…feel free to do that by the way…as long as it is nice and doesn’t make me cry), will not matter to you or mean as much to you in ten years time as it does right now. When you find that social media scores and numbers are getting you down and are comparing yourself to other people with a million retweets on that picture of a tortoise (people love a tortoise), imagine yourself living in a nursing home at 100 years old reminiscing about your life and adventures. I cannot guarantee that you will have achieved all you wanted nor that you won’t have some regrets over time, but what I can guarantee is the fact that if someone were to ask you at 100 years old what the highlight of your life was, it is not going to be “that time my Instagram picture got over 1000 likes”, and is more likely to be something along the lines of “that time I swam with penguins”, “that time I hugged a penguin” or something else people see as important…like marriage and the birth of your kids…that stuff. Of all the nursing homes I have ever visited people in, I have never heard of anyone reminiscing about the time they got retweeted by that guy from that band (and not just because twitter wasn’t invented in the time period being discussed). In the long term, likes and comments don’t matter, it is experiences, people and penguins that do.

Tip 5: Know that none of it is real – Ok, with this one I am going to hold my hands up and admit that I do not exactly know how the internet works, where it comes from or where it “is”. In my head however, though the internet is a real thing that we all use and experience in day to day life, it is not something like a cliff which would take serious crane action to remove and technically, with one flip of a switch, it could all be gone tomorrow. Of course nothing real is permanent and mountains and rivers can be “deleted” with enough effort, but few things aside from the internet that are so integral to our lives could be gotten rid of so easily. The internet exists but it could just as easily not and sometimes that also helps me when I find myself basing too much of my self worth on things I find on there. Every time you are upset or struggle with a comment or interaction on social media, perhaps it will also help you then to think about the fact that it makes no sense to base your self esteem on something so flimsy, for at any second the internet could just be over (LORD PLEASE DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN) and could all disappear at the flick of a switch…

Tip 6: Don’t forget the “real” world – I suppose this point is quite similar to the previous one but it is still important because as much as I want to encourage remembering that the internet is so fragile in it’s existence, I want to encourage people not to forget that the real world (you know…that stuff outside that you see when you peep out from under the duvet every few weeks) and the “real” life exists outside. Virtual and digital worlds exist for sure and they can be fantastic places to get lost in or even find yourself in, but though our world can be a bit rubbish at times, it is there and you do have a life within it away from social media, so tuning out of social media and into the real world is ok. Again of course, everything in the world is technically very fragile and not even mountains or oceans will exist forever, but in a way it is a lot more permanent and real in my eyes than a thumbs up icon or a few characters typed on a mysterious “mobile telephone” device. I know that shortly after that incident where I didn’t post online for a while, I met up with a friend and it really helped because it reminded me of what is actually important and that there is a life and dare I say it real people around as apposed to digital emojis and Facebook profile pictures, and sometimes those real people are worth spending time with too (unless their name rhymes with Bonald Wump. Never trust anyone whose name sounds like Bonald Wump.) If you are too caught up in social media scores and “friends” and what they all mean, take a step back and maybe glance around at the real world to remind you of the other things out there. Trust me, some of them are quite fabulous and worth keeping an eye on.

So there you have it! 6 ways to manage and look after your self-esteem/general mental health and wellbeing when you find yourself spending too much time on the internet or worrying about social media. I am not saying that these tips are going to make that bizarre side of 21st century life easy, nor am I denying that you will probably still freak out a bit about that comment and that photo with only 2 likes on it (don’t worry…I may have written these tips but I know I shall be doing the same), but I hope these at least help a bit with those stresses and anxieties, even if they are things you only remember once in a while.
Now if you don’t mind me, I am off to upload this blog to that trusty friend the internet and then I am going to spend the next few hours staring at the screen to see exactly how many people read it, how many like or comment on it and how quickly so that I know how much to value myself/hate myself for the rest of the day/generally get an idea of my worth as a human. PLEASE LIKE ME AND MY BLOG OR I AM NOTHING. NOTHING I TELL YOU…ahem…

Take care everyone x

SocialMediaSelfEsteem

The Importance Of Listening To People With Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 16 Comments

This Wednesday the 14th of March is a very special day. Why? Because as of the 14th of March 2018 this little blog you are visiting right now will be two years old. That is right folks, as of Wednesday it will be two whole years since the birth of Born Without Marbles, nay not birth, the hatching of this tiny little mental health blog egg that I had been keeping in my oh so sufficient plumage until that moment (and my my do I have a lot of plumage).

How crazy is that? Pretty crazy if you ask me as two years is a really long time…Like a baby can go from a screaming ball of tears to a waddling and talking human creature in that time and I would like to think that my blog has undergone a similar amount of progress.
Now, you are going to have to forgive me in this entry as I fear I am going to sound very much like one of those actresses in a ball gown making a thank you for my Oscar speech and I am well aware that two years of running this blog does not entitle me to any award, but still today I really wanted to thank all of you out there reading this for making this blog what it is and for putting as much effort into reading it as I put into writing it. Indeed, you readers have helped and supported me more than you can ever possibly imagine. “How?” I hear you ask “What have we done?”. Well dear friends, you have done the most important thing that one can do when living with or dealing with someone with mental health problems: you have listened, and I think that this whole listening malarky is a seriously underrated piece of malarky on the scale of all things malarky.

I know people have messaged me in the past, people who may know or care for people with mental health problems and who have asked me what they can do to support them and the answer I want to advocate today is to listen to them. That is it.

I think a lot of people often find that when they have a loved one with mental health problems they want so desperately to fix their problems and unfortunately that is seldom, if ever, possible.
Mental health illnesses and disorders are complex and difficult to understand, intricate beings (which is why I have managed to write about and try and explain them for a whole two years now without really scratching the surface as to their mysteries), and I think that when people see themselves as responsible for curing a loved one it is simply too much responsibility to take hold of. It would be like asking one person to fight a whole army of sword wielding warriors who will need a lot of strategy and weaponry to defeat as apposed to one lone soldier with a mallet (for we all know it is notoriously easier to get hold of a mallet than it is to get hold of a sword…seriously where do they even sell those? Are they available on Amazon? Not that I want a sword of course…I am just seriously curious as to how one would obtain such a thing were one to be in need). If you ever set yourself the challenge of you and you alone curing someone with mental health problems then I think you are setting yourself up to fail.

This doesn’t however mean that when it comes to mental health problems and people who are struggling with them that it is best to do nothing, and that is where this listening thing comes in that I want to thank you all for today.

You see, when you live with mental illnesses, you live with a constant stream of noise and mayhem between your temples and that noise is difficult to deal with. Maybe that noise comes from the barrage of thoughts that come with depression, maybe they are the intrusive thoughts from OCD or an eating disorder, maybe they are audible hallucinations from psychosis or schizophrenia, whatever the condition, whatever the disorder, there is a lot of noise, and keeping quiet about it is a sure fire way of making that noise louder.
If people don’t speak about the noise, the noise tends to build up, louder and louder until all “real” sounds are drowned out by the cacophony and therefore it is important to have an outlet, a place to talk about and release a bit of that noise, not necessarily because that will make it all go away but because it will slightly lessen the burden that staying silent will weigh you down with.
That is where listening comes in. When you simply listen to a person with mental health problems, when you allow them to be heard, you are helping them more than you could ever know because you are sharing in that noise and therefore are giving it a little less power. I think when a lot of people think about going to see a therapist they assume that they will have these big elaborate contraptions designed to zap the mental illness away or physically remove it by some grand operation when really that is not what therapists do. There are no magical contraptions (unfortunately) and there are no magical zappers (also unfortunately), instead therapists listen, they hear and take on some of the noise because when you speak out loud about something it loses power. That is why in Harry Potter everyone is so scared of Voldemort, they don’t speak his name and by keeping it locked up in their minds as this big scary word they increase the fear. As Hermione wisely once said, “fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself”, and that is exactly how I feel about mental illnesses. When we fear them and keep quiet about them, we give them more power to control us, we give them authority as some big terrifying thing never to be spoken about and alright, I admit it, they are terrifying, but unless we talk about them and get them out into the real world, they cannot be tackled. If everyone were to keep their illnesses inside of their heads then they would be kept in a place where nobody else could reach them but by talking about them, they become tangible, they become part of our world and thus are something that can be dealt with.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that talking about a mental illness is going to cure it instantly, if ever, as I know very well myself that after a lot of talking and a lot of therapy, things are still pretty terrible (hey, I am nothing if not honest), but as terrible as they are, at least I have an outlet to get them out of my head both in therapy and on my blog. I have people who listen to me and hear all the pain it is hard to speak out about and if you have been a reader of this blog from the beginning, last week, or even if this is your first ever entry (welcome!) you have been a part of that and you have helped.

So what do I want to get across today as we approach the two year anniversary of Born Without Marbles? Simply this: That if you want to help someone with mental health problems, the first and best thing you can do is to listen to them, and if you have been listening to me for years or just today, then I want to thank you for hearing and taking on my noise. Trust me I do not know where I would be without all of you wonderful people out there listening and supporting me and I want you to know how much I appreciate, and how much all people with mental health problems appreciate it when people listen, when they are heard and when others are there to share in the noise. From the bottom of my heart and from my head to my toes, today, my message is thank you for being there. You do more than you know, and more than I can ever thank you for in a mere blog post. I hope you all know that I am also here to hear all of you struggling out there and share in any of your noise as well.

So happy second birthday Born Without Marbles and to all readers and mental health sufferers alike, remember to keep talking and to keep listening, for doing so is one tiny tactic we can use to tackle the mental health demon army.

Take care everyone, and thank you x

Anniversary

Being Institutionalised After An Inpatient Admission

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 11 Comments

Humans are very much like lions. They have very fluffy manes and they like to stalk antelopes…no wait…that wasn’t my point…what was my point…ah yes, humans are very much like lions: they are not supposed to live in captivity. When you see a lion in a zoo standing behind the glass peering out, longing for freedom, they do not look happy, they do not look free, they look listless and bored and tend to pace around a lot because that is not an environment they are supposed to be in. Similarly, humans are not supposed to live in psychiatric units, it is not their natural environment, it is not where we evolved to be and being in one is an abnormal and temporary experience. Problem is, when you have been staying in a psychiatric unit for almost half a year, you start to get a little bit institutionalised and consequently over these past two weeks I have been struggling with my new found freedom.

Indeed, going back to the lion thing, I feel very much like a lion who has been living in captivity for a long time and then has suddenly been chucked out into the wild without any of the coping skills or natural instincts necessary to survive. I didn’t like living on one small corridor but at the same time it was a contained space that I knew every part of, it was a place I understood, yet now I find myself in this big wide open space of a world and no idea what to do or where to go. Over the past months I spent so much of my time desperate to get out of hospital that I never really thought about what it would be like when I got there and am now finding myself feeling a bizarre sense of “right….now I am out…what the hell do I do now?”. It is like my sense of direction has gone, my goals and my aims were all so focused on getting out and being free that I forgot about what would actually happen and what I would actually do when that freedom was achieved.

What troubles me is that I am not living in a place where I should feel like this, I am not living in an abnormal environment as I was when I was in the hospital, I am living where I am supposed to be, out in the wild, out in the real world, yet it is suddenly a world in which I do not feel I have a place anymore.

To be fair I am quite a homebody, I don’t go out much and the most adventurous trips I have been on since I have been out have been to places like the local supermarket, but every time I go to these places I find myself wandering around watching all these people casually buying food as part of their day, part of their lives that they are living and I wonder how on earth they do it. How do they live in this big scary world? How do they have jobs and families? How do they know what food to buy in a shop and then how do they go back home and make it into something to nourish themselves before maybe going on an evening out to do something similarly alien to me like socialising? I am not a part of that world. I am part of a world where I am used to waking up and being timed to eat a bowl of cereal under the watchful eye of a nurse or other mental health care professional, before gathering in a group room around a box of tissues to talk about my feelings. For five months the biggest deadlines and expectations I have had on my shoulders have been things like making sure I turn up to emotional regulation group with my notebook on time and making sure I am at the clinic to be weighed at 7:30 on a Monday morning. True I didn’t like it, to be honest I hated it, which is why I spent such a long time fighting professionals and trying to get out. I didn’t belong there anymore than a lion belongs in a perspex box, but it feels like so much time has passed and I have become so institutionalised, this admission more than any other even though this has not been my longest, that I don’t belong out here either. I don’t belong anywhere, I am like a ghost wandering around aimlessly haunting old places that I used to know yet now don’t feel a part of.

I think all of these feelings highlight one of the main problems with putting people into hospital for long periods of time, that being the institutionalisation I have mentioned and the fact that people forget how to survive anywhere else. They forget what it is like to be a person with a life and an identity other than a mental patient required to take their medication and have a stab at some therapeutic writing on a Wednesday morning or creative group in the art room on a Tuesday. It probably sounds ridiculous because I wasn’t even in hospital for that long and I have had many admissions before that I survived, some of which were longer than this, but I can’t help it, I just feel so out of place and so confused as to what to do now, A few weeks ago I talked about how living in a psychiatric unit is very much like living in a fish bowl and now I believe in that analogy more than ever. I am a fish out of water, or I suppose to put it more accurately since this is where I am supposed to be, a fish who has been used to a tiny little bowl with a little castle and a turret and is now presented with this great big ocean with giant sharks and other fish busily swimming past as if they are all going some place important and all know a lot of things that I don’t.
If it wasn’t for this blog I wouldn’t know what I was doing at all and to be honest I am even struggling with this. At least my blog gives me structure, my blog gives me a plan to work to, every week I write it, I draw the picture, upload it on the Monday and then pray that people read it and don’t suddenly hate me, but even writing has got harder since I left hospital because I am at a loss as to what to do with myself and my brain doesn’t feel like it is working properly. There is too much stuff out here in the real world, too many people, too much noise, too much responsibility and I am just an unemployed head case living at home (for now). It isn’t as if I am some boss at this high powered company where I am entrusted with the responsibility of managing loads of people and their lives and actions as well as my own.

I guess it is all about what you are used to and that I will settle into the real world and get used to it again eventually, but still I wanted to write today to highlight how institutionalised you can get even if you only stay in a psychiatric unit for a couple of months and how very disorientating it can be once you leave. Don’t get me wrong, I do not want to go back there by any stretch of the imagination and I am doing everything I can every day to keep myself safe enough to stay out. Like I said, it wasn’t that I belonged there at all, I just want to know where the place I belong is now because at the moment I cannot seem to find it. I am supposedly back where I should be right now, yet I am very lost and frightened and really in need of some kind of map to find my way home. I just wish I knew where home was.

Take care everyone x

Lion