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The Dangers Of Drinking Too Much Water When You Have An Eating Disorder

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 16 Comments

So in last week’s blog, I talked about a recent lesson I had learnt about the importance of familiar surroundings when you struggle with OCD, and funnily enough I have learnt something else in the past week too.
I am learning a lot of things lately. It is like being back in pre-school only Daniel Jones hasn’t stolen my green crayon (if you are reading this Daniel then yes I know it was you and I still want it back), and the topics of these recent lessons have been far more focused on mental health and less on how messy one can get whilst finger painting/what noise a cow makes (hint: it is moo).

In life, we are constantly being told to drink more water. If you have ever sat in a doctors’ waiting room you will have no doubt seen several posters about how drinking a lot of water is very important, how kidneys love the stuff, how dangerous it is to get dehydrated, and from all of these posters and health warnings you may assume that the more water you drink the healthier you are, which…well… isn’t exactly true, especially if you are someone who is struggling with an eating disorder.

Drinking too much fluid is by no means something common to all people with eating disorders however, and in my years of experience getting to know fellow sufferers, there seem to be three camps of people and how their disorders manage fluids.
In one camp we have the people with eating disorders who struggle to drink enough water and end up extremely dehydrated, then there is a second camp of people who could drink a whole swimming pool if they had a big enough straw, and then finally in the third camp there are the people with eating disorders who do not have a problem with maintaining safe fluid levels and would therefore like to leave the camp I have just put them in and go back home to a habitat that is slightly less tent like.

As it happens, I am in the second aforementioned camp (ours has a lovely log fire and on Saturdays we roast marshmallows), and I struggle with drinking too much water even if I am not at all thirsty.
It is odd because I have always known that drinking too much liquid isn’t good for you, but when it comes down to it, me gulping down glass after glass of water is like some uncontrollable compulsion, a kind of outer body experience.
Many a time I have been pouring myself another litre and in my head have been thinking “NO. STOP! THIS IS DANGEROUS NOW” but my body won’t listen and carries on filling up my glass anyway. It doesn’t matter how ill I feel, drinking the water feels like an urgent and necessary task as if I need to dowse a fireball that is burning somewhere in my stomach, no matter how much water it takes.

Even in the camp of people with eating disorders who struggle with drinking too much water, it is likely that everyone will do so for a variety of reasons and it is rare for two sufferers with the same disordered behaviours to have the same reasons for carrying them out.
When it comes to me though, my compulsion to drink a lot of fluid is partly because of posters I used to see at my local gym telling me that if I didn’t drink enough my body would hold onto water (leading me to fear that the number on the scales would go higher), but mainly it is because no matter how many doctors or dieticians talk to me about the science of the intestine, I am convinced that if I do not drink ridiculous amounts, any food I eat will get stuck in me forever.

Technically I know all about stomach acids and the body’s ability to break down solid foods via various muscle contractions and other clever things that go on behind one’s belly button, but in my head, eating anything solid conjures up an image of that solid thing getting stuck in a tube. Say for example I eat an apple, it doesn’t matter how much I chew it, when it is in my stomach I still picture it as a big red cartoon like shiny apple with the stalk attached, a lump that will stay there unless I am able to create enough waves to erode and wash it away.

For this reason, to try and keep my drinking under some form of control, I have been on a fluid chart for years where I write down everything I drink to try and keep an eye on things so that it doesn’t get out of hand. If I don’t write my fluids down my brain tends to trick me and convince me that I haven’t had a mouthful of water in days (even if I am surrounded by empty bottles of Evian and have been peeing every five seconds), so it is safer for me to keep a record of it so that when the compulsion to drink a lot comes, I can remind myself that I have already drunk more than enough and need to distract myself elsewhere. Last week however, this fluid chart thing went a little bit off plan with the disappearance of my parents on holiday.

I have had several people message me asking what on earth happened after the mass break down described last week, whether my parents ended up cancelling the holiday or whether we gave it a go despite plan A being a rather sizeable fail.

Well, after people had realised that I couldn’t stay at my parents’ friends’ house for the duration of the holiday, the immediate conclusion was that the holiday would be cancelled, but eventually we managed to come up with an alternative plan wherein mum and dad would go off to Malaysia as planned and I would stay at home with my sister and my most legendary friend of all time alternating sleeping over to try and help me stay safe.

It was going rather well for the first few days (or at least better than the disaster that had been plan A), but as time went on I started to get more and more anxious about my parents being away and consequently the urge to drink increased in order to wash all of that anxiety and stress away. I know it sounds pathetic but without my mum there to verify how much I was drinking and suddenly in total control of my fluid intake myself, things started to get out of hand. People who stayed over would be able to support me in the day time but when up late at night I couldn’t help but manically gulp glass after glass of water over the sink. All the people who write those “yay kidneys like water, stay hydrated” posters would probably be thinking that is great but as with most things in life, moderation is key and you can have too much of a “good thing”.
Drinking too much water can cause problems for anyone who has been hitting it hard on the old H20 because your kidneys cannot process it and consequently the water stays in you where it can dilute the salt/sodium level in your blood and cause a condition called hyponatremia, which doesn’t sound particularly exciting but in general language this is known as water intoxication, and I am pretty sure that phrases containing the word “toxic” are never good phrases to hear describe someones physical health.

In healthy adults eating and maintaining a healthy diet, a few extra glasses of water will not cause this kind of thing, but the risks when it comes to people with eating disorders is often greater purely because they may not have been consuming enough salt/sodium in the first place, and essentially there is a risk of drowning your cells on the inside. This then leads to things like heart problems, fainting, water on the brain, seizures, psychotic episodes, death, and basically a lot of things that mean you “aren’t very well” which is exactly what happened to me a few days after my parents flew off to Malaysia and is exactly why my poor sleepy friend had to call an ambulance at 2am on a Saturday morning having been woken by me banging around, generally delirious and spouting nonsense (and a little bit of water. I was like a living water feature. Delightful).

The reason I stayed in hospital for so long however is a slightly more complicated story which I will have to get around to next week, just so that we are all up to date and clear as to why I was so rude as miss a blog post two Mondays ago (Oh the shame. And I was raised in a house with such good manners!), but as an initial explanation, the problem was that I was hospitalised for drinking too much water, and it is now after some severe tellings off from several health professionals that I feel the need to write this post about it so that people realise just how dangerous drinking too much water can be when you have an eating disorder, in case it is something other people struggle with themselves and seriously need to seek support for. If you are one of those people who struggles with drinking too much water I know you are probably doing what I used to do upon hearing these kind of things, the whole “surely it can’t be that bad” and “it would never happen to me” but trust me when I say that water intoxication is extremely dangerous and potentially fatal so if you struggle with it, even if your head tells you “you will be fine”, it is vital you get regular blood tests to check your sodium balance.

Luckily after a few days of being on a water restriction in hospital (good lord was I thirsty), my sodium levels returned to a more acceptable level…it is just that other things started to go wrong after that but again, patience dear friends! All in good time!

Now what I don’t want is for someone who already struggles with drinking enough to read this blog and suddenly panic and start restricting their fluids more than they already were because that is NOT what I am saying you should do and that is dangerous for a different bunch of reasons all on their own. I am just saying it is dangerous to go ridiculously overboard when it comes to fluid consumption even if your eating disorder tries to force you in that direction, and that instead of not drinking anything, just do it all in moderation. Water isn’t dangerous, everyone loves a good paddle or dip in the swimming pool, you just have to keep it at a safe level and be careful not to drown.

Take care everyone x

Kidney

P.s I am sorry if this blog is a little bit all over the place. Physically I am still not in the best place right now and my ability to write is somewhat affected but please bear with me! I am sure recovery will hurry up soon!

Why Familiar Surroundings Are Important When You Suffer With OCD

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 2 Comments

The original title of the blog I was planning to write today was “Tips on staying away from home when you have mental health problems”. You see, my parents were jetting off to Malaysia and seeing as I am not well enough to manage by myself at the moment, the plan was for me to go and stay with their friends in this lovely little house out in the countryside.
We have been planning it for months, I had visited the house and felt OK about it seeing how nice my bedroom, personal office AND personal bathroom were going to be. There was even a cat called Pingu. A cat. Named after my favourite childhood penguin. Ideal right?

Well I thought so, but was still worried about managing my mental health with new carers who do not know me as well as my parents, so I came up with a list of coping strategies and ways to manage it. Consequently I decided to write a blog sharing my oh so helpful tips incase anyone else out there was in a similar situation, but then…well…I went to the house where I was due to stay for two weeks, lasted approximately four hours and then was driven home in hysterics at midnight with my parents due to fly the next day despite having still not packed so much as a flip flop, because we have been spending weeks packing for me to go away (if you want to imagine how many things and bags it was, think of the average stuffed car that people often drive off to uni in, double it and chuck a penguin on top for good measure. Oh and a Christmas elf. One must never travel without one’s cuddly Christmas elf. Oh there we go! I did give a travel tip! YAY ME.)

Clearly then, I am in no place to be giving tips about staying away from home right now BUT over the course of this traumatic experience, I have been reminded of a valuable lesson about mental health problems, so I thought I would share that with you today instead.

Having been mentally ill and having been in therapy for over a decade, I would say I understand my conditions and myself rather well, which is why I felt that I could make a plan about an approaching situation in advance without running into any unforeseen issues.
Trying to do my same rituals in a different place however, really reminded me of something a lot of people might not realise: that being that sometimes with OCD, it is not just about carrying out a specific behaviour like a shower routine, it is about carrying out a very specific shower routine in a very specific shower.

I always knew that because of OCD and anorexia, I have a LOT of routines, rituals and specific ways of doing things. I eat out of certain bowls with a certain spoon, I drink tea out of a certain mug at certain times of the day and I wash my hands, shower and get dressed in very specific ways. As rigid as these and a number of different actions in my day are, logically you could assume that I could carry them out in a different place so long as I had the correct equipment. There was a shower where I was going to stay so of course I could do my shower routine, there was a sink so of course I could wash my hands and I was taking all of my cutlery/crockery so obviously I would be able to eat all in my usual ways.

Even I can admit that years ago, though still having OCD, I was able to do these fixed ritual things in other places with other sinks and showers. I have been on holiday since my diagnoses, have stayed in a hospital and went to university (kind of…), always carrying out the same actions just in different locations. Therefore I tried to do that this time going to a strange house but, with things how they are at the moment, as hard as I tried and as good as my intentions were at the time I attempted it, it isn’t possible (at least to a manageable realistic degree that doesn’t involve hysterics 24/7 for a fortnight which is less “a good challenge” and more cruel torture. I am all for accepting challenges and trying things out of my comfort zone but sometimes you need to eat a few mini muffins before you are up to demolishing an entire five tier wedding cake by yourself).

I was truly shocked as I sort of hadn’t realised how bad things have got again.
The descent has been a gradual process, little slips that in the end add up to a sky diver height of a fall. It is like what they say about if you put a frog in boiling hot water it will hop out but if you put it in warm water and gradually turn the heat up it will boil to death before it realises (that is what they say isn’t it? Who are these people? Please dear readers, do not go putting frogs in boiling water. If you really want to see some green bubbling in a pan just whack in a bag of frozen peas, far more humane AND one of your five a day).

When we pulled up at the house I fully intended on staying for the next two weeks (obviously I did, I had my penguin and my cuddly Christmas elf, I was committed to this trip). Even though I was anxious, by using multiple packets of anti bacterial wipes and with support from my parents, I got through the unpacking and after two hours my room, bathroom and office all looked really nice, filled with familiar things, a comfortable home from home.

It was when I tried to shower that things went so horribly wrong. First there was the issue that the shower was a stand in shower cubicle with a door. At my house our shower head is hanging above the bath, so when I am getting all lathered I can stand out of the flow of water to reach the required bubbliness (I know that this is not the most environmentally friendly way to live my life and that I could just turn the shower off but just know that I am unable to do that at the moment and to be honest when you are focusing on just keeping yourself alive your carbon footprint is not a top priority. At least I am not flying across the globe in an aeroplane to Malaysia like SOME people…).
With this stand in shower however, I was unable to reach the desired bubbliness needed to get through all of my thought routines because before I had time to count to the required numbers the suds had all been washed away.
Then there was a problem that I had to put my soaps in a basket so my lemon shower gel for feet was too close to my banana shower gel for body and far too close to a wall that I couldn’t touch, and the way you turned on the shower made my usual vitally important life saving way impossible.

I took so long to shower that all the hot water ran out and after a while of forcing myself to stand under the cold ice like hail pelting me in the face, I got out though I still didn’t feel clean. I was in a bit of a state but I didn’t want to give up so I persevered and tried to get on regardless but it was one thing after another. I couldn’t wash my hands in the sink because the tap distance to the back of the sink meant holding my arm at 135 degrees rather than 90, I couldn’t step off the towel I had laid on the floor because my bare feet couldn’t touch the tiles and I couldn’t put on the socks that I had brought into the bathroom with me without direct access to trousers and slippers. “You should have taken slippers in and trousers too” I hear you cry but I had thought of that already and couldn’t because there was nowhere safe in the bathroom to put those things at an acceptable distance away from each other. I found myself standing stranded on this towel shivering and blue with cold, so I naturally did what any other person would do in that situation. I cried uncontrollably and screamed in terror for my mother.

Luckily my parents were still there because the unpacking had taken such a long time that they had ended up staying for dinner whilst I showered.
Seafood rice was cooked and eaten and a homemade rhubarb crumble was just being served when the screaming happened and mum came running. She tried to help by offering solutions, one being the ideal “I can go and get the trousers and not let them touch anything”, but I didn’t want to do that. Yes it would have been safe, but I wanted to solve the problem by myself somehow with support.
Mum could have easily gotten my trousers and I could have left the bathroom but what the hell would I do the next day when she was on a beach somewhere in Malaysia? Around this point my “in a bit of a state” descended into full on “out of control don’t know what I am doing dangerous risky chaotic hysterics and panic” and from there things are a bit of a blur. All I know is that I cried for several hours (I tried to talk too but was at that hiccuping crying point so “I don’t know how to manage I want to disappear” came out more like “Hic gasp gulp hic scream”), and my parents and friends frantically tried to decide what to do.
When I was able to talk and sob at the same time I made it clear that I felt it was a challenge too many and that rather than tackling the “parents away and totally different location for all rituals for two weeks” I wanted to attempt the “parents aka usual carers away, in a familiar place” challenge. Losing both was like losing both of my homes, a tortoise rudely ripped from his semi detached terrace house and his shell in the same day leaving a cold naked slug unable to survive in its place.

There were then more hours of discussion before we realised that this really was not a feasible option and then after two hours of packing all of my things back into the bags we had unpacked them from (we didn’t have to pack my elf. He went and got himself back in the car the second he heard the first bout of screaming. He knows me well), we were back in the car driving home in the dark, leaving the abandoned now cold homemade crumble on the dining table. It is a big shame. My parents love rhubarb crumble.

So it was that I ended up back home after my much shorter than planned and somewhat failed “stay away from home with mental health problems”. On the plus side I did manage to get to the house and unpack…I just left two weeks too early.

Clearly then, I think I have proved my point and raised awareness to all the people who might not understand OCD, that when it comes to OCD and other mental health problems with ritualistic behaviours, it isn’t just the rituals that are important to a sufferer but the specific location and circumstances under which those rituals are carried out.

Take care everyone x

Bubbly

Being Afraid Of Your Own Brain When You Have Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 19 Comments

I feel like there is someone in my brain who is trying to kill me. It feels like I am being stalked by something, like a lion stalks a gazelle, but I can’t see how close or far away they are because when I turn around there is nobody there. Nobody else can see them either, they are in my head and unfortunately my eyes are positioned in a way that I can only see the outside world rather than what is going on internally (sort it out evolution for goodness sake, you gave us opposable thumbs now can you please work on swivelling eyes…And whilst you are at it can you please take this appendix away because it is taking up valuable storage room).
I am scared that this thing in my head is going to succeed in trying to kill me and I am also scared that it will fail. I don’t like being chased and sometimes I just want the thing to catch up and get whatever it is planning over with.

You might be wondering how on earth it is possible for someone to be afraid of their own brain because surely if the brain belongs to me, I am in control of it and what it decides to do. You don’t go round worrying that your own fist is going to punch you in the face because if your fist were to ever get such an idea it is likely you would tell it that you would rather not be punched in the face and could it maybe do something more helpful like make you a cup of tea.
That’s the thing though. I don’t feel in control of my brain and I don’t feel like I know what it is going to do at any given moment anymore. I always thought that if I owned my brain and my brain was me, then I would know my way around it. I would know every lobe, every memory, every thought and every desire because…well…they are supposed to be mine. If I have a secret that I keep from other people I tuck it away in my secret brain cupboard so they won’t be able to find it, but lately it has felt like my brain has a whole separate section where it is keeping its own secrets in its own secret cupboard that I cannot access.

“Maybe it is a nice secret” I hear you cry, “maybe your brain is preparing you a surprise party” but I don’t think that is the case, partly because it doesn’t feel like a nice secret and partly because I know for a fact that my brain hasn’t been balloon shopping recently and as I have said many a time on this blog, one cannot have a party unless there is at least one balloon present. If there is something magical in this secret cupboard, I know that it is not Narnia and is more likely to be a direct doorway to the White Witch.

I am worried that I am not making any sense and that I am being confusing in this post but if I am I guess that would be an accurate representation as to how things feel with my mental health right now, confusing and making little sense.

The Depression and BPD are still there, the OCD, and anorexia still have their claws in and dictate every one of my actions, yet still it feels like there is something different, something weird going on. I am more out of control than ever and half the time I don’t know who I am or what is going on.
I keep seeing things and I can’t tell if they are real or if I am imagining them. It started off as spiders, not the most pleasant things to imagine crawling around you and I would far rather imagine waddles of penguins approaching if I have to imagine anything, but I don’t think I have much of a choice in the matter. I started seeing spiders out of the corner of my eyes yet I was able to turn to face the place I thought I saw a spider and I could see that there was nothing there. Now though the spiders are bigger and they have tails. They also have fur and have lost four of their legs. They are rats now. Even when I know I am alone in a room I can feel people standing behind the curtains or crouching just outside beyond the window sill. I don’t know what they are doing there and it must be incredibly stuffy wrapped up in a curtain for hours every day (I can confirm this after years of playing hide and seek as a child), but they stand there anyway.

I am scared that I am actually “going mad”. More often than not I have been having to wake my mum up in the middle of the night to come in and sleep in my room because I don’t feel safe from my brain. It is as though, if I close my eyes and go to sleep for a minute, I am leaving myself unguarded and it will be able to sneak an attack in whilst I am busy being unconscious. I don’t understand the logic behind this fear as surely if I am asleep, my brain is asleep too, yet still I feel so disconnected from it these days that I can’t be sure what it is up to when I am not looking. It is clearly doing something underhand during my snoozing of late because I keep waking up screaming and often have no idea why.

I stay awake all night to keep myself safe and I also have stay awake all night to guard the house, because if I go to sleep ,not only will my brain start wreaking havoc but the people outside below the window sill will also find a way in somehow. It is ridiculous, if there ever was an intruder in reality I highly doubt my presence would be the thing to deter them (a point my psychologist pointed out last week…I think she was trying to be helpful but to be honest I took it as rather rude because clearly rather than assuring me of my safety she is actually implying that I don’t look as terrifyingly strong and powerful as I clearly am and I take the insinuation that I could not intimidate a burglar very offensively.) Still, logical or not, sense or nonsense aside, the feeling that I must guard the house is always there.

It is just a difficult situation to be in because I know that I should be responsible for my own mental health and therefore should be responsible and keep myself safe. I am 25 years old, certainly old enough by society’s standards to look after myself but I don’t feel responsible or in control and consequently I don’t feel certain I can keep myself safe. I have been disassociating for days on end (I will do a post soon explaining exactly what that is because it is an important mental health topic I somehow haven’t discussed yet…FOR SHAME!), but basically it means that there are a lot of days where I am not really “present” and therefore I have a lot of blank spots in my memory. It is all so frustrating I could scream, yet I don’t think that would make any difference. All that would mean was I was scared and could hear myself screaming and I would rather have the former without the latter if I have to have the former at all.

Like I said before, I am worried that this post won’t make any sense as I am not sure I understand it either, but still I wanted to write about how this feels. To try and explain or raise awareness of this side of mental health problems, the side where your brain is so mixed up all over the place that you are frightened of it, just incase there is anyone else out there experiencing the same thing and feeling as scared and alone as I do right now. Sometimes my mental health problems involve being depressed, being suicidal, or self harming. A lot of the time they focus on being afraid of germs, being afraid of food, and now, apparently they involve being afraid of myself.

Take care everyone x

ScaryBrain

Birthdays And Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 14 Comments

When I was younger and heard adults saying things like “I just want to forget about my birthday this year”, I thought that adults were crazy and needed to seriously reconsider the way in which they were living their lives. Why on earth would anyone ever want to forget about their birthday?

For me, birthdays were something to look forward to and something I couldn’t forget about if I tried. Birthdays were about choosing which soft play area you were going to take all of your friends to for the party, buying rainbow coloured bouncy balls to fill party bags with and deciding whether you wanted a Thomas the tank engine or Spice Girls birthday cake ready to decorate with a flaming beacon of candles. Birthdays were about unwrapping incredibly exciting and complicated plastic contraptions that you would then spend the rest of your day watching your mum struggle to assemble amidst an encyclopedia of instructions in every language but English, before finally making it look like the thing on the box, only to realise that batteries were not included, causing your mother to curse the creators of Toys R Us and howl at the moon until the early hours of the morning, Barbie’s camper van standing motionless and taunting you from the corner. Birthdays were about wearing a badge with your age on it to school so that everyone would know how very mature you were and how much respect they should bestow upon you, and no birthday was complete without a trip to TGI Fridays where you would stand on your chair like a king whilst a chorus of red and white striped waiters belted out “Happy Birthday”, the performance concluding with rapturous applause from all around and, if you were lucky, an extra gummy worm in your Mississippi mud pie. With all that to look forward to, how could anyone dread a birthday?

I was sure that I would always look forward to my birthday and would never be one of these fools who looked upon the occasion with anything other than spine tingling excitement. I was wrong.
For the past few years, despite little Katie’s best intentions, I have become one of those people who wants to forget about their birthday, and I think it is because as you get older, birthdays don’t mean the same things as they used to. They become less about gummy worms and birthday cakes and more about time passing you by, life passing you by, which isn’t something you really care about when you are younger and your main focus is getting the bit of icing on the cake that has your favourite cartoon character on it. On top of that however, when you are mentally ill, I think they are especially hard because for me at least, a birthday can feel like a reminder that you have wasted another year drowning in anxiety and the older you get, the longer you have been stuck with this mental illness bothering you all the time.

That said, I guess you can sort of see birthdays and that marker of time passing as a positive thing. This year for example, I turned 25 (I did it last Thursday as a matter of fact and luckily, despite all the dreading and worrying about it talked about in this post, I really did have a lovely birthday, so if you sent me a birthday message or said hello to me at all on the 22nd June then thank you for being someone who made it special. I really appreciate you all so much). Alas! I must get back to the point!
So, turning 25 means I will have been unwell for 14 years. On the plus side, whilst a depressingly long time, it is an improvement in the sense that I can say the number 14 because it is a safe number, unlike the number I used to have to say, (the one that comes between 12 and 14), which is a somewhat difficult number for me to handle in terms of OCD (YAY SILVER LININGS).
Also there is something rather motivating about birthdays in that they often inspire you to make goals of things you are unhappy about and want to change before the next one.
Indeed, I think that as the number of years I have been ill has gone up, the more motivated I have become to fight my illnesses and push as hard as I can for recovery even when it involves doing something scary.

During the first years of my illness when I had to go back a year in school and take time out of education to go into hospital, I was motivated to fight purely because my illnesses were making me unhappy, but not so much because I realised what I was missing out on whilst stuck in my head. Ok I often couldn’t leave the house and I missed out on a few sleepovers with friends, a couple of school trips and several opportunities to share a pizza and watch a movie on a Saturday night, but to begin with, missing the odd pizza isn’t that big a deal. Obviously I would have liked to have done all the things like going bowling with friends and eating popcorn at the cinema, but for me being safe at home not having to touch or eat anything, felt a lot more comfortable. I would have rather stayed in my little bubble avoiding as much anxiety as I could, even if that meant being a little bit lonely, than go out of my bubble and cause myself a lot of distress trying to wear a pair of bowling shoes or eating a mouthful of popcorn. Staying safe was my priority, and if that meant missing out on a few sleepovers/meant less terror, that was a necessary sacrifice I would take. Why terrify yourself for weeks and weeks just trying to get the courage to see a friend for an hour? Better just to avoid it.

However the longer you live with mental illness, the more those little things add up over the years, and suddenly you find you have not just missed the odd sleepover, you have missed hundreds of sleepovers, hundreds of moments in which people took photos and made memories that they reminisce about and fondly recall with sentences beginning “Oh my goodness do you remember when…”. After several years, you haven’t missed one bucket of popcorn, you have missed an entire swimming pool worth of popcorn (not that I advise you put popcorn into a swimming pool…just trying to get the image of how much popcorn we are talking about across), and that amount of popcorn can’t be caught up on as easily as the one bucket you missed in the first place. As the days become months and the months become years, you realise just how much of your life you have missed out on because you were too scared to take part in it, and suddenly the motivation to work even harder to stop the years passing by without you noticing increases, because you finally understand how rubbish it feels to be left so far behind everyone else.

However at the same time, whilst the longer you live with a mental illness the more anger and frustration you have at it to motivate your recovery, the further entrenched you are in that illness and thus the harder it feels to get better. It is a catch 22 situation, the most vicious of all the vicious circles.

Time passes, you get angrier at all the time wasted, you become more motivated to fight but then find it is harder to fight than the first day you tried to challenge yourself because the illness has used the time wasted to dig its claws into you even further. Odd things that started out as little quirks to keep yourself safe become engrained habits and habits are a lot harder to break than things you only did a few times. I have smoked only one cigarette in my life and I will be honest, I hated it. It was like swallowing a smelly smokey fire. Therefore deciding to “give up” on the idea of smoking after that cigarette was not a challenge at all. I had spent longer as someone who didn’t smoke than I had spent as someone who did, it wasn’t a habit and I was not addicted or used to the comfort or feeling of a cigarette in my hand. Now however, I have officially been mentally ill for longer than I have ever been not mentally ill and I have dug myself into a hole so deep that it is far harder to get out of. Years ago I didn’t go to a meal out with friends because it made me uncomfortable, but that uncomfortable feeling has built over the years, and now I don’t go because I am terrified. Eating out doesn’t make me anxious, it makes me feel like I am dying on the inside. The longer you are ill, the more set in your ways you are and the harder it is to get better.

This year then, as always, though I dreaded my birthday as it scares me to think how long I have been trapped in my own mind, I am trying to see it as a positive motivation for change, an opportunity to say “this past 14 years has been hell and I am determined to fight as hard as I can to make sure that number doesn’t go up by one every time my age does”. I am fed up, truly angry every year as I see the growing list of all the opportunities I have missed out on and I really do want things to be different. It is just difficult, ageing with mental illness. As the years pass you may feel more motivated, but at the same time, you just feel more trapped.

Take care everyone x

BirthdayBlog

Is Donald Trump Mentally Ill?

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 2 Comments

Since his inauguration in January 2017, there have been a lot of articles written about Donald Trump and considering he is now President of the United States (feel free to cry uncontrollably about this), that is not a surprise. The job of President of the United States is not exactly one you apply for if your goal in life is to keep a low profile and avoid people noticing you. Of all the articles I have seen there have been serious statements about his political endeavours as well as more lighthearted comments about how his hair always looks like it is trying to escape (and who can blame it), or a more recent movement talking about how much his chin looks like a frog. Lately though, more than people comparing the lower part of his face to a tadpole laying amphibian, people have been writing about the fact that Donald Trump is so outrageous in his running of the country that he must be mentally ill.

Now, I am not denying the possibility that this is the case and that Donald Trump is indeed suffering from a mental health condition. I am not a psychologist who can make a statement either way on the matter and funnily enough I have never met old frog face (sorry, “President Trump”), as he lives in America and he doesn’t tend to hang out in the places that I am frequently found (aka my nearest Eating Disorder support service and my local Co-op.) For this reason I cannot meaningfully make accusations either way with regard to the accuracy of these claims. Maybe he is mentally ill, maybe he is not, but my issue with the whole thing is the fact that Donald Trump is only one in a long line of outrageous unpopular characters who has their persona explained away by the idea that they must be mentally ill. You hear it all the time from the newspapers to day to day conversation. If anyone ever says something ridiculous or if you ever hear about some murderer on the loose, people make comments like “they are clearly mad”, “they ought to be committed” or, as my Dad says, “their mind’s addled and they ought to have their bumps read”.

Of course, I understand that in some cases criminals are mentally ill and are therefore sent to psychiatric hospitals rather than prison, so I am not denying that diagnosable madness is never the cause of a crime or a foolish opinion. That said, this is not the case for EVERY crime or every stupid statement made and stating this idea over and over again, always explaining a murder or Donald Trump with the label “the person is mentally ill”, does nothing but perpetuate the mental health stigma that already exists and that damages the general “crazy” common folk like myself. I am always saying that nobody should ever be ashamed of being mentally ill and a lot of charities and celebrities have lately been supporting this message, coming out with their stories to encourage others to speak out and seek help. Is it any wonder people are afraid to say that they have a problem though, when the word “crazy” has become synonymous with actions or opinions that people think make someone a bad person.

Every time I read a headline that says “Donald Trump is like someone who is mentally ill” it feels like someone is instead saying “Donald Trump is like Katie Simon Phillips”. Obviously I realise it isn’t personal to me specifically but the comparison of Donald Trump to someone with a diagnosed mental health problem does lead to a large group of people who are unwell and who have no similarities to our floppy haired President, being lumped in the same category of some horrible Venn diagram. It just doesn’t feel fair. Why do I have to be shoved into the same category as Donald Trump? I have never threatened to build a wall (much to my Dad’s disappointment, he really needs help building our new conservatory), I have never stolen anyone’s health insurance and though I admit to having insecurities and am not the biggest fan of my appearance, I don’t think that my chin is particularly reminiscent of a toad. Admittedly I walk like and have similarities to a penguin, but a toad? Seems a bit harsh if you ask me.

Like I said, I know that whenever anyone makes statements like these they are not meaning to speak negatively of the mentally ill people of our world, but I think that it is because it is so unintentional and “unmeant” that it is such a problem. Mental health problems are so synonymous with criminal acts or outrageous opinions that you don’t even have to make an effort to draw a connection, it is automatic. I have personally found it particularly frustrating with Donald Trump especially, because one of the main things people accuse him of is having some kind of personality disorder, a diagnosis I have myself. This specific correlation seems even more personal than “he is mentally ill like you” because it lists a specific condition I am familiar with and I am sure it feels personal to many people out there.
“He needs serious therapy”, “he needs medication”, “he needs to be hospitalised” the people cry, and I find myself wanting to wave my arms about and cry back “yeah. a lot of us do, but that doesn’t mean that we are bad people or power hungry tyrants who discriminate against a variety of genders, sexualities and races that don’t fit into his perfect ideal of the “straight white male”. Not everyone who needs medication wants to build a wall, not everyone who needs intense therapy has got to that point because they have committed a crime and not everyone in hospital is roaming the corridors with ridiculous hair (although to be fair to people I do at least fit into that one.)

In a sense I suppose it is good that there is more of an awareness as to the things that could influence a person’s behaviour. These days people are seen less in the black and white “heaven or eternal damnation” terms than they were in the middle ages. People don’t see others as simply “good” or “bad”, even villains in movies tend to get backstories these days and are rarely the two dimensional moustache twirling creatures of pointless evil, with no more desires or motivation than those who used to tie people to train tracks in silent movies. They say every Saint has a past and every sinner has a future and I fully agree with that as well as the ideas that human actions and behaviours are often far more complex than they appear on the surface. Nevertheless, why can’t we accept at the same time that as complex and intricate as minds and motivations are, sometimes there are still things that are random, things that don’t make sense and that how things look on the surface may occasionally be a good representation of what is underneath. Why do people have to see the morally questionable things Donald Trump says and does and explain them as a sign of a diagnosed mental illness that needs therapy and emergency hospitalisation. Why can’t we see things he says or does that we perceive as idiotic and explain them simply as due to the fact that he is indeed a bit of an idiot. Maybe this sounds incredibly politically incorrect, but to be honest as someone who is frequently likened to and lumped in the same pile as Donald Trump, I am bored of being politically correct. I just think that people we decide are bad people and moustache twirling villains, did not all disappear the day we discovered the explanation of mental illness. Mentally ill people exist, but so can complete and utter plonkers who have nothing to do with mental health problems.

So back to my original question and the title of this blog. Is Donald Trump mentally ill? I DON’T KNOW (bet you are glad you read all those words to get to that groundbreaking conclusion). Maybe he is perfectly fine in the head and maybe he is totally off his rocker, but either way can we please stop with this need to compare anyone who commits a crime or has a political stance that many regard as offensive, to people who are mentally ill. I am mentally ill but I am not Donald Trump and neither are a lot of people out there who I have met in psychiatric units, passed in the therapy waiting room or stood behind when queuing up for their latest prescription of anti depressants. Like I said mentally ill people exist, idiots with mental health problems exist, but sometimes, if someone is behaving like an idiot, maybe they are just an idiot.

Take care everyone x

Trump

Eating Disorders Away From The Table

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 8 Comments

If I were to hand you a pencil and ask you to draw a person who, in the moment depicted, was struggling wth their eating disorder, you would probably draw an image of a person sitting at a meal table with a plate of food in front of them (Unless you are anything like my mother who instead, when given a pencil and asked to create a picture, will throw that pencil back in your face and run for the hills screaming “I can’t draw – leave me alone!”)
On one hand, drawing someone at a table would be right as it is likely that if someone has an eating disorder, meal times are going to be difficult for them. However I think there is an idea that when you have an eating disorder your struggles come into action at the dinner table and depart once the meal is over, a nice idea, though one that is unfortunately far from the truth.

For me at least, my eating disordered thoughts are there from the second I wake up and my first thoughts of the day will be about food and how much/what I am planning on eating during that day. It is silly really, because everyday I eat the exact same foods in the exact same amounts, so there is no decision to be made and any dithering is futile. There is no point in wondering whether or not I want Coco Pops or toast, I can ponder and postulate pancakes and Pop Tarts all I like but no matter what, the first thing I will eat that day remains the same as every other, in the same amounts and even on the very same plate. It is also pointless to think about this from the second I wake up as currently I am struggling with this rule that I cannot eat when the sun is up so, being summer, the first meal is usually hours away and shouldn’t be an immediate concern.
Nevertheless, every morning the thoughts and worries about what I am going to eat are immediately there, thinking about infinite options, things that might be healthier, lower calories/lower fat, before inevitably settling with the usual. It is like this for every meal no matter how far away that meal is, be it hours, days, even years.
There are several reasons why I have the same foods every day. For one thing I know what my weight does/how my body reacts to this meal plan, but mainly I stick to the same thing because it removes the need to debate the decision for hours each day.
Everything is planned down to the smallest most specific detail, I don’t just eat an apple a day, I eat a Pink Lady apple specifically to avoid the chance of spending three hours debating between a Golden Delicious or a Granny Smith, yet even if I know the debate is heading nowhere, it still arrives before every meal. I will spend the hours leading up to it debating the options and calculating various calorie amounts without ever getting an acceptable result.

Then, even when the inevitable decision has been made, the eating disorder is still there for the food preparation extravaganza, controlling every movement and weighing out ingredients to the exact gram, no matter how long it takes. I often weigh things multiple times on different scales to check that one set isn’t lying to me (I once saw a set of kitchen scales on Jeremy Kyle who failed the lie detector test. Turned out he WAS the child’s father and I have never trusted a pair of scales since). As always, the weight will be the same on every set of scales, but still I will spend time worrying that the food I was weighing was “different to usual” and that I randomly managed to pick up an incredibly dense courgette with twice the calories of a normal one.
Food prepared, there is then the obvious struggle people know about, the bit we all picture when we imagine someone with an eating disorder, the eating that takes place at the dining table. However even when I leave that table, the battle is still going on, and rather than sitting at the table politely waiting for the next meal, anorexia follows me rabbiting on about what went on at the table and the meal that, for everyone else, was over hours ago.
Did I eat too quickly? Did I eat too much? Do I feel fuller than usual, aka a sign that the scales were lying earlier and I was dealing with a magically calorie dense genetically engineered superhuman courgette? Have I gained weight that I can see? All of these questions swirl around in my brain amidst the thick soup of guilt and I replay the meal in my head over and over again incase I missed some key piece of evidence of something that I should be worrying about. I said in the part about worrying about meals before they occur that the meal can be hours or weeks away, and similarly the worrying afterwards can carry on for years after I put my knife and fork down on a plate.

Eight or nine years ago, during one of my admissions to hospital, I had a meal involving mashed potato. I had been eating the hospital mash for months and months before so I knew exactly what to expect, yet there was one particular day that the mash tasted different. They say variety is the spice of life, but as I ate that mash the difference frightened me and as someone with an eating disorder I wished that variety would keep its peppery little paws off my food thank you very much.
At first I wasn’t sure what the difference in the meal was but then it hit me that the mash tasted sweeter than usual. Immediately I became convinced that someone had mashed a doughnut into it and hoped I wouldn’t notice. Other than the slightly sweeter taste I had no evidence to support this theory, hospitals were not struggling with an epidemic of caterers with an uncontrollable urge to shove an iced ring into every dish, but that sweet taste was enough to have me convinced. It has been 9 years and yet I still think and worry about the doughnut that I am convinced was in my mashed potato nearly a decade ago.

Every waking hour between meals is consumed with food fears and often every sleeping hour is too. Not only does anorexia not live at the dinner table, it doesn’t live in the land of conscious thought either, and is well known to infiltrate and get its claws into the snoozetastic unconscious place known as “The land of nod”.
I have nightmares most nights, all of them with varying storylines, characters and background music, yet a lot of them have similar themes, one of these themes being food. I will dream that I have been held up at gun point and forced to eat an entire chocolate cake, before waking up and fearing that I did it for real and that I therefore have to go for X amount of time without food to make up for my behaviour. On many occasions I have woken up so convinced that I have eaten something that was actually part of a dream, that I have had to search the kitchen for evidence to prove to myself it wasn’t real. One specifically memorable dream involved me cooking and eating a gigantic spaghetti bolognese and the fear upon waking made me feel so sick that I had to go downstairs and check cupboards to see that all the pans were clean, the pasta wasn’t open and the bin was bolognese free, so I couldn’t have cooked and made it for real (apparently my brain believes I might unconsciously cook and eat a meal but draws the line at the idea that I would have washed up afterwards.)
I also dream about exercise and whilst some people have unconscious thoughts that lead them to sleepwalk, mine sometimes drive me to do sleep sit ups on autopilot so that I will wake up halfway through a set, stomach muscles aching, out of breath, wondering what the hell is going on.

For me then, having an eating disorder isn’t just about struggling at meals, it is about being constantly controlled and dictated to 24 hours a day 7 days a week, a voice that follows me no matter where I go or how unconscious I am, interfering with thoughts and my ability to function even when food is nowhere nearby. It is a nice idea to assume that eating disorders do just live at the table and that meal times are the only difficult times for sufferers, but to tell you the truth, when you have an eating disorder, that devil will stick to you like an unrelenting shadow.

Take care everyone x

EatingDisorderTable