An Important Reminder For People Struggling With Mental Health Problems During Exam Season

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 4 Comments

Ah summer, a wonderful time of sunshine, drinks with umbrellas (as we all know if anyone needs a device to keep something dry it is a glass of liquid), and, less wonderfully, exams. No matter what kind of exam is being thrown at you, whether it be a GCSE, A-level, university finals or your N.E.W.T’s at Hogwarts, I think we can all agree that exams suck and are a very stressful part of the year for everyone involved, especially people with mental health problems who are pretty stocked up on stress and need no exam boards adding to it. If you have exams coming up I can guarantee you have been told how important they are by teachers and lecturers and if you are anything like me you will feel that they are the most important things in the world, but I want to provide an alternative voice to all that stress and pressure and let you know that in the grand scheme of things, exams and other education related worries are not important. Now I know what you are thinking, “why should I listen to a weirdo on the internet when I have educated officials telling me that these exams are vital to my future happiness?”. Well dear reader, because I am going to prove my point with an analogy using the absolute best thing about summer, ice-cream, and if that doesn’t get me credibility then I don’t know what will.

For the purpose of this post I would like you to imagine an ice cream cone. That empty cone represents your physical health, no emotions whatever, just the heart beating oxygen to carbon dioxide basics of being alive. Now add a scoop of ice cream to that cone (one involving chocolate or peanut butter preferably but I suppose you could use any flavour for your metaphorical ice cream…just not rum and raisin because that is nasty). That scoop of ice cream is your mental health, stress levels, emotional stability, any brain activity that involves quality of life, pain or pleasure, and makes you different from the empty ice cream cone of the amoeba. Now add a cherry to that ice cream cone. That cherry is exams/good results/fantastic education stuff in general.

If you went to an ice cream van in the real world and asked for an ice cream, you would expect at least a cone with a scoop of ice cream in. A cone is fine but it is worth nothing without the ice cream and without the cone the ice cream would have no “body” to chill in (literally). To be worth having, you need both the cone and the ice cream. Having a cherry added on the top would be nice, but without the ice cream and the cone it is pointless. Without those key components you just have a random cherry floating in the air and that is useless in terms of the ice cream experience (otherwise known as “life”). Exams alone are that useless floating cherry.

The most important things to focus on and look after throughout life, exams and education in whatever form, are your physical and mental health, because if you don’t have either of those things then exams have nothing to sit on.
When I was doing my A-levels I was absolutely terrified and my exams literally became a life or death situation. My head was compressed under so much pressure and my brain had made some kind of OCD rigid deal that I had to get straight A*’s or kill myself. No other grade would give me “permission to live”, not even an A which is an incredible grade to get as it is. My anxiety and OCD drive made a life or death situation out of “a star” and you know what that star is? IT IS JUST AN ASTERISK. IT IS PUNCTUATION. It is not the be all and end all goal of life, this mystical magical holy relic to be chased to the end of time. Nope. Look here is one now *. And another one *. Is “*” and therefore any grade worth the pressure and insanity placed upon exams?

The stress of exams, grades and dedicating all of your energy to revision is like chasing a floating cherry without the cone and ice cream needed to support it. If education is causing so much stress that your anxiety is out of control, if you are revising so much that you are “not having time to eat”, then that is not OK. At university I spent my entire time chasing that illusive floating cherry (otherwise known as “a first”). I read books obsessively, didn’t sleep, took notes on things with unnecessary detail and precision. Revision sheets were awash with bubble letters that I took hours colouring in using the order of colours in the rainbow. I had to get a first so everything had to be perfect, but I was so busy colour co-ordinating titles that I didn’t look after the cone or the ice cream and eventually everything fell down with nothing there to support it. I never took my final exams at university, I never wrote my dissertation or got the resulting “dissertation picture”, because I was in hospital. Thankfully I had the most amazing tutor and team at university so I was still able to graduate. Did I get a first? No. Has having a “2:1” rather than a first changed my life in any way? No. Do you know how often I get asked about my degree or A-level grades? How often someone asks to admire my colour co-ordinated revision notes with obsessively neat handwriting and bubble letters? Never, because in the real world none of it matters, what really matters is keeping yourself alive and able to function.
When you are in school I know that education feels like the world and grades are the tip of the mountain in importance, but when you leave school you realise that that mountain was just a mole hill and the real important mountains in life are actually living your life both physically and, hopefully, with some mental stability or quality that make it worth it. Getting an education or a dissertation picture are things in life, but they are not the ONLY things.

Obviously I am not telling you not to bother with revision, if you can handle it then that is great and of course you should do your best in exams, but you shouldn’t sacrifice your emotional or physical wellbeing to achieve, catch a cherry that is useless without the cone and ice cream to balance it on. An earlier hospitalisation during sixth form meant I had to go back a year in school so I did my A-levels a year late. Again it seemed like the biggest deal in the world, but I needed that time in hospital and that time out and eventually I got my exams, Ok they were a little late, but the only difference between my certificates and the ones my initial year received was the date. Also, I actually made loads of new friends in my new year, so in retrospect going back a year was not only vital but actually gave me some positive experiences with people I wouldn’t have met had I forced myself through exams the first time. Especially if I had died in the attempt.

In short, education can wait. Education can be done any time if needs be, but what cannot wait or be done at any time is keeping yourself alive and looking after your health. If you need to take time out, do it. Lower the pressure and expectations for grades. In short, give yourself a break, give yourself time to breathe. If you have exams and revision this summer then I wish you the best of luck and hope they go brilliantly, just please remember to look after that cone and scoop of ice cream first, and don’t kill yourself over a floating cherry that in the grand scheme of things matters nowhere near as much as the ice cream.

Ice cream

“Crazy Is The New Black” – Why Mental Illnesses Are Not A Fashion Trend

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 7 Comments

On Saturday night I went to a bar with two friends to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. I anticipated an evening of ridiculous dresses, flags being waved violently in my face, maybe even the odd dancer dressed as a potato. My hopes of such merriment were dashed when one of the presenters made a derogatory joke about mental health that did nothing but boost the stigma that my blog aims to destroy. AND there was no dancing potato. The joke? The “advertising” of a Eurovision Song Contest straitjacket to wear in celebration of the event because, as the presenter stated, “crazy is the new black”. Now I am not one to follow fashion trends so I don’t want to pass myself off as a fashion blogger, but in my opinion, that kind of statement and jokey interpretation of mental health problems went out of style around the 18th century and the fact that it was paraded on TV in 2016 is quite frankly something that has left my “flabber” well and truly “gasted”.

At first, after the comment had been made, I simply hated the presenter who had said it. I was ready to fly to Sweden to pull her off the air, but then I realised (around the time I was trying to hitch a ride to Sweden on the back of a pigeon who, alas, was no help in my mission whatsoever), that this joke was scripted and had therefore been approved by multiple people. Hell someone had even made a prop strait jacket, so this isn’t a little blip or misjudgement, this is a carefully considered statement that makes mental illness out to be a “cool trend”, that was viewed as acceptable for two hundred million viewers across the world.

I hate to whip out the “if this was a physical illness” card here, but seriously, think about it. Imagine if the woman had been advertising a Eurovision themed chemotherapy pump with feathers on it and claimed that “cancer is the new skinny jean”. People would have been up in arms, it would have been in newspapers, the demand for the removal of the presenter and script writer would have been widely documented, and Facebook would have been awash with furious people voicing their opinions. However, being mental health related, it was just swept under the carpet, nobody batted an eyelid other than a few distressed tweeters and bloggers online. Forgive me, but I have to ask what on earth is the difference between stating mental illnesses are “the new black” and saying cancer is “the new skinny jean” or whatever fashion trend is “in” these days? Cancer kills thousands of people a year? So do mental illnesses.
Maybe I am deluded to think that crazy isn’t a fashion trend and maybe I should pick up a copy of vogue ASAP, but in my eyes that joke is nothing like what “crazy” is to me.

Crazy is spending an hour putting on make up to go out with a group of friends and then crying it all off because you were so scared of tying your shoelaces incase the germs on them were to cause the end of the world. Crazy is being watched 24/7 for months, in the shower, on the loo, all of it because you are not trusted to keep yourself safe without constant supervision. Crazy is yelling at your mother because she cut a bagel incorrectly. Crazy is having to sleep with your hands on the pillow so the nurse watching you sleep all night can be sure you aren’t clawing your skin off under the duvet. Crazy is having to ask your friend to come into the bathroom with you to turn a tap on because you are scared to touch it yourself. Crazy is failed relationships because your partner cannot handle your mental illnesses anymore. Crazy is initially refusing to take an aspirin from a paramedic in the back of an ambulance who thinks you have had a heart attack, because he mentioned it was “lemon flavoured” and you fear that that may mean the tablet has calories. Crazy is having a separate room for exams at university so that you can cry and have panic attacks without disturbing other people. Crazy is being locked inside for months on end because the last time you were allowed out you tried to climb over a fence to escape the hospital you were detained in and had to be rescued by the fire brigade. Crazy is having to shower until the top layer of skin comes off and you are bleeding all over because only then can you be sure that the dirt is gone. Crazy is being the only person in your friend group who doesn’t have a job because you are mentally too unwell to work. Crazy is waking your mother up at 4am for a hug because you are too anxious to go to sleep. Crazy is taking menopause oestrogen supplements at 23 because you can’t eat enough to produce the hormone yourself and as a result your spine is riddled with Osteoporosis. Crazy is not being able to go to the toilet because your OCD says that it isn’t time yet. Crazy is going back a year in school because you missed yet another chunk of education being stuck in a psychiatric unit. Crazy is having nothing to say when family members ask what you have been up to, because they don’t count “I haven’t killed myself and have got out of bed every morning”, as an achievement. Crazy is being unwell for so long that you honestly can’t remember what normal is. Crazy is all of these things plus a hundred others that nobody can ever put into words. “Crazy” is the hell experienced by the millions of people across the globe who are struggling right now, but are too embarrassed and scared to speak out incase their worries are belittled, brushed aside or used as fodder for the next stigma supporting “joke”.

You can describe crazy in an infinite number of ways, but as the “new black?”. That is not what the word means to me.
If anything, crazy is the new “crisis in humanity”, and it is killing more people every day than your average fashion trend.

Crazy is the new black

“Who Am I?” – Anorexia And Identity

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 12 Comments

Have you ever wondered how people refer to you when you are not in the room and they don’t know or have forgotten your name? People refer to others using general but somehow specific terms all the time (my mum and I do this with contestants on Masterchef for example, this series we had “beardy man” and “Jam sandwich lady”), and it makes me think about how people refer to me. Rightly or wrongly I have always assumed that people call me “the anorexic one”, “the one who never went to school dinners”, “the one who disappeared into hospital for 10 months and then came back to sixth form 2 stone heavier” or words to similar effect, and it is one of the reasons that I find the concept of recovery so frightening and difficult to achieve. I feel that the label of being “anorexic” serves as a sort of identity both to me personally and for other people. In my head “anorexia” is my thoughts, it is all I think, it is what I do and who I am, so in my eyes if it disappeared, I would disappear too. I also feel this way about OCD sometimes, as that is also what I do and how I live/what I am, but the identity tie is mainly to the label of “anorexic”. After all, OCD is rarely used as an adjective to describe a person, you never hear the words “they are an OCDic.”

When anorexia first appears in someone’s life, it is sort of viewed as a separate thing, an added extra, an invader that is not part of the real person, or, in metaphorical terms, purple hair. People say that someone “has” anorexia much like they would say someone “has” purple hair due to some dye they have just bought, it is a temporary alteration to their being that will gradually wash out over time, it is not an integral part of who they are. If someone has it for a month, they will perhaps be known for that month as “the one with the purple hair” and then the label will change again as they themselves change style and perhaps career (e.g the brunette professional penguin tamer).
The problem is that the longer someone has purple hair, the more the purple hair becomes tied up with who they are as a person, they stop being a person with purple hair, the purple hair almost becomes them. When I was first diagnosed with anorexia it was an addition to who I was, a bit of purple colouring in my ponytail, but now after all these years I feel it has leaked all over me. The dye as it were hasn’t stayed in my hair, it has dribbled down into my skin so that my entire body is as violet as that girl who turns into that blueberry in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when she eats the piece of gum Willy Wonka told her wasn’t finished. I no longer have anorexia as one has purple hair, I am anorexic, I am entirely purple from head to toe. If you scrub at my hair or my skin, the colour doesn’t just wash out anymore, it has been too long, it is embedded and to get rid of it you would have to peel away all of my skin completely which would in turn get rid of me too. That is how anorexia feels in terms of my identity, it is a thing that has become me and that now I am so entirely that it is impossible to remove. Without that label who would I be? My therapist is always correcting me when I say things like “I am scared of eating X” by saying “the anorexia is scared of eating X, Katie isn’t” but I don’t feel like that is true. I don’t have a voice telling me to avoid going over a certain number of calories, it is just my thoughts, it is just me.

A few years ago I went to hang out at a friend’s house with various people I had not met before (some may have called it a “party” but there were no balloons and in my eyes a party is not a party without rubber sacks of the host’s breath floating about, so I would call it a “jovial social gathering”). At some point in the evening some cake was brought out and handed around. The plate and thus the cake was offered to every guest individually, except me. Don’t get me wrong, I really appreciated it and was relieved. I hate the awkward moments when people offer me things that I then have to make up excuses to avoid, and knowing this my friend the host (lets call her Bertha for the purpose of this conversation), did not put me in that position. She knew I wasn’t going to have any cake so she didn’t insist on the whole “Cake?”, “Oh, no thank you” palaver that is often so embarrassing. However, this act of what was consideration for me and kindness of a friend aware of my difficulties, really got me thinking. When Bertha went round the circle she saw everyone as a person with the potential to eat cake, but when she got to me she saw someone or something different, she saw one of the “anorexic species”, a creature notorious for avoiding sweet treats. It felt like Bertha saw me as “the anorexic one”, I was different, and I had to wonder what on earth would it have been like if in the five minutes before the offering of the cake, I had been struck by the most wonderful bolt of lightening in the history of weather, and instantly cured of all mental health problems ever. What if I hadn’t had the illness that made me “the anorexic one”, what would be left, if anything, or would there just be a an empty space where the former anorexic had been?

I guess the point I am trying to make here and the point of this post/what I want more people to understand, is that there is a reason that anorexia is so hard to recover from. It is such a complex illness that both destroys and provides in ways that people may not think.
When sufferers are trying to fight but are struggling, it isn’t simply a case of being “scared of food” or ”scared of gaining weight”, often it is also a fear of what they will lose, of throwing away everything that they think they are, the removal of their core identity, leaving a hole they have no idea how else to fill.

Identity

(Apologies for the crease at the top of this image…I actually drew this picture for an appointment with one of my psychologists and the paper got creased on the way to the hospital. It was a good day for therapy but a bad day for my attempts at art.)

What To Do If You Think Someone Is Struggling With A Mental Health Problem

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 2 Comments

Having mental health problems sucks, but so does seeing a person you care about struggling with them when you have no idea what to do. It can be frightening to see someone becoming more and more unwell without necessarily seeking help for whatever reason, and sometimes it is necessary for friends or family to step in. Unfortunately this can be a very awkward situation, after all nobody wants their friends to gather them round the fireplace for a good old “we think you are insane” discussion, so in this post I am going to try and help people who are concerned about someone’s mental health and don’t know what to do about it. These things are at least what I would like my friends and family to do if they ever suspected I had a problem, (though I would like to point out that there is no need to do any of these things now family, rest assured I am well aware that I am a bit funny in the head), so hopefully other people will find these approaches acceptable too…

OPTION ONE: The first and best way to deal with someone you love struggling with mental health problems alone is of course to approach them in some way and discuss your concerns. If you plan to talk to someone directly about the issue, the key with this is to not go in all guns blazing, in fact, do not involve a gun in the situation at all. If you must have a prop, take a cup of tea or something, everybody likes tea and nobody likes guns (a mantra that might make this world a better place if more political leaders followed it but I will try and stop wars at a later date, for now I am just going to tackle mental health problems. Please be patient.) The problem is that mentioning someone’s mental health in conversation is also one of the more difficult options as it can be an awkward topic to bring up. For this reason, if it were me, I would always suggest writing someone a letter (or email if necessary but a letter is more personal), instead of talking to them directly, and it is actually an approach that is beneficial to both parties. By writing a letter you can make sure you get all your points down and really say what you want to say clearly, rather than gabbling some incoherent speech out of nerves in the moment, that doesn’t really get what you want to say across. It also helps the person you are approaching, as having someone tell you that they think you are crazy is difficult and often embarrassing to hear. This embarrassment may then cause someone to become defensive and say things that they don’t really mean either, perhaps snapping back because they are insecure or laughing and trying to brush it off to distract you from the conversation (a technique I myself am world champion of). With a letter the person can read it in their own time and thus really think about it properly without giving in to the initial emotional response conversations can bring. It also gives them some privacy to deal with the topic and means that they can re-read it at a later date if it is something they want to think about and come back to. When it comes to talking to someone about their mental health, writing things down in a letter is awesome.

OPTION TWO: I would always say that bringing up someone’s mental health with the person themselves should be the first plan of action, as it can be upsetting to know you have been discussed by other people behind your back. However, in some circumstances, if for whatever reason, option one is too difficult or has been tried and failed and things are getting serious, talking to someone’s family can be a great second option. If there is a misunderstanding and the family can confirm the person is fine then great, but if not it is important for the person struggling to have some people close who are perhaps more aware of what is going on than they are. Families often miss things because they are around their loved ones so much that they don’t notice subtle gradual changes over a long period of time and sufferers may not realise what is going on either or be in full blown denial about it. Having a friend or outside point of view can therefore be really valuable.

OPTION THREE: People often think that mental health helplines are for people who are themselves mentally ill but this is not the case at all. Samaritans for example is available to anyone for any issue regarding mental health (or things that are nothing to do with the workings of the brain, you can call them about anything, even if you lose your keys and want to yell at someone, though I WOULD NOT advise this), so calling them to get some support may be a good thing to do so that you have someone looking out for you too. Samaritans don’t give advice, but if you are worried and have nobody to talk to about your friend, it can be therapeutic for you to get it off your chest and take care of yourself. There are also a lot of other helplines including ones like “Rethink mental illness” who may be able to offer advice, so I will put a few numbers at the end of this post. After all as my favourite nurse at my previous hospital said to me, “you can’t look after other people if you don’t look after yourself first”. Wise words indeed. Think of calling a helpline, or maybe visiting a mental health charity website, as fitting your own oxygen mask on a plane before you help others (only closer to the ground and with what I hope would be an ample supply of oxygen).

OPTION FOUR: Once you have managed to somehow bring up the topic of mental health with someone you care about, the next step should always be to get them to go to a GP. Maybe offer to go with them as support if that is possible, but either way it is their GP who will know the next course of action and will be able to discuss potential mental health services in their area.

OPTION FIVE: This one probably sounds really dramatic but if you are seriously concerned about someone’s mental health and attempts to bring it up with them or their family directly have not worked then it is always an option to go to A&E or call an ambulance. Obviously this isn’t something to do lightly and should only be done in extreme circumstances, but if you ever think someone is in immediate danger because of their mental health then it can be necessary. With this there is of course a potential risk of upsetting or annoying the person you are calling an ambulance for, but ultimately it is always better to have a very angry live friend than no friend at all.

Overall, approaching anyone because you are concerned about their mental health is never going to be the most pleasant experience and probably not a moment either of you will want to tweet about or document with an album on Facebook. Nevertheless I hope these options at least help give some kind of idea as to how to make it a little more bearable. Unpleasant or not, talking to people you are worried about is very important and shouldn’t be avoided. Who knows, one day the person you are confronting might thank you…and, if they don’t and get really angry at you doing any of these options, just tell them it isn’t your fault and that a weird bespectacled person on the internet was the one who gave you the advice that they followed, I am more than happy to take the blame.

Stay safe everyone and have a great day.

TeaAndGun

 

HELPLINES AND FURTHER ADVICE

Samaritans:
08457 90 90 90 – 24 hour support seven days a week

Rethink mental illness:
0300 5000 927 – Monday to Friday 9.30am-4pm
Rethink also have a really good web article about this whole topic here: https://www.rethink.org/carers-family-friends/what-you-need-to-know/worried-about-someones-mental-health

Carers UK:
0808 808 7777

Sane Line:
0300 304 7000 – 6pm-11pm every day

Support line:
01708 765200

I’m Scared I Killed Victoria Wood – The Problem With Having OCD And An Inflated Sense Of Responsibility

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 3 Comments

In the past few months, an unusually high number of well known celebrities (well known in the UK at least), have died. It feels like every other day that I go onto Facebook and find new pictures of the recently deceased posted by friends in mourning. I understand that people die all the time, people who go unreported, people nobody mourns on Facebook because they weren’t “well known”, were just a nameless number in some horrendous incident in a different country that people care far less about because they don’t relate to it as much. I understand that all these celebrity deaths are not in fact a rise in the number of people dying overall, but still I can’t help but feel something has changed, something to cause it, and that that something is me.

When people have OCD there are various things that drive them in their rituals. Some simply carry them out until they “feel right”, whatever that “right” feeling is, but many, myself included, carry them out because they are fearful of what will happen if they don’t, that not carrying the tasks out is not just distressing but dangerous to either themselves or the people around them. Whenever I talk to professionals about this (professional people in the world of psychiatry I mean, not general professionals like professional penguin keepers who I feel would be less interested in my mental health problems), they call it having “an inflated sense of responsibility” a common symptom of OCD.
This symptom is pretty self explanatory from the name of it, but basically it makes sufferers feel as if their simple actions, like opening a door, are far more significant than they are, can control the world in irrational ways, that individually they have some great power which can cause events and impact the world. It can feel like tiny daily tasks have a ripple effect out onto the universe, like sitting down in a chair incorrectly will cause a totally unrelated event to happen elsewhere, such as an earthquake or tsunami. Of course when something “bad” happens that the sufferer wrongly blames themselves for, they are just connecting two totally separate things that coincidentally happened around the same time, but still it can be and is really frightening.

This sense of inflated responsibility is one of the reasons why OCD tends to get a lot worse for people when they are in stressful situations, things with a debatable outcome that they desperately want to have some control over or impact in favour of a positive result. In a way it is a comforting thought to think that you can influence things as if by “magical thinking”, even “sane” people without OCD do it all the time, like when musicians might wear their “lucky pants” with the aim of ensuring a good performance. The problem is that with OCD, this responsibility never seems to correspond to good events or making positive things happen, you can’t tap a door knob and “cause” yourself to win the lottery or anything, even to the irrational OCD, that idea is just silly. Instead, this power people feel they have can only do evil and not good, which when you think about it is quite possibly the worst superpower to feel you have of all time. I think I would rather feel I had powers like spiderman with the ability to spout webs all over the place, and I don’t even like spiders. Or close fitting lycra suits.

I remember sitting in the exam hall at school during my maths GCSE 8 years ago and being in a massive dilemma, a dilemma caused by this inflated sense of responsibility and not just a dilemma everyone faces when they are sitting before a maths paper.
In my world of OCD I had, and continue to have, both lucky and unlucky numbers, and for one of the questions early on, the answer was one of the unluckiest numbers to exist in my eyes. I can’t even write it here because it scares me, so I am just going to pretend the answer was “X” for the purpose of this post because that is what you are supposed to do in maths when you can’t write the number (cheers for that algebra). I knew 100% that the answer was X, I had checked it and rechecked it multiple times but still I could not write it down. I feared that if I wrote “X”, that my parents would die. I knew that in terms of maths, to write anything else would be wrong and I wouldn’t get the mark, but that seemed like a far preferable outcome to losing my loved ones. You might be wondering why I had this sense of a dilemma when obviously if the choice was ever “lose a mark or kill your parents” everyone would lose the mark, but whilst fearing this, I knew it was “just” my OCD freaking me out. My psychologist at the time was always telling me to challenge the OCD, to go against it because only then could you prove that all it spouted was lies. I wanted to do as she said, ignore the OCD and write “X” anyway because writing numbers doesn’t really have the ability to kill your parents, but I was too terrified, so in the end I had to write the wrong answer on purpose. This dilemma came up several times during the course of the exam (a surprising amount of my “unlucky numbers” came up in the 2008 GCSE maths paper), and every time I purposefully wrote the wrong answer. It was infuriating and I wanted to scream, but annoyingly that is something you are not allowed to do in a GCSE exam, as “no screaming” is in fact the rule just after “no mobile phones”, so I just sat there being controlled by this inflated sense of responsibility and importance I felt my maths answers had.

This influx of celebrity deaths has triggered me so much that I genuinely feel the need to apologise to everyone reading this for murdering these famous people of whom so many people are fans and are upset about. Nevertheless, I wanted to try and find some kind of positive or useful outcome from this trigger which is why I am writing about it to hopefully explain a bit more about this aspect of OCD. Now I guess the task is to just try and not let this impact my rituals more than it already has…I am just scared as to who my actions could hurt next.

13063866_10207493767356203_1561972051_o

(Just incase you don’t get it, the picture above is literally an inflated “sense of responsibility”…this probably doesn’t need any explaining and is nowhere near as clever as I think it is but just wanted to point it out because I was pretty proud of that little pun…It’s hilarious…no?…Ok never mind I will leave now so you can get back on with your day)

An Attempt At Explaining Self-Harm:

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 15 Comments

Before anyone reads this I just want to put out a brief trigger warning that this post discusses the purposes and reasons as to why people may self harm so if that would trigger you in anyway please click away and read Harry Potter instead.

As I am typing this I am honestly surprised at how uncomfortable I feel discussing this topic. I am fairly open when it comes to my mental health, partly because I am currently unable to hide it, and partly because I want to reach out to other people to either help or offer a bit of company in what can be a very lonely battle of the mind. Writing a post that acknowledges that I self harm however is somehow harder than waffling on about having anorexia, OCD or depression as I find it really embarrassing. I feel when it comes to self harm there is a particularly high level of stigma and misunderstanding, it being a common belief that people do it for attention. For this reason I feel a lot of shame admitting that it is something I struggle with, which is silly because it isn’t something to be ashamed of at all. Equally it isn’t something to be proud of, it is just something that exists as a problem for a lot of people, and so I am going to try and explain it here as best I can to anyone out there who can’t get their head round it. Maybe if more people talk about it and understand, we can all be open and able to deal with it rather than keeping it as a shameful secret that will never get better unless it is talked about.

As always I cannot speak for everyone with this issue but I am going to at least provide a list of three reasons as to why personally I struggle with self harm and perhaps other people will be able to relate. I also just want to preface these points by saying that in explaining the rationale behind self harm I am not justifying it as a good thing to do whatsoever, it is an unhealthy coping strategy that needs to be talked about and treated to find alternative ways of managing difficult feelings that are not so damaging. Still, you can’t find an alternative until you know what purpose self harm serves in general or for you personally, so here goes:

1. It provides a release: When I am feeling particularly anxious/stressed/upset, it can feel like I am physically bursting with the emotions coursing around my body. It is like that buzz of adrenaline you get when you are scared of something, your skin prickles, you can feel your heart beating and the extra energy pulsing through your veins. You are full of so much extra emotion that you are going to burst like the lid off a pan of frantically popping popcorn. Without the heat on, the popcorn kernels fit in the pan, but with the heat/distress they expand and burst all over the place because they, like the emotions and upset, take up too much room. When I feel like a bursting pan of popcorn (and we all know what a common feeling that is), self harm is a way that helps release some of the pressure, it is lifting the lid a little so that some of the popcorn banging around inside can get out.

2. It makes the pain you feel visible, understandable and treatable:  A lot of the time, feeling extremely depressed or upset for no logical reason can be frightening as you know it doesn’t make sense for you to feel so distressed over nothing. When I self harm I make the pain that is frightening me understandable. I feel the same pain I was feeling but I can see where the pain is coming from, no longer is it an unknown mental pain, I know the source. I hurt because I have a wound, the pain makes sense and I know that physical wounds can heal, I can do something about it, I know what to do to treat it, and I can be proactive in it getting better. It is still unpleasant, but it is a distraction from the mental pain that was previously occupying all of my brain space, a pain that I couldn’t treat, nor did I know for certain if it was ever going to go away.

3. It serves as a punishment to relieve guilt: Like many people in this world, with or without mental health problems, it could be argued that I have low self esteem. I find this hard to believe, as rather than low self esteem I feel I have an accurate understanding of my inadequacies as a human, a self awareness that I am a terrible person, but I have been told this is all lies and the whole low self esteem thing by many people over the years so I try my best to believe them. Anyway, because of the way I feel about myself, I feel guilty for taking up a place on this planet. I feel guilty for wandering around this planet and forcing others to deal with my presence when they would be a lot better off without me, I feel bad for using up oxygen that would better be spent passing through the lungs of someone else. Self harm is a sort of punishment to lessen the guilt of living, it is to make up for my crimes committed just by existing. I am also not asking for people to tell me that I am not a terrible person because I have never been able to believe anyone else’s opinion (which is hilarious really…I think I am the worst person in the world yet simultaneously think I am right about everything…), but if I had to give a comparison to try and help people make sense of all of this, I would basically sum this point up as “I am Dobby the house elf”. I am sure everyone has read the Harry Potter books (and if you haven’t you really should), so I won’t explain this likeness in too much detail, but basically, like Dobby, when I do something wrong I feel I have to do something to punish myself for it.

Sitting here and reading all of that back, I feel as naked as the day I arrived on this planet (remain calm, I am technically wearing clothes right now, I just feel a bit exposed considering I am letting people into a piece of my brain). Still, this is important stuff, and like I said before if nobody talks about it then self harm becomes this big taboo that will never be understood. Again, this explanation of self harm is not condoning it in any way and if you are struggling please seek help right away as there are certainly other ways to fulfil the purpose self harm has in your life. I myself am currently working to battle this issue and find alternative coping mechanisms. When I find some good ones I will certainly be making a post about them to try and help people if possible.
Until then, please stay safe everyone, take care, and know that I am sending a lot of love and support to you all.
P.S Just going to end this post with a quick clarification to clear up any confusion resulting from my comparison of myself to Dobby the house elf. Though I admit I have a self harm punishment style likeness to Dobby, that this is the ONLY similarity I have to Dobby. I want it known that, contrary to popular opinion, I am not in fact a house elf, and that my job last December was as a CHRISTMAS elf. We Christmas elves are indeed a very different species, so to make that plain, below I have provided a brief diagram to demonstrate some of the key differences between House elves and Christmas elves. I hope this helps. Thank you.

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P.P.S If you read all of this then as a reward here is a photo of me as a Christmas elf. Feel free to make it your screensaver.

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6 Ways To Explain Depression To People Who Don’t Really Understand It:

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 3 Comments

Living with depression is incredibly hard, but to people who don’t live with it, so is comprehending what it actually feels like to suffer with an illness that is often brushed off as “just being a bit down in the dumps”. For this reason, to try and help more people understand the condition, I have come up with 6 examples of the way depression feels for me in ways I hope are easily understood or related to by anyone.

1. The “night before dread”: You know when it is the day before something you really do not want to do/are frightened of? Like the first day back at school after the summer holidays or a rectal exam? That feeling of absolute dread when you look forward to the next day’s unpleasant events that you cannot get out of? That dread of the next day is what depression feels like, only you feel it every day, all day for no reason whatsoever. You look to the future and realise that there is no impending rectal exam or reason for you to feel this way at all, which in theory should make you feel better but it doesn’t. It actually feels more frustrating, because unlike when you know what you are dreading and know you will feel better when the looming event is over, when you are dreading nothing in particular, you don’t know how to get that “nothing” out of the way so that you can feel better and move on with your life.

2. The “head in a bucket”: For me, depression often feels like having your head in a very heavy immovable bucket. It is pitch black all around and darkness is all you can see. At the same time people are standing beside you without a bucket on their head, telling you to look at trees, pretty flowers and positive things in life, which would be all well and good if your head wasn’t stuck in a bucket. They tell you to look on the bright side, to look at the sunshine/how lucky you are and you really try. You squint and turn your head for hours desperately trying to see what they see but no matter how hard you try all you see is darkness, not because you aren’t wanting to see the light, but because that damn bucket on your head is blocking it all out.

3. The “Robot driver”: Many days I wake up once in the morning, and then again sometime in the afternoon, having lived part of my day without really realising what was going on. It feels as if my body has gone on autopilot and turned me into a robot carrying out all the daily tasks required of me without really being present or noticing what is going on at all. It is like when you drive yourself home sometimes (not that I can drive but I hear this is a common experience), and then when you get to your front door you don’t remember the drive because you were too distracted thinking about how fantastic penguins are. The difference is that with the depression robot automaton example, you don’t know what you were distracted by, what you were thinking about or whether you were actually conscious or present at all. Your body has just been moving around with no-one inside.

 
4. The “frozen mute weird coma active mind thing that I cannot think of a good name for”: Imagine someone has super glued your tongue to the roof of your mouth. They have also injected you with some weird substance that means you physically cannot move your limbs or your face and you cant really feel them either. If someone touches your arm you can see it happening but you can’t feel the other person on your skin. Mentally your brain is active and you are thinking things like “I really should get up do something productive right now” or “I have so much to do and I have to get on for goodness sake move”, but still your body is too numb to respond and you can’t even open your mouth or speak to tell anyone what is going on.

5. The classic “Wading through treacle” but with weights tied to your ankles: This example pretty much says it all in the title, but basically just imagine trying to walk across a football pitch which is filled up to your chin with treacle (an unfortunate consequence of an explosion and resulting flood at the local treacle factory. Thankfully I can assure you all that nobody was harmed in the explosion but a hell of a lot of treacle has been wasted by spreading itself across this football pitch). You also have heavy weights strapped to every limb so every step is a huge effort, yet still you try as hard as you can and use all your strength to get to the other side of the pitch. In reality though, that struggle merely corresponds to the task of cleaning your teeth, so to get through the entire day there are still hundreds more pitches of treacle in front of you that you must pass through before you can just give up and go back to sleep again.

6. The “Deserted Wasteland”: Sometimes depression feels like you are standing out in the middle of a deserted wasteland (you wouldn’t have guessed this from the title of this one but just go with me and don’t feel too surprised), where all around you there is just barren empty land. There is no grass, no trees, no sign of life anywhere around as far as your eyes can see. You can have a hundred members of your family and friends in the real world trying to look after you and supporting you through it, so you shouldn’t feel so isolated but no matter what is going on in the “real world”, mentally, in the desert, you are always completely alone.

Now I will admit that this is not the jolliest list of examples ever to exist, but to be fair depression isn’t the jolliest thing in the world, so I guess you could say I have done a pretty good job…Anyway, I hope this list helps someone supporting a friend or family member with depression to understand what they may be feeling. Also if you are a fellow sufferer/bucket wearer, I hope you find some solace in the fact that you are not the only person that feels like this and that there are people out there who understand, even if they only exist on the internet.

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What are they doing about the fact that you are insane?

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 6 Comments

Every time my parents pick me up from a psychiatric appointment, they ask me the same questions:

  1. “So what did they do to you today?”
  2. “What are they doing about the anorexia/OCD/depression?”

They are only trying to be nice and just want to understand more about what is going on with the crazy person living in their house, but I often wonder what exactly my parents expect me to answer when they ask me these kind of questions.
What did they do to me? Well first I was strapped to a table and then they hit me on the head with a mallet to smash the crazy out. What are they doing about the anorexia/OCD/depression? They are cornering it with a sleuth of angry bears (that is actually what a group of bears is called, “a sleuth”, trust me I looked it up on google), so that it runs off of a cliff into a flange of angry baboons (I may or may not have just discovered a website that tells you what the collective names for various kinds of animals hence the uses of ‘sleuth’ and ‘flange” in this post).

The truth is, the psychologists and psychiatrists and support workers I see don’t “do” anything, but at the same time that does not mean they don’t do anything. Sometimes I may do pieces of “work” or try courses of various therapies, discuss changing my medication or upping the dose, but on the whole the majority of my appointments are taken up by simply talking about things. If I say that to my parents, they worry that because nothing is being “done”, I am not receiving any treatment, but what many people don’t realise is that simply talking as a treatment, is seriously underrated.

By telling someone how you feel, you can release some of the emotions you are bottling up; by explaining a problem you are having to someone who doesn’t understand, you may understand things that even you didn’t know you were feeling; and by sharing a secret or a burden/pain, you share the weight of it and are allowed a little brain space to breathe. Like they say, “a problem shared is a problem halved”, not that I know who they are but they seem pretty smart to me. I know it all sounds very wishy washy, which is probably why the idea of “just talking” is sometimes not viewed as “treatment”, but mental health issues are far more complex and confusing than people can really comprehend, and you only learn about them through exploring. I have been in treatment for over a decade yet still I often realise things about my illnesses and my relationship to them that I didn’t know before, just by talking things through.

I suppose the message I want to get across in this post is that when it comes to recovery from mental health problems, it isn’t straight forward, there isn’t a set thing to “do” or fixed course you follow. As cheesy as it sounds, recovery really is a journey of self exploration, and everyone/everyone’s journey is different. People are individual and unique, so their experiences of their illnesses are individual and unique, different and relative to them alone, so “just” talking about things is really important. Only when you really understand what is going on with you and how your life is affected personally, can you really tackle the problem. If you are just starting to receive therapy or are supporting a loved one in therapy and are worried that nothing is really “happening”, please do not feel despair. It may not feel like it, but things really are being “done” and you are working towards recovery even if you don’t realise it right now. Words are power. Use them.

Just going to end this post here by letting you know that a group of is caterpillars is called an army. How hilarious is that? The answer is very. Caterpillars are literally the most non-threatening looking animals in the history of the world, yet still if a lot of them came into your house you would have to say that you had been invaded by an army. Now if you don’t mind, I am off to gather my own caterpillar army to help in my quest to destroy mental health stigma. Cheers.

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Why it is physically impossible to “look anorexic”.

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 9 Comments

A few weeks ago, the woman whose womb I once inhabited for 9 months (otherwise known as my mother), was chatting to a fellow human, and during the conversation my mother mentioned the fact that her offspring, aka me, has anorexia. The first response to be uttered (after the obligatory “Oh dear that is sad”), was the question “what size is she?”.

Has a more irrelevant question ever been asked? The answer is no. It is a question equivalent to asking someone with a broken leg “what colour is your cast?”, as if that will tell you about whatever funny business the bones are doing inside. Honestly I do not know what size I was before I heard of this incident, but right now I can assure you I am well and truly FURIOUS sized (like fun size chocolate bars only less fun, more rage.)
Unfortunately, this ridiculousness is a common response or question when someone hears that another person has an eating disorder, so I want to clarify one vital piece of information that everyone needs to know:

The weight or size of a person will never tell you how ill or how well someone is with an eating disorder.

Eating disorders (though obviously having implications in the “real world” in terms of behaviour around food/affect on physical composition of the body), are mental illnesses, the severity of which will never be judged by a number on the scales or a size on a pair of jeans. People with eating disorders can be underweight, a healthy weight or they can be overweight, but no matter what size, you will not be able to tell from their appearance what is going on inside their heads. Not only can you not tell the mental strain from appearance, you cannot tell the physical strain and the effect the illness is having on the body either. People with eating disorders die with bones popping out all over the place at a BMI of 2, but they also die whilst looking healthy or overweight because the physical complications caused by these illnesses are so much deeper and more complex than “weight loss”. Heart attacks caused by the body eating heart muscle for energy, electrolyte imbalances caused by purging and insufficient nutrition, and multiple organ failure caused by the general strain of eating disorders on the body are but three of the many ways people lose their lives in the fight and all of these things are invisible on surface level.

It isn’t even as if this misconception that eating disorders can be seen benefits anyone, as it is a dangerous belief for all involved. Sufferers may feel they aren’t really ill because they don’t look like the stereotypical skeletal pictures of people with eating disorders in the media, parents may not take their child’s issues to food seriously because they “look alright”, and medical professionals might deny input or treatment because the weight of the patient isn’t “too low” so they “can’t be that bad”. It is also an idea that even damages people who are trying to recover from an eating disorder, as sometimes help is withdrawn once weight is no longer “low” which is exactly the time that people need to be supported most.

Many people have even been refused treatment at all until the number on the scales is seen as corresponding to being “anorexic”, and until May 2013, there was actually a BMI criteria that had to be met in order to officially be diagnosed. Thankfully, the new DSM (basically a massive book that gives the lists of symptoms one needs to be diagnosed with any mental disorder) has revised this issue and anorexia can now be diagnosed in people of any weight, but despite this, the misconception still remains. It isn’t exactly unusual to hear the word “anorexic” used as an adjective to describe someone’s frail appearance, a casual turn of phase that further perpetuates the issue. Unless you have insanely magical x-ray vision and can see the thoughts and fears someone is harbouring about food (and if you do have such vision please go to a doctor as you are a medical marvel and could potentially help a lot of people with unseen medical conditions…or find buried treasure…but more importantly help people), you will never see a person “looking anorexic”.

The myth that eating disorders can be seen or measured is a dangerous, stigma inducing and potentially fatal story that needs to stop being told. If you really like myths, maybe give Theseus and the minotaur a go (it’s actually rather good, there is a maze with string, monsters and everything), but whatever you do please don’t believe the one I have attempted to debunk in this post.

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“Can’t you be normal? Just for today?”

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 2 Comments

17 days ago, my Grandma died. Today was her funeral.
I wasn’t going to write a post about it and thus about my mental health in the week that led up to my grandmother’s death because to be honest I think it makes me seem very selfish, self obsessed and ridiculous. However, having thought about it I have realised that the entire experience (I have lost all of my other grandparents before so I don’t mean the experience of a loved one dying, rather it was the events leading to it that I want to discuss), highlights something people often don’t realise about living with mental illnesses.
With mental health issues, as with physical illnesses, there are no days where you can simply “turn them off”. There is no break or holiday from the battle, even when interference from that voice in your brain comes at the most inconvenient and irrelevant time.

We were told my grandma was going to die on Monday the 29th of February. They didn’t say how long exactly, but she wasn’t going to live until the next Monday, so time was precious and naturally my family and I spent what was left of her life at her bedside, even if she was asleep for the last 72 hours or so. I love my grandma dearly and she has played a big part in my life, and a large portion of my childhood memories are constructed from the hours I spent being looked after by her in the house she shared with my grandad.

During the week starting the 29th February 2016 I should have been thinking of nothing but my grandma and my mum who was about to lose her mother, my irrelevant worries about germs, how many steps I had done or calories I had eaten should not have come into play, but no matter how hard I tried, they did. Even family members and friends thought I should give my personal neuroses a break for the week as they really weren’t important in a literal life or death situation, and were just making things more difficult than they were. In all honesty I agreed with them, and got frustrated at myself for not putting my irrational fears aside. I felt like a right idiot, like a person on the Titanic who, once alerted of the fact we had crashed into a massive iceberg, worried not about safety or lives being lost, but whether or not the iceberg issues would interfere with my dinner reservations that evening. I was the character in the disaster movie that you yell at the screen to shut up because they are worrying about such nonsense.

That said, a person with an eating disorder cant “just eat like a normal person” because it is Christmas and it is a nice occasion with nice food and nice people hiding behind every christmas tree, a person with OCD can’t “just stop” their rituals because the the house is on fire (or it has crashed into an iceberg…not sure how but lets just go with it) and they really need to focus on evacuating, and a person with depression cannot “just cheer up” because it is someones wedding and nobody wants to see a grumpy person throwing confetti with a face like a soggy potato. Being on your “best mental health act like a normal person behaviour” is no more possible than asking your liver to be on its “best physical health behaviour” despite having hepatitis. It is like asking someone with a broken leg “to just take the cast off and run” like nothing is wrong because it is the Olympics and therefore a special occasion that requires special effort. No matter what the occasion, the leg, the liver or indeed the brain, is still broken.

When it was the last time I would be able to hold my grandma’s hand I should have clung to it like she clung on to life, but in terms of OCD I was too afraid to touch her even though I have held her hands a million times before when I was a kid and survived to tell the tale. When it was the last time I could sit with my grandma I should have focused on being present with her, but my mind was buzzing with thoughts that I was lazy for sitting at all and needed to go outside to do some walking to burn calories. When my mum came home after a day of watching her dying mother she did not need me kicking up a fuss because I didn’t want to eat my dinner, yet still, every night I would cry over the same meal I have had every evening for who knows how long. It felt wrong, inconsiderate and selfish to be crying about a meal when my mum was about to lose her mother, but as much as I tried I honestly couldn’t help it and it is that message that I want to get across in this post. There were a lot of ways I should have behaved both in that week and on countless other occasions I could list from the past decade but with any illness, physical or mental, the should’s and oughts become difficult to obey.

Obviously I cannot blame everything on my mental health issues and some responsibility needs to be taken. I may not be able to help being ill but I should have dealt with my illnesses in a more constructive way that week. I should have called my psychiatrist or hospital to manage my worries rather than spilling them over onto my mum who was already full of her own fears and that is my fault. What I don’t want is it to make it sound like mental health issues are a get out of jail free card that allow you to do whatever you want with no consequences. After all the person who cannot run in the Olympics cannot spend the time of the race stealing penguins from the zoo instead and then blame it on the fact they had a broken leg that was preventing them from doing what they should have been.

If anyone reading this is a parent or carer of someone with a mental health condition I just want you to know that whoever your offspring or friend is, they do not mean to create any stress in your life with their problems, and when they do it is because they honestly cannot help it. They know there are times where it would help you if they could “just stop and be normal” and I can pretty much promise you that they will be trying, sometimes it just isn’t possible even when they can see the pain they are causing other people.

Good lord this post has got a bit heavy and depressing so I am sorry about that, but I feel it is an important topic that I need to touch on. Have a picture of a penguin in a sombrero to lighten the mood. Cheerio.

 

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