6 Tips For Managing Public Transport When You Have Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 2 Comments

As you read these words I will hopefully be hot footing my way to London. I say hopefully because, as the idea is so terrifying, I cannot be sure I will go through with the journey (I am writing this a week in advance. Call me Mr Organised. Actually don’t, make that Señor Organised…has a bit more of a flourish don’t you think?).
Going to London/leaving the house at all is scary for a multitude of reasons such as managing food, being in unfamiliar environments with uncontrolled levels of bacteria, generally being around people, but one of the top scary things on the list of ultimate London scariness (it is a very long list), is the fact I will have to use public transport, and I am pretty sure that will be on many peoples’ lists of scary things about leaving the house.
Therefore, today I thought I would write this blog post to help anyone out there who is overwhelmed with terror at the mere thought of bumbling along on a bus or trundling track via a train. I can’t say these are the best ways to manage public transport anxiety issues, but they are at least the tips I will be using to get me through…if I manage to leave the house to get to the public transport stage that is…All aboard the mental health travel tip train! Here we go!

1. Make alternative routes: If there is one thing you can rely on when it comes to public transport, it is the fact that it will be unreliable. Buses break down, flights have to stay grounded because it is cloudy and I am yet to have a train journey which hasn’t started with a good half hour wander up and down the platform listening to the woman on the tannoy tell me that my train is delayed in a frustratingly calm voice (she always says she is sorry to announce the delay but if you ask me she doesn’t sound sorry at all. HOW DOES SHE SLEEP AT NIGHT?). I once even had a train cancelled with the explanation that there were “slippery leaves”…That’s right, slippery leaves. Not even going to try and make a sarcastic joke about that. I think the phrase “slippery leaves” makes the point. Anyway, due to multiple reasons much like the aforementioned soggy foliage, it is likely that any route you plan to take will be interrupted. This is enough to make anyone frustrated, but when you are already anxious and stressed it can feel like the end of the world and make you run back to your home wondering why you ever bothered leaving the front door. For this reason it is always vital to have an alternative route to fall back on incase any slippery leaves rear their ugly heads to get in your way.

2. Customise your route: When trying to look up directions, pretty much all of us will turn to the internet (dear young readers, did you know that maps actually used to be things you could find on paper rather than apps on your phone with floating blue dots. They called these maps “The A-Z”. They were marvellous things, I really wish you could have seen them), and when you look up directions on the internet it will often tell you what it thinks is the easiest route. However, this “easiest” route is the route judged as easiest by a computer, it is a purely rational decision and unlikely to fit with what is “easiest” for the irrational fears in your head. Of course we must all push ourselves and challenge our mental illnesses lest they control every aspect of our lives and sometimes there is only one way to get from A to B. Nevertheless if there are options on a journey that may not be the quickest route on paper but that will help you manage anxiety better, go with them. Walking a few streets along may take longer than hopping on the London underground, but if the tube is likely to cause a paralysing panic attack in the end, walking may actually save time and a hell of a lot of stress.

3. Do not rely on the internet: Another thing in life that can be as unreliable as the number 44 bus is internet signal. It is all well and good to entrust your travel plans into the route calculating hands of an online computer but if you find yourself in the middle of nowhere with no internet, Siri is going to be of little use in helping you out of that predicament. Even if you do have signal, phones and other pieces of technology are always at risk of running out of battery (especially if you have spent too much time playing Pokemon go…ahem), so regardless as to whether you found your route online, make sure you take a paper copy. Paper doesn’t require signal and paper does not run out of battery leaving you in an anxious heap. In short paper is awesome, so don’t forget to use it.

4. Listen to audiobooks: When on a train or a bus I often find my anxious thoughts speeding around my mind faster than the mode of transport I am riding, so fast that they are little more than a blur that I cannot decipher. Every bump in the road is a potential earthquake to my terrified brain, every new passenger a potential murderer, and for this reason when anxious on public transport it is vital to have distractions. A lot of people listen to music in order to help soothe them and if you are one of those people then make sure any journey out of the house involves earphones to listen to your favourite tunes. Personally though I struggle with listening to music on public transport, as when you put music on shuffle it can be unhelpfully unpredictable. It is all well and good to be on the bus nodding your head to a relaxing ballad from Adele but seconds later you can find yourself being bashed about the ears with the drums of heavy rock which is not relaxing at all. For this reason then, I often listen to audiobooks which I find are a lot easier to get lost and calmed by, so I thoroughly recommend them as a distraction technique (especially Harry Potter books on trains. That way you get the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry and you can pretend you are on the Hogwarts express as you listen).

5. Buy tickets in advance and get money ready: To buy tickets you need to queue. Queuing is stressful. People with anxiety and mental health problems do not need added stress. The solution? AVOID QUEUING (by booking tickets in advance at quiet “non rush hour” times or online, not by whacking everyone else in the queue out of the way with your hand bag.) Personally when it comes to buying tickets I also find touching money to be a challenge, so if you also struggle with this may I suggest getting your fare ready prior to the moment some ticket officer asks for it so that you do not have to suffer the money touching stress with the “oh my goodness I cannot find the right change why is my purse full of pennies people are staring at me” stress. When I prepare a bus fare in advance I always like to antibacterialise it and then keep it in a separate pocket to lower anxiety further. It isn’t ideal in terms of trying to fight things like OCD, but if needs must, in my eyes it is better to do whatever you need to to get out of the house.

6. Give yourself time and plan every step that is difficult: The final thing that I would say makes travel difficult is the general panic and hysteria I find myself getting into when I am in a rush/under a strict time limit. For this reason to reduce anxiety I always leave a lot longer for my journey than might otherwise be necessary AND I plan in travel breaks whenever I need them. It makes more sense to hop from train to bus to train and on again until you reach your destination, but incase the anxiety gets too much it is important to plan pit stops to release some tension and take a break from all the mania. Personally, with planning breaks I also like to plan toilet breaks because the idea of an unplanned unexpected public toilet experience freaks me out, so if it scares you too, maybe find loos along your journey that would be easiest and fit them round your ticket times.

So there you have it! The six tips that I use to help me get through the fear of public transport and the six tips I will hopefully be carrying out right now on the way to London (like I said it is a week in advance but already I have planned every safe toilet along the journey. PREPARATION IS KEY.).
Of course they won’t take the fear of public transport away, but hopefully they will make it a little easier or at least doable.
I wish you all safety and relaxation during any upcoming travels and promise to keep my fingers crossed that you are never faced with the horror film inspiring added obstacle of “slippery leaves”.

Take care everyone x

transportanxiety

A Message To All The People Out There Who Are “Pro-Ana”

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 5 Comments

Before I get on with the main bulk of this post I just want to preface it by clearly stating the fact that eating disorders are not a choice and are horrible illnesses that barge into and take people’s lives without those people having a chance to stop the aforementioned barging. However, as involuntary as eating disorders are, there are some people out there who for some reason see them as a glamorous and desirable life choice/thing to aspire to. It is to THESE people and not all involuntary sufferers out there, to whom I address this post. All clear? Cool, let’s get on with it…

In life, there are many types of people that I do not understand. For example, I do not understand people who eat a piece of Christmas cake and leave the icing/marzipan behind (THAT IS THE BEST PART WITHOUT THAT IT IS JUST RAISINS), neither do I understand the people planning to vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming election. Possibly the most confusing people to me however, are those who frequent “pro anorexia” websites online (yeah. That’s right. They confuse me even more than Donald Trump supporters. At least Donald Trump has floppy hair you can laugh at when he is spouting bile. Anorexia has no floppy hair and therefore no room for visual comedy). If you didn’t know already, pro-anorexia websites are basically as horrendously sick and disturbing as they sound. Having avoided them like the plague myself, I cannot provide an in depth image as to what they show, but from what I gather it is pretty much a lot of pictures of skeletal bodies that people stare at in order to inspire them to achieve the beauty of collarbones that make you look like you have swallowed a coat hanger. There also may be forums where people can discuss diet tips, encourage each other not to eat and who generally see anorexia as something that is desirable, that they want to have (hence the ‘pro’ in the name).

Now I am not one to tell people what to do. When I do not understand someone’s life choices I am not going to stand in their way and insist they change their deepest desires. Though I do not understand people who leave the icing and marzipan from the top of Christmas cakes (or indeed people who choose to eat Christmas cake when the other option is chocolate log…there is no decision there…obviously it is chocolate log every time), I have never spied an icing abandoner, approached them in outrage and chased them down the street waving the forgotten almond paste and fondant. This is because although I do not understand this behaviour, I trust that they have tried icing before and following the full experience and all the knowledge available, they know that cake without icing is really what they want.
When it comes to people who want eating disorders however, I simply cannot allow myself to sit back and let them make these life “choices”, as in my eyes the only person who would ever make such a decision as to get an eating disorder would be a poor uninformed soul who doesn’t really know what they are getting into. For this reason then, today I thought I would just write a little post to all those people who want eating disorders, in order for them to realise what life with an eating disorder really is like. Basically I am enlarging the font of the little set of “terms and conditions” that accompany the joy of being thin and not eating, so that people can be sure it is what they want. So to all people who want to have an eating disorder, that is cool, but before you go ahead and seek one out, here are a few things that I want you all to know:

1. Eating Disorders are not great for your physical health: Not eating is great and all but it is important to be aware that not eating is potentially fatal and is the reason that eating disorders are the number one killers in terms of mental health problems. Even if you don’t die they will definitely wreck your body, so before investing in an eating disorder you may want to say goodbye to your health first, as lord knows you wont be seeing it for a while. For one thing your hair is going to fall out in clumps, your skin is going to become dry and pale and you will probably have bags under your eyes so big that you can fit a week’s food shop in them (no more paying 5p for a carrier from Tesco for you! Bargain!). You are also going to be freezing cold all the time no matter what the weather, so in preparation you may want to purchase forty to fifty hot water bottles, blankets and thick thermal fleecy undergarments (sexy). This does have the benefit of making you a good pastry chef (as all bake off fans will know, cold hands are essential to a good apple pie), but on the down side you won’t be able to eat that pastry without agonising guilt afterwards… Also you may want to buy a wheel chair or walking stick as eating disorders love to screw with your bones (picture anorexia as a dog having a good old gnaw on your elbow until most of the bone has chipped away, leaving an osteoporosis filled powder). Oh yeah, and if you want kids anorexia will probably render you infertile too, but hey, who cares! You will save a tonne on child care and you get to be thin right? Wrong…

2. Eating Disorders do not make you thin: This disclaimer is a tricky one but allow me to explain. Basically there seems to be this idea that when you have an eating disorder attacking your mind, this will be physically evident in a lot of weight loss. For one thing, not all eating disorders involve weight loss, and for another thing even if they do, you will not be able to appreciate it. Sure you will be able to get on the scales and see the numbers go down but when you look at the reflection in the mirror it is likely you will not see that weight loss at all. Interestingly, when you don’t eat enough and become underweight, self perception becomes more and more distorted, so you may even see yourself as having gained when really the opposite is true. Its just a fun little game eating disorders like to play (the jokers!), so if wanting an eating disorder to “look thin” then maybe look elsewhere in terms of life goals and ambitions as looking thin is not a package deal with an eating disorder. The physical complications mentioned above are a package deal no matter what though, so no worries there.

3. Eating Disorders do not make you happy: Much like the myth that eating disorders make you thin, there is the idea that they will make you happy (probably because there is the association that being thin makes you happy but the happiness idea remains nonetheless). Yeah, if you want an eating disorder because you think it will make you happier, once again I would advise you to reconsider, as being undernourished is actually a way to encourage our good friend depression to join the party rather than the desired eternal bliss. Often anxiety will pop round too, so again be aware that those two delights are part of the package deal. You will often note that in these pictures on ‘thinspiration’ websites there will often be “models” without a face (primarily the images show thigh gaps and rib cages), and the reason for this is because were consumers to see the full image, the whole thing wouldn’t look so appealing. After all it is a lot more difficult to sell the idea of how beautiful a hipbone is when the owner of said bone is crying and waiting for the pain inside to end.

4. Eating disorders will mess up your social life: Aside from the effects eating disorders will have on your body and mood, it is also important to note that they affect your social life, and by “affect” I mean utterly destroy it until you are left all alone. You can have the best friends in the world but ultimately with all the “catch ups over drinks” and “dinner reservations” you will constantly find yourself avoiding them as you cannot join in with any activity whatsoever. You may be thinking “Ok I will ruin pizza night but I can still go out to play mini golf with friends”. That is a really nice thought, yet alas this will get ruined as well. Even if an activity is not revolving around food, you will still not want to go either because you have exercises to do or because you are too miserable, anxious/hate yourself and are too self conscious to socialise.

5. Eating disorders will/are likely to cause some issues in the workplace: Much like socialising with friends, working or holding down a job will also become impossible with an eating disorder, even if your job is not food related. Again we have the classics of depression and anxiety making it hard to leave the house, as well as the required sick days for your battered physique (you may pick up virus’ and illnesses a lot easier than most people due to damaged immune system, so stock up on the cough syrup). Bigger than that however will be the issue of concentration. Yeah…with an eating disorder your ability to function mentally will spiral away faster than water down a plug hole (especially water down the plug hole in your bath remember as all your hair will have fallen out and blocked the pipes with soggy wodges of entangled strands). Ahh, nothing says “living the life” like a Saturday night spent in the house pulling hair bundles the size of kittens from your drain (top tip: if you put goggly eyes on those bundles they look even more like kittens. They are adorable. Great Christmas presents too and December is coming! Get malting!). With mental functioning at an all time low then, it is likely you will lose any job you do have and money problems will likely follow as well as our old pals who love to join money problems for a party, depression and anxiety!

So that is only five of the terms and conditions important to be aware of when wanting an eating disorder (there are millions, trust me), but I think that for now I have made my point/ helped potential eating disorder investors to be a little more aware of what they are desiring/encouraging when scrolling through those pro anorexia websites. Like I said, I am not one to tell anyone what to do so if these points don’t diminish the glamour of the thigh gap photos, then go ahead and have fun. I just want you to know what you are getting yourself into so you can make an informed decision. There are people out there who want eating disorders, but I doubt they would find the unwelcome surprises that come with them as appealing.

Take care everyone x

pro-anorexia

Why Halloween Can Be Difficult For People With Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 1 Comment

When I was five years old, I used to get so frightened at the prospect of people turning up to my house in costumes on Halloween, that my mum would have to take me out of the house and drive me around our neighbourhood with a jumper wrapped round my head so that I couldn’t see the hoards of trick or treaters passing by. I am now twenty four years old and a lot of things about me have changed (for example I can now tie my shoes and tell the time unlike my five year old past self), but my terror towards and unusual way of spending the pumpkin laden holiday of Halloween is still very much the same.

It probably sounds ridiculous to admit that when I am of course aware that a lot of the ghosts you see dragging their chains at Halloween are actually kids with bedsheets thrown over their heads as apposed to genuine supernatural beings. It is after all fairly easy to distinguish the two simply by checking to see if the creature in question is carrying a bucket of sweets (kids wearing old bed sheets tend to be more interested in seeking candy than seeking revenge, unlike the true ghostly counterparts on which they base their fashion choices). However my issues with Halloween are not because I am convinced that the trick or treaters appearing at my door are real monsters, but are due to a hell of a lot of mental health fears and stress that I am sure a lot of other people struggle with as well. So, if you have ever wondered how Halloween feels when you have mental health problems, sit back and rest assured, for I am here to tell you all about it…

Let us begin with trick or treaters. When you have problems with anxiety it is likely you will be anxious about a lot of things (ground breaking information right there I know), and with social anxiety these things are likely to involve pieces of general daily interaction like answering the phone or the front door. I know that for me, hearing the sound of the doorbell or the ringing of a telephone sends shivers down my spine/causes me to leap under the nearest blanket and clamp my hands around my ears until the noise stops and the person goes away…and that is when I am expecting a call from a friend. Indeed, I have been known to ask visiting chums to text me when they enter my road and then a second time to say when they have reached the door step.The vibration of my phone to signal the receiving of a text scares me too, but it is far better than the alternative hellish chimes of the doorbell. As you can imagine then, when the people turning up at the door are unexpected strangers, the anxiety is even more intense.

That is bad enough when it is general unexpected strangers, say a postman dropping off a parcel or a window cleaner asking to be paid, but on Halloween it is even worse because the strangers I am already in fear of are wearing goblin masks designed to make them look all the more terrifying!Some may even be dressed to look like the Grim Reaper or be carrying fake blood soaked foam axes to create the impression that they are a murderer on the loose, which, when you live in fear of terrible things happening on a day to day basis is a sight that will do little to calm any stresses already spiralling in your neurotic anxiety riddled brain.

It isn’t even as if you can just decide not to answer the door to avoid the unexpected goblin visitors, because if you ignore them they will threaten to throw eggs at your door! Who the hell came up with that idea as a means of celebrating a holiday that originated as a way to honour the dead? Which dead people have ever said that they wish for that to be the way in which they are remembered?
I know that it is all supposed to be “just for fun”, but I certainly don’t enjoy an evening of people turning up in horrifying attire, demanding I choose between the options of providing them with sweets or having my abode bombarded by the unfertilised albumen/vitellus of low flying poultry. That isn’t a choice! I don’t like either of those options! Whatever happened to the joy found in socialising with friends and celebrating any occasion over a cup of tea or a game of snakes and ladders?
Then again, even if you decide to brave opening the door despite the potential terror lurking on the other side and give your tormentors the sugary treats they require, you have the added stress of actually having to buy the candy, yet another nightmare for multiple anxiety related illnesses, most of all eating disorders.
Everyone knows that people with eating disorders often fear eating food themselves but for some, even walking into a supermarket to buy it in the first place is a difficulty. Personally, I know anorexia makes it hard for me to buy tins of chocolate or biscuits for presents at Christmas even though I am aware that I don’t have to eat them, and I have several friends who find that things you would potentially buy for trick or treaters are “triggers” which they would usually avoid having in the house. For some, there may be certain foods that they know they are likely to binge and/or purge on, so obviously it is easier to keep them on the supermarket shelves out of harm’s way and not in the next room, much like someone giving up alcohol rids the house of bottles in an attempt to remove temptation. If therefore, you have an eating disorder and this is the case, Halloween is a night where you either have to buy products that you know will potentially send you on an out of control rampage back home, or avoid the products and spend the evening scraping egg yolks out of your letter box.

Reading back all that I have just written, it is pretty easy to see how Halloween can be an utter nightmare for people with various anxiety laden mental health problems, and here I have only touched on the dread that comes with trick or treaters, which really is a small part of Halloween on the whole. I haven’t even mentioned the serious potentially frightening situations like Halloween parties, other social gatherings with people disguised as intimidating warlocks and of course the most petrifying festive activity…apple bobbing (cue dramatic lightening, crash of cymbals and the high pitched cackle of a hyperactive banshee).

If then like me, you have a mental health problem that sends you into a state on Halloween, my advice for managing this evening would be to try to hang out with friends or family who are not dressed to look like the Grim reaper, to distract you and help with any goblin like visitors. Either that or of course there is the option of hiding under a blanket with your hands over your ears waiting for the day to be over/getting a friend to drive you around the neighbourhood away from any doorbells with a jumper tied around your head. Remember, it is just one night of the year and if things really are terrible I hope this post has let you know that you are not alone in feeling scared of a holiday everyone else seems to look forward to. I am not sure how knowing that I am also terrified will help much when the doorbell rings and you are faced with the “say hello to a masked creature or clean eggs from windows tomorrow” dilemma, but I guess it is always nice to know that you are not alone and to have the knowledge that someone out there understands. Also if you don’t have mental health problems and none of these things are relatable, I hope I have at least answered any questions you may have wondered on in life about what it is like to have mental health problems on October 31st.
I hope you all have a fabulous/as anxiety free evening as possible. Happy Halloween!

halloweenpost

 

An Explanation Of Invisible OCD Rituals

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 10 Comments

When most people imagine someone with OCD carrying out a ritual, they probably picture them visually carrying the ritual out in the “real world”. Maybe some will picture a person repeatedly tapping a light switch, arranging books or washing their hands, but it is unlikely that the person pictured will simply be standing there with no obvious signs of ritualistic activity.
However, many people with OCD actually have rituals that can be carried out invisibly, and this is a side to OCD that I feel needs more discussion/awareness raised, partly to help others understand the condition better, but partly to help sufferers who do not realise that what they are experiencing is actually a form of OCD that can be treated.

Now I have started to write this blog post I have realised just how hard trying to explain a mental ritual is to people who may not have had them themselves (damn it past Katie why did you have this as an idea for a blog).
If trying to give a rough idea in terms of my OCD though, my personal thought rituals generally involve things like compulsively picturing certain events or people, thinking the same words a certain number of times, having to remember something in exact detail or ritualistic blinking (which I suppose isn’t really a thought ritual as if you know what I am doing you can physically see it, but in most circumstances people don’t notice and thus I count it as one of the lesser known invisible sides to the illness. Even when people do notice I am fairly good at covering it up anyway. You would not believe the number of times people have asked if I am ok because I am flapping my eyelids like the wings of a hummingbird and I have had to pretend I had an eyelash. I used to feel very bad saying this as I don’t like lying, but recently the guilt has gone as I realised that it isn’t actually a lie. It is indeed a true fact that I have eyelashes…just not in the specific eye location implied by my blinking…God this is a long set of brackets…sorry about that…I will close them now…actually wait…no it is ok that was all I had to say about blinking…today at least).

Some of these thought rituals mentioned above are fairly straightforward, as in the “repeating a certain thought over and over”. Okay it can take a long time but it is easy to understand and explain to professionals as a symptom. This is not however the case with all thought rituals, and in order to give some impression of just how complex they can become, I thought I would explain a specifically long and complicated one of mine (if you are able to follow this next bit and gain any sense from it then congratulations, you are a genius, please apply to Mensa immediately).

So, probably the most complex of my rituals is one that I carry out every night before I go to sleep in order to “keep my friends and family safe” (though I am of course aware that rationally there is no way that my thoughts prior to the land of nod are capable of such safeguarding. Nevertheless I still carry them out every evening without fail…GAH!)

The start of the ritual involves picturing a long mantlepiece (it is made of high quality mahogany in case you are interested), and it is lined with photo frames, each one containing the face of a loved one that I wish to protect. Over the years the photos of the people in these frames have changed as people have come and gone from my life, but it is rare that a picture is removed and more common for an extra one to randomly appear when someone becomes particularly special to me (bear in mind this is a very long mantlepiece that can hold an infinite number of frames. It is a nightmare to dust.)
Once all the pictures are imagined in their neat little line, the next step is to imagine a paintbrush with green paint on the end drawing a tick over the face of each person to confirm them as safe, much like an attendance sheet register thing that you have in school. What must not happen is that I picture a red cross being painted over each face. It sounds easy enough, after all they are my thoughts so surely I can think what I want (ha!), but it is very much like that trick when people ask you to imagine a scenario and not to imagine a white elephant, a statement after which you can think of little other than a trunked creature looming in the forefront of your mind. Once the green tick is imagined on the person’s face I then have to move on to the next picture and so on until all of the faces are adorned with a flourish of bright jade acrylic. However, if during this process one of the pictures goes wrong (aka they get a red cross), then I have to start the entire thing again from photo one. Even if I finally manage a line of perfect ticks though, the ritual is not over, as then I have to imagine staring at all these approved photographs for 100 counts without imagining a gust of wind blowing any of the pictures over which is incredibly stressful as if such a wind occurs I have to whip out the paint brush and start all over again. That little explanation from the painting of the green ticks is step ONE of this thought ritual.
There are ten steps overall. TEN.

Rest assured, I will not elaborate on the next nine steps as I fear I would be here all day. No matter what step I get to however, if there are any mistakes I am sent back to step one and hopefully this explains somewhat the difficulty, complexity and time consuming nature of rituals that may not be visible like those in which I wash my hands multiple times. I realise it probably sounds a bit weird to say that I get stressed and upset over imaginary breezes blowing imaginary photo frames off an imaginary mantlepiece, but if those breezes come and if those pictures fall then I fear I will put everyone I have ever loved in danger due to my negligence, an understandably scary thought for anyone.

You are probably wondering how on earth I concocted such ridiculously long mental routines, yet if you were to ask me how they appeared I honestly couldn’t tell you. They didn’t exactly appear overnight, rather they developed over time in a gradual process I cannot remember the beginning of. That said, if I had to pin the origin of my mental rituals it would probably be my first hospital admission to a psychiatric unit over ten years ago. With most people, OCD tends to evolve and morph over time as the person’s life and situation changes and it is often a dramatic change in environment or situation (like suddenly being inpatient in hospital), that can cause rituals to flick on stealth mode and turn invisible. Before my first hospital admission, all of my rituals were visible and involved things like showering for hours on end or repeatedly washing my hands. In hospital however, none of these rituals were possible as I was physically locked out of my bathroom and had to ask for permission each time I needed to use it, at which point I would be supervised and stopped from engaging in any behaviours. Now, on the surface, you would think this cured the problem. True, I was no longer showering for hours every day, but that wasn’t because I didn’t have OCD anymore, it was because I was physically incapable of getting to the shower despite best efforts (turns out I am rubbish at picking locks/kicking down doors of psychiatric unit shower rooms. I would make a poor criminal.)
By being physically locked away from the equipment needed to do my usual rituals then, my rituals changed and adapted. The OCD was too strong to just disappear at the first hurdle in the road and instead my compulsive behaviours became located in areas nobody could lock me out of, areas nobody could bar my access too, those areas being found in my own head (just left of imagination next to the frontal lobe to be specific).

The reason this invisible kind of thought ritual OCD is less talked about than its more apparent variants is probably because of how difficult it is to explain (let alone understand…seriously if you are following this get on that Mensa thing). Nevertheless, difficult or not I think it is a really important topic to raise awareness of as like I said near the start, some people may be suffering from OCD in this way and not really aware of it. I have been in treatment for years so when aspects of my OCD became internal I knew immediately what it was, yet I am sure there will be people out there struggling who never knew that this was a thing. Perhaps there are people out there silently suffering, in distress as they find themselves having to paint ticks and avoid imaginary gales without having any idea of why or how to stop it. Had I no knowledge of OCD and were I experiencing such things there is a good chance I wouldn’t tell anyone because even I can admit that thought rituals sound a bit “crazy” and are not something you would want to bring up voluntarily or admit to, especially if you didn’t know anyone else felt the same. Maybe people with thought rituals don’t even realise it is OCD because they think OCD is washing, and it is for those people (as well as any other lovely people reading this of course) that I have written this post.

If you are struggling with compulsively carrying out intricate thought patterns that cause distress if not performed correctly, you certainly are not alone and it doesn’t mean you are crazy. Obviously I cannot diagnose anyone online, but if you relate to this post there is a good chance that what you are struggling with is an invisible form of OCD. That probably sounds scary if you haven’t ever considered yourself as a person with mental illness in need of therapy, but hopefully it will provide some comfort knowing that your struggles are part of an illness that can be treated. It is not something to be suffered in silence even if your routines are performed in such a manner and I would urge anyone out there relating to this to go to the GP and ask for help. If they have any awareness of mental health issues they will NOT think you are “weird”, they will understand that this is a common issue for OCD sufferers and hopefully by speaking out you will be able to get the help you need. Also if there are any GPs out there or students training in medicine, maybe this post could help you identify these symptoms and help someone in the future. Either way I really think invisible thought OCD rituals need more discussion. The more we are aware of OCD, the more we can understand and most importantly of all, defeat it.

Take care everyone x

mantlepiece

Born Without Marbles Is Now On YouTube!

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 4 Comments

What is this? A born without marbles post on a Friday? What is going on? I thought they only came on Mondays? Someone contact the BBC and get Fiona Bruce to report this (actually don’t bother. I already contacted them. They weren’t interested). No, this is not actually the usual Monday blog post, it is in fact an announcement to let you all know that Born Without Marbles is now not just on my website…IT IS NOW ON YOUTUBE AS WELL! Are you thrilled? Now you can hear me waffle as well as read about it every Monday! Bless this happy happy day! Anyway, this is just to let everyone know that the channel is there so feel free to take a gander and subscribe if you fancy (and by if you fancy I mean please subscribe even if you don’t fancy. Trust me, All the cool kids are doing it so it must be a good idea). I won’t post on here every time I upload a video (unless that wouldn’t be annoying/you wouldn’t mind), so be sure to check on the Youtubes for my face whenever you can.

Hope you are all having a marvellous day, take care everyone x

Why I Wish Mental Health Problems Came In Boxes

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 7 Comments

Whenever a doctor or health care professional looks at my notes for a brief overview of my mental health, they will see three separate words:

Depression
OCD
Anorexia

The words may not be on separate lines as I have illustrated above, but there is always some kind of gap between them, even if that gap is only in the form of a comma or perhaps a space bar. As a brief summary of my mental health, I suppose those three words can give you a reasonable idea of my struggles. Nevertheless, the idea gathered from those three words is only a reasonable idea, as my illnesses are far more intertwined than many people realise. If I were to write the three diagnoses in a more accurate form, they would look like this:

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Now granted, that wouldn’t be as easy to decipher as the former example (although doctors are used to examining messy handwriting…), but it would be a lot closer to the truth and what mental illnesses feel like.
I think that some professionals, even those working in mental health, have a a problematic view of the illnesses that they treat by thinking that they can be separated into neat tidy boxes as easily as I can separate these words just by hitting the space bar. Don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE it if they were right and that mental illnesses really did come in boxes, much as the title of this blog post suggests. For one thing, if mental illnesses came wrapped and caged within physical cubed objects it might be possible to operate on a person and physically remove the cause of any problems with the ease with which they remove a tonsil (or tonsils…I think people have more than one tonsil…I really need to get round to counting mine one of these days. It has been on my to-do list for years). More importantly though, were mental illnesses to be so easily distinguished from each other, it would make treatment far more straight forward.

In terms of treatment I get for my mental health, I have several very separate teams of people in several very separate buildings. There is the hospital for my eating disorder which always smells of cauliflower cheese, there is the general mental health centre for my depression (which doesn’t smell much of cauliflower or cheese), and if I get accepted to the new service I was assessed for two weeks ago, I will have another building to attend appointments in regarding OCD (I haven’t been in that building yet so I am afraid I cannot document how much this place smells of either cauliflower or cheese but I will be sure to inform you the moment I know).
When I walk into each building every week, I am expected to talk about and deal with the illness that has been designated to that service. It’s as if they think I can leave my other mental illnesses by the door still packaged in their neat little boxes, without realising that the three are inextricably linked in a complex mesh even I cannot understand, so if one comes into the room with me, the other two cannot help but tag along.

For example, because of my mental health problems I have a lot of behaviours. One of these is that I tie my hair up repeatedly before a meal in a routine that can take as short as five minutes or as long as several hours. Now, if asked, I would say that this behaviour is an eating disorder behaviour as I only carry it out prior to a meal. If I wasn’t about to eat something, I could tie my hair up in seconds so I would say that as the anxiety is more about preparing for the impending meal, the hair tying is a part of anorexia. That said, there are many professionals who have argued with me that it is in fact an OCD behaviour, an obsessive ritual of repetitive compulsions that make no sense in rational terms. Who is to say which one of us is right in our conclusion? Both have fair points and it is easy to argue either way. What about the fact that I cut the majority of foods into four separate pieces? It is related to food so it could be my eating disorder, yet the numbers and rigidity with which I handle a knife is far more akin to the OCD. So what is the answer? Who is the culprit in causing each of these rituals? Who can solve this mystery? Someone find Poirot immediately! (Finding Miss Marple or Sherlock would also be helpful but they are second choices because they don’t have fancy moustaches.)

It isn’t that I particularly care which of my diagnoses is causing the problem, I just want them to go away, yet without knowing the specific name of the villain in this situation it is hard to find a professional able to help me. When I talk to the eating disorder services they tell me to talk about the ritualistic eating behaviours with the OCD team yet the OCD team tell me that is a job for the eating disorder hospital and as a result, treatment for these behaviours tends to slip through the cracks without ever getting a chance to materialise because they don’t fit into the neat boxes everybody wants them to. In this example it isn’t really that big of an issue as in spite of not fitting into the neat boxes all the time, I still receive treatment for both OCD and anorexia even if is is unable to solve the issues where behaviours are a combination of the two. The biggest issue however, is when this lack of mental health diagnoses tidiness doesn’t just get in the way of someone’s treatment, but gets in the way of them being accepted for treatment at all.

All over the world people including myself who are seriously struggling with mental health problems are referred to services that turn them down not because treatment is not needed, but because the case doesn’t exactly fit into a specific list of criteria. So why not broaden the criteria? Obviously I realise that the issue causing all of these problems is a lack of funding for mental health services and thus the need to have specific criteria to narrow the case load down (don’t worry, when I become prime minister I am going to be chucking so much funding at mental health services that this problem will be solved. I am also going to chuck in a lot of funding to investigating the invention of a mug that keeps a cup of tea at exactly the right temperature for hours on end, but that is a story for another time).
Still, issues with funding or not, it makes absolutely no sense to me seeing the complex soup that is mental health being separated into neat little blocks. I myself have been turned away from services for being “too complex”, which is basically like saying “yes you are crazy and in need of help but you do not fit into our definition of crazy so we are going to have to send you elsewhere only to be told the same thing and referred somewhere new all over again”.

Labelling a mental health problem with a diagnosis like “OCD” or “anorexia” is of course incredibly useful in terms of narrowing down a problem, but even then every person with OCD will experience the illness differently and that needs to be taken into account with the way they are treated as each experience is equally valid. If you go to the supermarket there will be a whole aisle of baked beans, tin upon tin all labelled “baked beans” and sure, they are all “baked beans”, but each one is slightly different just as each person with a diagnosis is slightly different. Nobody should be refused treatment for being the “wrong kind” of crazy, the fact that there is any kind of crazy should be enough.

That is why I wish mental health problems came in boxes, but alas I fear that is one wish that won’t ever come true (much like the wish I made on my 4th birthday to become a penguin. It has been 20 years and I am still waiting. Haven’t even got a sign of a flipper yet.) However, if it is a wish that won’t come true then we need to change the way we see mental disorders and indeed treat them rather than acting as if things are far simpler than they are in reality. It is time we realised that mental illnesses don’t come in boxes and the people who suffer from them don’t either. Rather than refusing to help those of us with a bit of a confusing mess going on, we need to roll our sleeves up and dive in anyway. Everyone is different, yet all are equally worthy of support.

Take care peeps.

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