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What It Is Like To Be Taken Into Hospital Under A Section 136 Of The Mental Health Act

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 26 Comments

I honestly don’t know where to begin with this week’s blog, as lord knows it has been a fairly traumatic seven days.

I guess I will just have to start at the very beginning (a very good place to start according to a certain Maria Von Trapp), the beginning being Saturday afternoon when things with my mental health blew up like some atomic bomb (and by atomic bomb I mean a really massive nuclear weapon of mass destruction and total insanity. There was even a mushroom cloud). 

So, picture the scene, it is Saturday afternoon and I am with my mum in the car outside my house (as in the family home where I grew up, not the flat) and we were talking about the fact that from today, my parents are going on holiday for two and a half weeks. Now, I realise that I am 26 years old and should therefore feel fine about being left alone for two and a half weeks, but due to my issues I am incredibly reliant on my parents and in reality they are more like a pair of carers as opposed to members of my family. Indeed, as I may have mentioned before, my mum gave up work to look after me full time as my level of independence is quite low, especially when I am struggling as much as I am now, and in fact my level of independence has been rapidly falling in recent weeks because the noise in my head is so loud that I have been finding it hard to take care of myself properly. I also fear this holiday because due to my diagnosis of Borderline Personality disorder (or Emotionally unstable personality disorder as the kids are calling it these days), I have an extreme fear of abandonment, which manifests itself in me doing anything I can to keep people from leaving me alone. I want to write a full blog about this fear of abandonment thing one day but for now just know that the idea of being left by my parents strikes absolute terror into my very core.

When mum and I were talking about the holiday then, I became extremely anxious and things only got worse and worse as time went on. It was then after about ten minutes of conversation that it happened. I snapped. 

It is extremely difficult to explain what I mean by that but basically it was like a switch went off in my brain and I became so terrified of being left alone that I completely lost control, so the rest of the scene happened in a total blur with me sort of watching the action and what I was doing rather than taking part in it. As soon as the thing in my brain snapped I just started hysterically screaming and crying and then for some reason I started to lash out. Like I said, all that happened was a total blur but from what I have been told afterwards in this lashing out I ended up hurting my mum and then in an act of total wildness I grabbed her phone and smashed it in the road. Naturally, my mum was terrified so she ran into the house without me, at which point I was left alone in the garden and the screaming in my head got worse. As you know, I have OCD with an extreme fear of contamination and in my daily life I barely touch anything unless it has been antibacterialised before hand, yet at this point I was so out of control that I started actively tearing up plants from the garden, running my oh so perfectly washed hands through the filth and soil, ripping roots and flowers like a maniac. I could feel the dirt wedging itself in my fingernails as I grabbed at the earth but still I couldn’t stop until the point where the anxiety in my mind reached such a point that I realised I need to stop the noise and the only way I could see to do this was to end my life. At this realisation I ran from the house, sprinting faster than Usain Bolt on steroids, the only thought in my head being that I needed to end my life. I won’t tell you exactly how I planned to do this as I don’t think that is helpful for anyone, but just know that I ran and I ran, desperate to reach the moment where I could end it all and in turn end the terrible thoughts. 

For about half an hour I was running alongside a river, looking around in fear that someone was going to save me and it was at about this point that I saw the first policewoman. As I saw her I started to panic but she let me pass without a word so I thought I was “safe” and continued on. Soon however I reached a pub, and it was here that I spotted two police cars in the distance as well as two police officers coming towards me. It was then that I realised that they were here for me and I froze like a deer in the headlights. I wanted to run but as I turned I saw the other policewoman coming from the other way and I found that I was completely ambushed. Still I tried to escape, but the three of them managed to trap me in a corner where I stood crying and shaking uncontrollably. As we stood there they asked me a few questions and then told me that I had to go with them. Naturally, this was not what I wanted at all, I wanted to be left alone to die but I had no choice in the matter and after a few more words I was escorted by the police through a giant crowd of people in a beer garden, enjoying their drinks in the summer sun, and into a police car. It was quite possibly the most humiliating experience of my life. Once in the car I was then driven home, but as two police officers went into the house I was left locked in the vehicle with the third police woman who was trying to calm me down. I however could not calm down and this fact was only made worse when the other two police officers came back to the car and told me that I was being arrested for assault, and criminal damage against my mum’s phone and the garden. It was honestly like something out of a movie with the police officer saying that whole speech about how I didn’t have to say anything but anything I did say could be given in evidence etc etc. Desperately, I pleaded to be allowed to speak to my mum or at least give her a hug as I was so afraid, but the police officers refused and with that I was driven to a police station where I was supposed to be interviewed by a sergeant. I however, was far too distressed to talk, so I was taken into a police cell with a new policewoman, an extremely empty, cold and uncomfortable room with nothing in it other than a bench. Together we sat on the bench, me frantically asking questions and begging to go home but the woman would not talk to me. I don’t know how long we stayed in the police cell (it felt like forever) but eventually one of the previous police officers appeared to tell me that because all of my actions were due to mental health problems I was being “de-arrested” and instead sectioned under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act. It is likely that if you have any mental health problems yourself you will know what a 136 is, but if you don’t it is basically a Section of the Mental Health Act under which police can detain you if they deem you to be at extreme risk of hurting yourself or other people. This then meant that I had to go to a hospital, so without further ado I was placed into an ambulance, driven to a 136 hospital and then I was escorted inside by the police. Once there a mental health nurse came out to ask me a lot of questions but I was still so distressed that I just cried and could barely speak. Questions over I was then escorted to my room, possibly the barest room other than the police cell that I have ever seen. Naturally, because a 136 suite is a hospital where people who are trying to end their own lives are taken, there is nothing in the room that you could hurt yourself with which basically meant that there was nothing at all. Ok I have been in mental hospitals before but this was an entirely different kettle of fish, with nothing other than a bed nailed to the floor and not even a door to the bathroom or a seat on the toilet. 

I am sure the place was clean (after all it was a hospital) but because I was in a new environment it was this point that OCD kicked in and I totally freaked out. As I had been picked up by the police I didn’t have any belongings (they had searched me and had taken everything away from me at the station) so without my trusty hand sanitiser I was at a loss and started having a panic attack. Thankfully the staff were absolutely amazing and a kind HCA talked to me to help me calm down. She then went to find some anti bacterial wipes as well as a mop and bucket and together we cleaned the whole room. Even when clean though I was still desperately suicidal and at risk of self harm, so she stayed with me and helped me to shower and get into some clean clothes . Naturally I continued to beg to be allowed home to see my mum, but obviously because I was sectioned I wasn’t allowed home for 24 hours or until a mental health team could come and assess me, so to my dismay I had to stay the night. Thankfully the staff there were completely amazing and kept me safe until I fell asleep around 3am. 

I must have been tired after all the drama because I slept then until 3pm (other than a few five minutes during the night where I was woken up by the screaming of other patients) and at 3pm I was awoken by a nurse telling me that the doctor was there to assess me. From there I went in pyjamas looking like a right scruff bag (not that I really cared at the time…I was so out of it and traumatised that I would have probably been assessed in a penguin suit and not been embarrassed) to another bare room with a few chairs to talk to a social worker, a doctor and a psychologist. Naturally their main goal was to assess how at risk I was to see if I needed to go to a longer term hospital, but I was so scared of that that I am ashamed to admit that I lied. They asked me if I felt in danger or suicidal so I told them that I felt safe over and over again. I must have been convincing because thankfully they agreed to not renew my section and said that I could go home, which I guess takes me to this point right here, writing this blog in my flat feeling as unsafe and at risk as ever, all alone and traumatised by the past 24 hours. On the plus side, if any of you out there have ever wanted to know what it is like to be picked up by the police and taken to a 136 suite, now you know! Hoorah for small mercies! 

I am not really sure how to end this blog other than to beg all of you out there not to see me as a terrible person for all that I have done and explained in this post. I will admit I have behaved disgracefully and I am extremely ashamed for all my actions (especially hurting my mum who like I said I love more than anyone in the world and would never hurt whenever in control of and feeling rational about my actions) but I really want you all to know that all that has happened has happened because I am really not well at the moment and am more out of control than ever. As you know I was un-arrested in the end and was taken from the police station to a hospital, so please do not think any less of me or assume me to be some kind of criminal, as when I am in my right mind I would never behave as I have done this past few days. I cannot control what any of you will think of me after admitting this (I hate admitting it but as I have always said on this blog I am nothing but honest) but if I could influence your way of thinking whatsoever please do not think of me as some violent, nasty person, but rather as a person who is very unwell and struggling with their mental health problems more than ever. 

As I go forward after this incident all I can do is hope that I can manage to keep myself safe even though when I told the psychologist this, it was a lie. The next two weeks are going to be extremely tough for me as my parents are away, but thankfully I do have friends who are coming in to look after me and the crisis team are visiting every day. I hope I can stay alive for them and equally I hope that I can stay alive for all of you too. For now though, I will end this post and simply hope that you have all had a good week. You all mean so much to me and I am eternally grateful for all the friends I have online who supported me during this “incident”. 

Take care everyone x 

Handcuffs

The Difficulty Of Having A Job When You Have Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 11 Comments

Oh what a week it has been! Friends gather round, because boy do I have a disaster of a story to tell you! 

So let’s go from the very beginning (a very good place to start I hear) which takes us back a few weeks ago to a time when I was feeling very guilty about the idea of applying for benefits from the government due to mental health problems. I know that technically I am entitled to monetary support but I have always struggled with the guilt over accepting it and for this reason, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try and get a job. Ideally I wanted a job for only a few hours a week  because I knew that anymore and I couldn’t cope, so I was thrilled when a few days into my search I found that my local supermarket were looking for someone to do a 12 hour contract. Consequently I filled out an application form, had an interview and bingo! I got the job! But the problems did not end there… 

The problems started on my very first shift of 2-10pm on June the 23rd 2018. I arrived promptly to meet the manager who was lovely, and then I was placed on the till with the idea of shadowing another member of staff. When I was shadowing it was all fine as all I really had to do was stand there and try to figure out what was going on, but then it was my turn to go on the till and it was here that the problems began. You see, because of OCD I find it extremely hard to touch things, primarily money. Now you may be wondering why I thought I should accept a job where touching money was going to be part of the proceedings but hey, I will be honest, I didn’t know it was going to be as much of a problem as it was. From my very first customer I was in trouble. I not only had to touch money but I had to touch the till, and inside my head was screaming. Unfortunately though, I hadn’t told the members of staff about my problems so I had to simply do my best and soldier on as if nothing was wrong. It was agony. With every customer that came along I became closer and closer to tears as my anxiety levels rose and rose. I was making silly mistakes on the till because I was so anxious I couldn’t focus on what I was doing and the more failures I made the more embarrassed I became. Not only was I struggling with touching things though, I was also struggling with members of the public looking at me. You see in recent weeks my self esteem has taken a violent plummet to the depths of the bottom of the ocean (around the place the Titanic lies buried under a hell of a lot of water), and I strongly believe that I am the most hideous being to ever grace the planet. Consequently, being looked at by members of the public was really difficult and raised my anxiety levels further. 

For two hours I did my best, touching things and being seen, but then someone I knew came into the store and from there it all fell apart. Don’t get me wrong, it was lovely to see a friend as I was working but it was a friend who I haven’t seen since all of this alcohol induced weight gain and therefore they naturally commented on it. Again don’t get me wrong, nothing nasty was said, my friend just told me how well I looked, but this was enough for me to feel like the fattest person who has ever lived on the planet and from then on as I stood by that till, I was swallowing back the tears. I tried to carry on swiping and talking, being as good as I could be with customer service but soon I started to feel a panic attack coming on. All the touching, all the being seen, the encounter with a friend all got too much and soon I was finding it hard to breathe/hold back the tears/not faint. Immediately I realised that I couldn’t do the task anymore, so I ducked away to speak to the manager in the office where I had one of the most humiliating discussions I have ever had. 

Luckily the manager I spoke to was lovely, beyond lovely but it was incredibly humiliating having to explain that I was struggling on the till because I am completely mental. In hindsight I should have told my employers about the problems before (note to all people out there, if you are going to get a job, let people know about your problems first) but foolishly I had kept all that quiet in the foolish hopes that it wouldn’t be relevant . Thankfully the manager accepted what I said about my mental health problems and he sent me home, which was a big relief. I practically ran home in tears, anxious about disappointing my parents but thankfully they were lovely and understanding too. 

Cut to now, the next day, when I am currently sitting and writing this blog not knowing what to do about anything. I had a job, I managed two hours and then I ran away, so who knows what is going to happen next. I don’t know whether or not to quit (that is if I even still have a job to quit after my behaviour) or whether or not to try and give it another go. All I know is that that two hour shift was utterly and completely terrifying and I feel like a massive failure for giving up on my first day of work. I so desperately wanted to achieve something, to be normal, to have a job and I messed it all up. 

I guess on the positive side I have learnt the lesson that when you go into a new job with mental health problems, it is important that you tell the employer, but other than that I cannot see any good that has come from this. Maybe I should run away with the circus and become a clown. 

So that is my latest update, I had a job, I lasted two hours and then I have potentially quit the job. Like I said I won’t know what exactly is happening until I next get to speak to the manager, but it looks like this career has gone down the drain before it ever got the chance to start. In the meantime I am going to keep going, keep blogging and trying to keep myself safe at this still difficult time (I still haven’t managed to stop drinking yet and I am sorry to all those that news disappoints…still working on it though…). Anyway, that is all I have for now…

Take care everyone x

Job1

What Do People With Anorexia Eat?

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 7 Comments

Over a year ago I wrote a post about how people with eating disorders were misrepresented in the media via their use of skeletal pictures when interviewing or discussing someone with the disorders, yet lately I have noticed there is another stereotypical image being promoted that drives me equally round the bend, that being the idea that people with anorexia do not eat anything at all, and it is this myth I really want to tackle in this post as it is simply not true and is unhelpful to everyone.

You see when you come across articles in the paper interviewing someone with an eating disorder, they always make it sound as if the person has gone years without ever letting a morsel of food pass their lips. 

I am often reading pieces stating that someone lived on half a cornflake for three years or something ridiculous, a statement that is physically impossible and that must be taken with a pinch of salt as everyone knows journalists will often exaggerate or make things sound worse by picking and choosing details from an interview to make a good story. If an article makes it sounds like someone interviewed supposedly hasn’t eaten more than half a cornflake for three years, it is most definitely false and cannot be taken as a fact in general or by which other sufferers can be measured. 

Admittedly, people with anorexia frequently do not eat enough, it is after all one of the symptoms, the classic restricting of calories to lose or prevent weight gain. Indeed people with anorexia often eat very little, nowhere near as much as they need to keep themselves alive, but that still doesn’t mean they don’t eat anything at all and spend years living on air. In addition to those in relapse  who still eat at least something (regardless as to whether it be enough or not), when people are in recovery and on a weight gain meal plan they may actually eat more than some “normal” people. I know I have certainly followed meal plans that exceed the “government guidelines” irrelevant calorie limit, which have been prescribed to me both in and out of hospital. People in relapse and recovery are still considered as having “anorexia” if their mental state dictates that diagnosis, no matter how much they eat, and they should all be counted and taken seriously as a voice for people with eating disorders without being discriminated against for (brace yourselves)…having breakfast. What about the people who have severe anorexia but eat to keep their families off their back or to maintain a job? The ones who eat purely to stay out of hospital or the ones who are trying their best to eat to get better yet are still in as much mental pain as anyone else and hating every second? The ones who want to scream and shout every time they eat but force themselves on anyway because they don’t want their kids to see them worrying about food in fear that they may also pick up on the anxiety? That image, of people with anorexia eating, is never represented in the media, as equally valid or not it isn’t a dramatic image that would sell a story in a magazine. After all, headlines of “anorexic eats an appropriate number of calories, not because they are better but because they don’t want to scare the children” are never going to sell or create as much drama as “anorexic eats nothing and only licks a blade of grass once a month for 10 years”.

I am pretty sure that every member of my family is aware that I have anorexia and in a way I find this helpful. With them knowing, it means I don’t have to lie all the time, if I disappear for a few months to go into hospital it isn’t a big secret and I don’t have to pretend I have been off travelling, climbing Kilimanjaro or building schools for orphaned penguins in the Arctic, but in a way it actually makes things harder because I feel there is an expectation of the way I should behave at family gatherings. I am currently unable to eat outside of my house or with family anyway, but even if I were able to I would find attempting it incredibly intimidating as I imagine if I were to eat anything, people would be confused. If a person without an eating disorder goes out for a meal and eats, nobody raises an eyebrow, but if someone who is known to have an eating disorder goes out for a meal, when they eat people start to question whether there is anything actually wrong with that person in the first place. If you hear someone has to go into hospital for a new leg and then you see them prior to admission dancing the tango pretty happily using their old one, you might wonder why on earth the new leg is needed as clearly there is no problem. The issue is of course that though someone may appear to be eating happily on the surface, they could still be going through mental torture inside and may be just trying not to make a fuss and embarrass themselves or draw attention.

The dangers of this misconception that “anorexics don’t eat” are very similar to the ones created by the idea that people with anorexia are underweight. Again, family members or professionals may not be concerned about someone they suspected may have an eating disorder because the person often sits down for a family meal. Sufferers also might find themselves in situations where they don’t eat, not because of their disorder in particular, but because they feel they can’t incase people suspect that they are faking the whole thing. Much like images of skeletal bodies, people hearing the myth that people with anorexia don’t eat can cause people to think that they are not “that bad”, “not ill enough to warrant help” or even worse it can trigger them to restrict their intake further because they think there is some “anorexic standard” they have to live up to. You cannot compare the severity of a person’s illness with that of someone else’s just by looking at what they look like or how much they eat without having any idea of what is going on inside their heads. 

Overall I guess the message of this post is that when it comes to the portrayal of people with eating disorders in the media, take all the pictures and interviews as pieces of journalism to sell a paper with the nuggets of truth inside partially skewed or not representative of eating disorder patients as a whole. Making judgements based on accounts that are for the purpose of selling papers rather than truly giving a voice to people with no ulterior motive is never going to provide an unbiased piece that one can make conclusions from. Basically what I want to say is do not trust the media at all, instead you should trust strangers on the internet like me…actually don’t trust strangers on the internet…that isn’t the message I want to promote at all…. just don’t think that people with anorexia don’t eat. 

Take care everyone x

Sandwich

My Alcohol Confession Part Two

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 28 Comments

It is currently 2am on Monday the 4th of June and this blog post is due up in a number of hours. Normally I have the blog and picture all prepared almost a week before it is due to go up, but this week I am unprepared because this week I am scared.

All week I have been trying to write yet I have been unable because I am so scared of letting something slip that I should have explained last week and therefore in holding my words back I am unable to say anything at all. You see last week in my post ….. I came clean about a new problem I have, that being the problem of me binge drinking alcohol, but what I did not mention is a consequence that has come from that binge drinking and it is that consequence that I want to talk about today.

 

I am so scared to admit it because it is something that has both been terrifying and upsetting me lately, even though it is nothing to be ashamed of. I feel like a right idiot and hypocrite for being so upset about it considering I would be the first person to tell anyone out there that what I am about to say doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t show how ill or well anyone is, but I cannot help it. 

I am shaking as I am writing this and it is so stupid because it isn’t even a big deal. I am sure all of you out there are going to be thinking that I am about to admit to murdering penguins or something as I am making it out to be such a big and terrible crime, when really it is all going to be incredibly disappointing when I actually get round to spitting it out. Oh God I am practically going delirious with fear and I can’t believe I am actually going to come out with it. Ok, shut up Katie, just get round to the point.

So here goes, here is my confession: I am a healthy weight. 

OH MY GOODNESS! I CANNOT BELIEVE I ADMITTED IT! WHY IS THIS SO HARD, GAH, WHY.

I have just read back all that I have written and good lord it is the biggest amount of codswallop I have ever read. What am I even doing? What is going on? 

Right, time to explain. So like I said last week, I have started binge drinking and I have been binge drinking every day for almost two months now, pretty much ever since my suicide attempt. When I started I was extremely underweight and you all probably think that that is still the case, but in actual fact it is not. You see, before I started binge drinking, I was barely eating anything, but then I got drunk for the first time and in my drunken stupor I started eating. I have heard of other people with eating disorders turning to drink and from several people I have heard that they tend to replace food with alcohol when this happens, but this is not how it has happened with me. You see when I get drunk, I get happy and I don’t care about anything and consequently I eat and that is what I have done for the past two months. “You have eaten food” I hear you cry “what kind of a confession is that?” But when I say I have eaten food I mean I have eaten out of control, drunken quantities of food and because of this I have gained a lot of weight. I don’t want to admit this because I am extremely ashamed but I have gone from being very underweight to being a healthy weight in two months. It has been extremely traumatic and what’s worse is that I cannot seem to stop. Weeks ago I said that I was going to stop drinking so that I could lose all the weight, but I still haven’t managed to do that and so the weight is piling on. Even worse than that is it is all a vicious circle. You see one thing I didn’t mention last week was one of the big reasons why I drink and that reason is that it helps me deal with all this new unexpected and extremely painful weight gain. Problem is, I drink to make myself feel better about the weight and consequently eat which makes me gain more weight, hence this most vicious of vicious circles that I am stuck in. It is like a massive whirlpool from Moby Dick (in actual fact there is no whirlpool in Moby Dick but I just wanted to use this opportunity to drop in a Moby Dick reference to show off the fact that I have read that massive book).

I have decided that from the day I put up this blog I am going to have a new start, no alcohol and I am going to try and lose this weight again because like I said it is making my eating disorder scream louder and making me want to drink alcohol more which I really need to give up. In the interests of losing all this weight again I have joined a gym and come up with a new meal plan to try and help me, but I have no idea how I am going to do it because I cannot seem to give up alcohol and I am scared. I am scared that I will never get sober and that I will gain so much weight I will get overweight .

I guess here is where I should probably take a moment to explain why I think all of this is such a big deal because in actual fact being a healthy weight is not a big deal at all as I have said multiple times. Being a healthy weight doesn’t mean I have recovered from anorexia, far from it, I am so distressed by anorexic thoughts that I have been driven to drink, and I am no less anorexic than I was two months ago, but I worry that all of you reading this will now think that I am not worthy of listening to. It is ridiculous because I would never think that of anyone else, but my brain is just such a mess. 

If anyone else were a healthy weight I would listen to them and hear them as much as anyone but I worry that all of you only read my blog because I am underweight and now I am a healthy weight I am terrified that you won’t like me anymore. Does that make sense? Gah THIS IS SO STUPID! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? Oh purple pansies I don’t know what else to say because I am so anxious about posting this…maybe I can distract you from all of what is going on…OH MY GOODNESS LOOK A TURTLE!

GAH ok so what is the message of this post? What am I saying? Well, I have no idea and to be honest I am flip flapping all over the place, but basically what I wanted to update you on this week is the fact that I am still struggling to stop drinking alcohol since my suicide attempt and that this alcohol has made me gain a lot of weight which I now need to lose but please don’t stop listening to me because of all this because oh dear no please. Ok, now for me to run away and pray you don’t hate me. Cool…bye! 

Take care everyone x 

Fatty

Why Alcohol Doesn’t Go Well With Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 10 Comments

Ketchup goes well with chips. Rhubarb goes well with custard. But do you know what doesn’t go well with mental health problems? Alcohol, and this is a lesson I have learnt fairly recently. 

You see there is something I have been leaving out of my most recent blogs, partly because I didn’t think it was a big deal and partly because I thought it was an issue that would resolve itself fairly quickly, but it turns out that that is not the case. Basically, over the past month I have become dependant on alcohol to get through life with my mental health problems and it is causing a lot of issues. 

It all started five weeks ago on a jolly evening out in a rather sunny April, when I was at a concert by my favourite singer. The concert was brilliant, the music exceptional, but In between each song my favourite singer would pause to talk to the audience and on one of these occasions she stated how much she wanted a drink to help her to relax on stage. Obviously I have known about alcohol before this moment in my life, but as soon as she said about how it would relax her, my anxious brain got all excited and I decided to try drinking myself to see if I could relax too. Cut to today, five weeks later and I have not been able to have a day sober since.

Naturally, I have been trying to stop drinking for multiple reasons. For one thing I know that it is not good to spend your entire life totally off your rocker on vodka, but I can’t help it and it is now that I am realising how silly it was to start drinking in the first place. Obviously I never intended to get addicted to it but come on, we all know I have a rather addictive personality (actually I don’t think I have a personality at all, just a thick blob of addictive in its place) so maybe I should have seen this coming, but I didn’t and now I am left to try and deal with this extra problem on top of all the others and that is why I am writing this blog, to tell people out there with mental health problems that alcohol is not going to be a solution to your issues, rather it will add another issue to the pot. 

It is like making a cake. When you have mental health problems you have all the ingredients of insanity swirling around inside you, anxiety eggs, depressed flour, paranoid sugar and melancholy vanilla extract. Then comes alcohol which you think will wash all of those ingredients away and leave you free of all problems and to be fair, temporarily it does. When I drink alcohol, my anxiety goes way down, I laugh rather than cry and suicidal urges become a thing of the past. For once I am happy, dare I say merry to the point of feeling pure joy. If you could see all the things I have done in the past month you would be shocked at how much I have “achieved” under the spell of alcohol, from touching a door handle to eating out in public and for this reason you may think that alcohol therefore goes well with mental health problems. It takes the pain away so surely it is a great combination? Wrong. Instead, as I have learnt, alcohol only masks the problem by placing a big old blanket on top of all of your mental health ingredients so that you can’t see them, but underneath that blanket things are getting worse. The more you drink the more the mental health problems blend together, the closer they get to the oven and then BOOM! Before you know it you have sobered up and instead of finding your problems gone you find that whilst they were covered up things have got a whole lot worse and you are suddenly left not just with all these nasty ingredients to deal with but a giant three tiered cake covered in icing and cherries, and that is where I am now. 

I think alcohol is very sneaky that way and to be honest I wish I had never started drinking in the first place. It was just so easy to get addicted to it. When you are anxious and depressed all the time and then find a magic potion that takes all that away, why wouldn’t you drink it and then keep going? Even if the relief from your problems is temporary and the potion is actually creating more and more problems, wouldn’t you keep drinking it? Now I am sure some of you out there are reading this and are saying “no Katie, no I wouldn’t” in which case I have to congratulate you for being far more sensible than me! 

Like I said I am trying to give up alcohol right now and I have managed two days sprinkled in amongst the five weeks of drinking, but it is far harder than I ever imagined to go without alcohol, even though I have only been using it as a solution to my problems for five weeks. I don’t think one can become an alcoholic in that time but you can certainly become pretty damn addicted and that is why my team have referred me to alcohol services to try and nip this problem in the bud before it gets any bigger. Alcohol certainly hasn’t solved my problems, it has just added to them and that is why I wanted to write my blog about this today because I fear that other people out there are likely to fall into the same trap as I have, the trap of seeing alcohol as a quick fix to all the nastiness in your head and therefore becoming reliant on it for life, which seems good in the short term but in the long term will only create bigger problems and lead to more addictions and issues than you ever imagined. 

I can’t offer any advice to people like me who have already fallen into this trap, because like I said, I am still in it but what I wanted to do in this blog was to warn about the fact that mental health problems do not go well with alcohol and alcohol is certainly not a solution to your demons, it is instead a new one of them poised and ready to make itself at home with the rest of the insanity family. 

So that is my confession for the week, a jolly one I am sure you will agree! Still, at least in the past five weeks I have learnt something and hopefully in writing this blog maybe I can use that lesson to benefit someone else out there who was maybe on the brink of turning to alcohol but now realises that it is really not a good idea…I can only hope! In the meantime I m going to try and give up alcohol myself before services have to get involved, but considering how hard I have been finding that, who knows how well that is going to go.

Take care everyone x 

NoVodka

Anorexia And The Fear Of Being A Healthy Weight

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 15 Comments

When people hear that I have anorexia and am scared of gaining weight or scared to maintain a healthy weight, they always assume that this is because I am scared of getting (or eventually being), “fat”. In actual fact, this is not because I fear getting or being thought of as fat or large at all, and funnily enough being fat is probably one of the things I worry about the least when it comes to anorexia. 

The majority of my friends are a healthy weight, (by which I mean a healthy BMI which is of course not a foolproof way to measure anyone’s health due to all the many variables at play, but for now it is the best we have). Some of them have always been a healthy weight and have never had an eating disorder, but there are others I have met in treatment during times in which they were very underweight, that have since regained to a healthy place in their quest for recovery. Sometimes I was in hospital with them for the entire weight restoration process, but never at any point did I ever look at them gaining back the weight they never should have lost and think that they are “fat” once their BMI has returned to a healthy range. On the contrary, without exception, I always think people look more beautiful and fabulous than ever before when they have gained the weight. It is like seeing a shrivelled up flower come back to life again and bloom brightly coloured petals all over the place, and in seeing this surely I shouldn’t fear being a healthy weight myself? After all, who would want to look like a shrivelled up flower when you could look like a fresh one at the peak of its colour? I know I certainly don’t, so why do I fear being a healthy weight? 

When it comes down to it, it is all to do with the way I feel on the inside and the way in which people perceive me. Inside, I feel broken, scared, weak, sad and very much shrivelled in every sense of the word. When I am underweight people treat me as if they know all of these things. They don’t ask me what I am doing with my life or how I am because they know I am too unwell to be doing anything in life, which saves me having to tell them these things and acknowledge the catastrophe that is my current situation myself. When I am healthy however, they assume that my mind is naturally in the same corresponding state, and when that isn’t the case, it can be incredibly frustrating, confusing and dysphoric. 

To explain it in another way, I would like you to imagine that I am a penguin (and if you know me well enough that will not be too much of a stretch. Literally all you need to do is add a beak and the ability to eat raw fish, I mastered waddling before I could talk.) 

Inside I know I am a penguin, and I feel like a penguin. I know that I like sliding across sheets of ice on my tummy, I know that I can swim faster than an olympic athlete, I know I can catch fish with ease, I have fully accepted the fact that no matter how hard I flap I will never be able to fly and I know that in terms of career, my goals are to waddle around various agencies to pursue my dream of becoming an extra in the children television show “Pingu” or to model on the front of the wrapper of a chocolate biscuit that is named after me. When I am underweight, everyone else around me can see that I am a penguin. Fellow penguins nod to me in the street to acknowledge our solidarity in species, when I go to a pub the bar keeper knows I will want ice in my drink without me having to ask and friends compliment me on the elegance of my waddle and ask how I achieve such shine on my beak. If they hear about an audition for an actor to play Pingu’s second cousin twice removed, they call me right away and offer to give me a lift, but when I am a healthy weight, they see that audition sheet and don’t even think of me. 

When I am a healthy weight, nobody can see that I am a penguin, instead, they see a meerkat and treat me accordingly. When I nod at my fellow penguins knowing that I am one of them they look at each other aghast as to what this fluffy stranger is trying to say. People keep putting me in sand pits so that I will feel more at home, they buy me air conditioning systems to install in my desert home because they know how hot it is in my country of origin, I am offered jackal repellent to help me avoid predators and passers by ask me for help comparing different offers they have received on their car insurance. Nobody is unpleasant or horrible, but still I hate it and want to scream at them because inside I know that I am a penguin. Jackals don’t hunt me in the arctic! I hate sand because it gets stuck in my flippers, I am cold enough as it is without air conditioning units in my igloo and I know nothing about car insurance! When I am a healthy weight there is such a disconnect between the meerkat people see and talk to on the outside and the broken, cold little penguin on the inside that it almost feels like being two different people or that people can’t really see me at all. I feel I have to try and act like a meerkat to live up to their expectations yet I don’t know how. When I am underweight, people see the penguin I know and feel that I am, I don’t have to pretend, I am instantly understood and treated as the waddling little creature I am. 

That is why I fear being a healthy weight, and from what I gather from friends with eating disorders that is also why they fear it too. It is nothing about fearing being fat or looking unattractive, it is fearing being seen and treated as something or someone that is totally different to the person you know you are in your heart, it is fearing being put in a sand pit that burns your flippers rather than being taken ice skating for a pleasant afternoon of sliding on your tummy. 

I realise this whole thing is a really difficult thing to understand (and as you can probably tell, a difficult thing to explain what with all this talk about penguins and meerkats), but I hope I have helped it make some sense. I have anorexia, but I am not scared of being fat, I am scared of people thinking that I am “ok” when inside I feel anything but. 

Take care everyone x 

Meerkat

Suicide And Shame

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 14 Comments

Cabbages, sprouts, kale, broccoli, cauliflower. 

Apologies for that rather random start to a blog post, but to be perfectly honest I had no idea how to start this entry after last week’s post and after a suicide attempt it is so difficult to find the words to comprehend the world, that it seemed as fitting a way as any to start this blog by listing my top five favourite members of the Brassica oleracea plant species. 

So yeah…Hi everyone, I am back and I must say a little at a loss as to what to say. First off though I really must take this opportunity to thank you all for your support after last week’s post because I really was very worried about posting it and you were all so kind and lovely about it that it made me feel all of the warm fuzzy feelings inside (as warm as fresh bread out of the oven and as fuzzy as one of those little dogs that looks like a ball of fluff with legs, to be specific.)

Secondly, I guess I should address the elephant in the room (no not that trunked creature in the corner, Frank, he does not deserve to be addressed. He has been very badly behaved stealing cookies this morning…that is why I put him in the corner), aka the fact that last week I attempted suicide. Now I am not going to go into the details of how it happened because I do not think that is helpful and the last thing I would want to do is trigger anyone, but what I wanted to write about was the feelings that came after the attempt because all in all this experience has taught me some very interesting lessons that I think might be of use to some other people out there. 

You see, something that surprised me after this whole incident occurred is the level of shame that I felt after this whole suicide extravaganza. When I woke up in hospital and realised that all of my efforts had been in vain I felt terrible, not just physically, but mentally in terms of what I had put my family through and that is something that I doubt many people expect to feel. When you are all caught up in the moment of a suicide attempt, you cannot think about anything else. There is no logic, no rational thought, all you can think about is the big black hole swallowing you up, the level of intense pain and the desperate need to make it stop. As selfish as it may sound, you cannot think about family or friends, not because you do not care about or love them more than anything in the world, but because the pain is so loud that it drowns thoughts of anything and anyone else out. It gets to the point where the black hole is so dark that you wouldn’t notice whether or not someone turned the lights out in the room you were in because everything is already pitch black and you cannot see your hand in front of your face. The world is a blur, colours turn greyer than they are in the first ten minutes of the Wizard of Oz and sound or voices in the real world become the incoherent bumbling of voices underwater. When you wake up however and it hits you as to what has happened and you see the faces of your family there and hear their worried voices clearly for the first time, that is when the shame kicks in, and that shame only got worse as I heard the phone calls and read the texts of worried family members trying to reach out to me and my parents. It is that shame  that I wanted to raise awareness of in this post initially, because I wanted to warn anyone else who is suicidal out there of how much people care about you even when you don’t believe it possible and don’t care about yourself. 

Then again, at the same time, whilst I want to rase awareness of the shame that comes after one attempts to take one’s own life, I want to remind anyone out there that suicide attempts are in essence nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t get me wrong, they are nothing to be proud of either which is one reason as to why I nearly didn’t write about this event on my blog, but after reading your comments I have learnt that the shame that comes with suicide, though real, is not justified. That isn’t to say you can’t feel ashamed, for who am I to tell people what they should or should not feel (as if that would make a difference to those feelings that tend to creep up on you unannounced anyway). Still, feeling ashamed about a suicide attempt is very much like a person with kidney stones feeling ashamed that they have little pebbles lodged in one of their vital organs. Suicide attempts are, like physical health problems, a sign of illness and I truly believe that nobody who seriously attempts suicide ever does it by choice, rather they do it because they are driven to it through that level of pain they feel, just as a mother in labour may beg for pain relief and slap her partner across the head without really meaning it. 

Suicide is not a choice, it is a consequence of severe mental pain and it is being reminded of that by all your lovely comments last week that I wanted to spread the message of today to other people who may be out there suffering with the shame of suicide. If this is you, please know that I am so sincerely sorry that you are hurting and I do not condone your actions in any way, but I want you to know that if you’re struggling with the shame of what you have done, it is no way unusual, neither were these actions your fault. Instead they were the actions of a mental illness that is driving you crazy and in these circumstances rather than shame, the key thing is to reach out and ask for help and support to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again. I will admit, getting that help and support is a struggle (as someone who has been desperately asking for help from people for months, trust me, I know getting the help you need is no easy task) but it is that which you must do. Suicide may not be a choice but seeking help when you are struggling often is and if there is one message I want to get across in this post it is that if you are ashamed after a suicide attempt, please give yourself a break but more importantly seek help. 

Other than that, today I can honestly say I do not know what words of comfort I can offer to you all but I wanted to thank you from the  bottom of my heart for the words of comfort you have given to me. My dear readers, you really are so important to me and, as it turns out, vital to my survival in this game of mental health. Hopefully next week I will manage to talk about something a little more jolly or at least a little less depressing. In the meantime…

Take care everyone x 

Elephant

A Brief Mental Health Apology

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 18 Comments

Trigger warning: This post discusses suicide so if that kind of thing triggers you then please go and watch kitten videos on Youtube instead of reading the following post.

So this week I have a bit of an apology to make because this is not going to be a normal blog post as unfortunately it has been a bit of a hard week here at Born Without Marbles HQ. I wasn’t going to talk about it on here because to be honest I am really ashamed of what has happened but then again I am always honest about my struggles with mental health problems, so I figure why should today be any different. Anyway like I said, this has been a difficult week culminating in…gosh this is hard to admit to…a suicide attempt and recovering from all of that is why there is no regular blog this week. I did however want to take this opportunity to let everyone who may have heard of recent events know that I am physically now completely fine so there is nothing to worry about anymore and I am sincerely sorry for all the worry and distress I have caused. I will probably write a lot more about it next week when things have settled down a little bit. As I said, usual blogging will resume next week so stay tuned for that and please know that I am very sorry for having let you all down this week. Thank you to everyone who has shown me love and support these past few days and I look forward to speaking to you more next time. 

Take care everyone x

Apology

What Do You Do With Someone With Mental Health Problems?

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 28 Comments

Usually, when I title a blog with a question you would expect for me to find some kind of answer to said question in the blog below, but, spoiler alert, this week that ain’t gonna happen because today I genuinely am asking all you guys out there what on earth you do with a person with mental health problems.

I suppose to be more exact I should specify that there is a particular person with mental health problems in mind when I ask this question, perhaps obviously, me.

You see, as far as questions go, this is quite a big one that is perplexing and confusing the many therapists and family members in my life, and considering that none of them can find the answer, today I figured I would ask you lovely lot, aka the wonderful readers of my blog, for your opinion, because if you can’t go to the internet to solve all your problems and big questions in life then quite frankly where can you go? (don’t say a therapist, trust me they are stumped on this one too). 

You see me and my family are sort of stuck playing a game of Where’s Wally right now, although slightly different as we are well aware of where Wally is and just need a place to put him. Wally in this situation is me (I even have the glasses for it…just missing the stripy sweater and hat…actually thinking about it the glasses I am wearing are the only things that make this remotely like a game of Where’s Wally…Wally was never stuck as to where to go because of mental health problems and if he was then that gives those activity books a whole new spin to them), and lately there has been a big question as to what to do with me. 

You may remember that after coming out of hospital, the plan was for me to stay home and follow some ground rules set by my parents, but shortly after my departure from the loony bin it was clear that I was unable to follow those ground rules and consequently we came up with the plan of me moving into my own flat…However now…yeah…it doesn’t look like that will be possible as although the purchase of the flat is still going swimmingly (I think…I have never been one to understand the purchase of properties), it doesn’t look like I will be able to cope living there by myself as planned. On one hand I am fully convinced that I could do it, but considering the week I just had when my parents were away in Cyprus, perhaps that is naive of me to assume blindly that I could cope all by myself as when trying to live by myself for just one week in my own home, things did not go to plan. Indeed, a mere hour in my own company and I was on the brink of suicide, hence why my dear best friend had to step in and save the day and come to stay with me, so maybe independent living isn’t the thing for me at the moment, and that is why I am posing you this question today as to what to do. I cannot stay at home living with my parents as I am still unable to follow the ground rules required and am in short, driving them around the bend with my mental health problems (it is a lot to ask of people to live with a complete lunatic and one of these days I am going to give one or both of my parents a mental breakdown themselves at this rate), but it seems I cannot live alone elsewhere either, hence the question of where to put me. 

At the moment, the option my parents are pushing for is for me to go into this sort of long term hospital like place which is less like a hospital setting and more like a communal living area for people with mental health problems. I however am not keen on this idea and really I want to stay as far away from communal living spaces as possible. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one who is completely set against mental health hospitals, after-all I have been in many myself on previous occasions, but they are not places that I particularly like being and in my eyes, as bad as things are at the moment, I really want to do all I can to be treated and to get better somehow in the community as an outpatient. To be fair this hospital place isn’t like most other hospitals, there is no long corridor and like I said it is more of a communal house with a big family living space and a huge garden (a garden so big in fact that it is basically one giant vegetable patch…they even grow cabbages there and are looking into getting cows and chickens which has caused me to name the place “The Literal Funny Farm” to my mum’s annoyance…she really likes the place…can you tell I am not keen…). Still, despite the fact it isn’t like a  regular hospital I am still not convinced. Part of this I will admit is an OCD issue as the idea of communal living gives me all kinds of heebie jeebies what with sharing bathrooms and other areas, but also the problem is that I do not want to live surrounded by people with mental health problems. Obviously I do not mean this in an offensive way nor do I have any judgement against people with mental health problems, how could I, I am one, but there is something about living with other people with mental health struggles that I have always found difficult and potentially triggering. When you are insane yourself but live with sane people I always find it sort of gives you an idea of normality for you to try and follow however hard that may be, but when you are insane and living with other like minded people, as nice as it is to have people to relate to, crazy is in a sense a version of what is normal, and I have always found long periods of time in situations like that problematic which is what this would be. This hospital is not a place where people go for a few weeks to recuperate but a place people go for six months to a year to do serious long term pieces of work and I just do not feel ready for that, especially having just come out of a five month admission to a hospital only recently. To be honest I still feel like and want to feel like I am settling in at home but it doesn’t seem that that will be possible much longer for the sake of my parents physical and mental health…

Which is why I am asking you all this question today. What do you do or what would you do with a  person with mental health problems aka me, a person who is currently very much entrenched in their own lunacy but very much lost as to where to go? Seriously, I am asking you lot because of all the people in my life you are perhaps the people who, alongside my therapists and family members, know me best. After all you read my ramblings on a weekly basis (at least if you are a regular reader you do and if you are please know that I think of you as very special), therefore who would be better to answer this question? So, people of the internet, dear blog readers and lovely people who have just stumbled upon this blog today, tell me honestly, what do you think and where do you think I should go?

In my dreams I would ideally like to stay at home as I may have mentioned a million times but if that is not possible which do you think is the best alternative? Living all by myself in my own flat even when a mere hour of doing so in my own home went terribly wrong or living in a communal farm like area for people with mental health problems with a passion for growing cabbages? Or maybe you have a third option, who knows, all I do know is that I don’t have the answers and if any of you out there could help a mental out with a few words of wisdom, I really would appreciate it. I realise it is asking quite a lot for you to make a decision as to what happens at this next stage in my life but I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t seriously in need of some good old fashioned friend (for I consider you all to be my friends of the highest quality) to blogger advice. 

Either way, whatever you lovely bunch decide or think, I am curious to hear your thoughts as right now being landed with this question all by my lonesome is quite the burden and is one I cannot carry much longer. So what do you do with and where do you put a person with mental health problems? I really don’t know, but I sincerely hope that someone out there has the answers as lord knows I need some. 

Take care everyone x 

Cabbage

Should NG Tubes Be Used In The Treatment Of People With Eating Disorders?

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 10 Comments

When it comes to treatment for people with eating disorders there are many different options and interventions to be explored, various therapies, meal plans, pieces of group work and even hypnotism. However, alongside all the perhaps more psychological treatments, there are other more invasive practical treatments that can be used such as the NG tube (a tube that is inserted through the nose and into the stomach to feed a patient who is unable to consume food orally themselves), and this is something I never had much of an opinion on before it happened to me recently for several weeks of my admission to hospital. It may seem silly or odd to be bringing this up now as my tube came out over 8 weeks ago so surely I should be over it and not thinking about it anymore, but I have to say that even though it has been a while since its removal, the method of being NG fed still affects me to this day, is a fairly traumatic thing for people to go through, and it has made me wonder whether or not NG feeding should actually be used in eating disorder treatment full stop. 

Obviously if I am going to open up a debate in this blog about whether or not NG tubes should ever be used I am going to have to say that aside from all the ethical, psychological, long term effect complicated sides to the issue, bluntly yes NG tubes should be available as a way to treat people with eating disorders. Despite their perhaps negative side effects down the line, it makes no sense to rule them out completely (unfortunately…I really hate admitting this…excuse me whilst I go away and grumble). 

Sometimes, whether we like it or not, NG tubes are life saving necessary pieces of treatment and there are people out there who arguably would have died without them. If a person is unable to nourish themselves adequately and becomes seriously medically compromised, sometimes the only option is to NG feed them as a matter of saving a life and I know that, as much as I disagree with the methods used on me and wish more than anything it hadn’t happened, that that is the argument doctors and nurses have had with me in defending that method of treatment. 

Aside from life saving serious stuff, NG tubes can also be positively used not just for getting nutrition into people but for providing a motivation to eat orally despite the screaming eating disorder wailing in their head like a banshee who just stubbed her toe on a particularly sharp piece of lego. 

When someone is struggling to eat because of an eating disorder it is often made harder by the fact that eating always feels like a choice, an option you actively choose to partake in, and who would choose to torture themselves by forcing themselves to eat when they knew their brain would go off screaming at 90 miles per hour? With an NG tube in place however, the act of getting nutrition is no longer an option or a choice, it is going to happen one way or another and with this choice of whether or not the food will go in eventually being taken away, sometimes eating becomes easier. 

Personally I can at least admit and testify to the fact that I found the NG tube helpful in the sense that it did motivate me to eat because the choice was taken away. No longer did I have the raging debate of “do I eat or don’t I”, it was just a matter of how it was going to go in/happen (“up the nose or down the throat” as I used to think). It also gave me encouragement to eat in a way because there were times when I knew that if I didn’t consume what was in front of me orally, I would get an increased number of calories down the tube and that certainly served as some motivation! 

Indeed at my unit there was a rule that I was presented with a meal and if I were not to complete it, the entire meal would be started again via the feed. Therefore if halfway through a meal I was struggling and really wanted to give up, having the tube there motivated me to carry on as I knew that were I to stop, we would have to start all over again and I would essentially end up having to go through the same meal twice. NG tubes can also be helpful in the sense that they offer a way for medication to go into a patient when a patient is unable to take a medication themselves (another thing which I hated and disagreed with personally but can understand is necessary in some circumstances.) 

As I said at the beginning of this debate however, alongside these positives there are a lot of negatives and it is the effect of these long lasting negatives that I am still feeling today. You see, when you have an NG tube, it takes responsibility for eating away, and whilst this is a good thing when a person is unable to eat by themselves, it is a bad thing because in learning to eat again or going through the re-feeding process they are not actually learning how to do it for themselves. Indeed, people go from needing the tube in an emergency situation to becoming dependant on it and that is what happened to me. For the first few months of re-feeding I was going through the motions but psychologically was making no progress and then when it came out I didn’t know how to eat. Without the tube, suddenly the guilt became much worse because eating went from being the lesser of two evils with the tube in to simply “evil”. 

Another negative from using an NG tube and perhaps the one I am struggling the most with today is that of rapid weight gain. When you are on the tube it is possible to gain a lot of weight very quickly that mentally you are not ready or prepared for and although it can again be life saving and good treatment medically, it can be an incredibly traumatic experience. Similarly, now I have been left at a weight far higher than I am comfortable with because of the tube and because I reached this stage far quicker than I would have done without it, I am still struggling with the repercussions and am feeling overwhelmed. 

In terms of trauma it can also be a traumatic experience to be restrained for feeds and when this happens it can damage the patient vs treatment team relationship. For example I used to trust my treatment team and even get along with a lot of them, but if I am honest, now I resent them all and want to be discharged from the entire service because the act of having something so traumatic being done to me has led me to dislike and mistrust them all. Having something like an NG feed physically done to you whilst you are held down means being treated as an object not a person, there is no therapeutic benefit, you are just a thing being pumped full of stuff you are terrified of with no chance to work through it or figure out a long term solution at home. It is a temporary fix and though you can force feed someone food, you cannot force feed them long term recovery, so in a sense the NG tube method is unhelpful long term. Then again that is just my experience and I know that for other people actually starting with an NG as a temporary measure can help long term as it gets enough nutrition for their brain to work and allow recovery long term afterwards so it really is all down to personal experience. 

Overall then, should NG tubes be used to treat people with eating disorders? Well, I don’t know is the honest answer, it is a tricky one because I think the answer will be different for different people. For some people using the NG tube is not a matter of something to be debated but a necessary life saving act of treatment and sometimes it can even help long term recovery by motivating someone to eat orally by taking away the choice. Also the more nutrition someone gets the more likely it is that their brain will be receptive to treatment but then again there are the negatives of cases like mine where I have been fed up to an unbearable weight via physical methods without going through the proper therapeutic work, meaning that I am now stuck unable to deal with it and thus struggling with relapse. I don’t think when it comes to this question there will ever be an answer for everyone but it is certainly a controversial topic that I think we need to keep working on and talking about. 

Take care everyone x 

NGdebate