suicide

The Importance Of Triangles In Times Of A Mental Health Crisis

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 9 Comments

When you are going through what is known as a “mental health crisis”, everything feels like such a mess that you cannot even begin to start tidying it all up. Tiny jobs become momentous tasks, trying to survive an hour feels like trying to survive a millennium and it all feels completely unmanageable. Unhelpfully, being in the 21st century, the general busy non stop, non sleep, 24/7 side to modern life does not help matters (on the other hand there is the positive that, helpfully, we are not in the 16th century where, although it was less busy, you had a higher chance of being murdered by your husband if his name was Henry and he happened to wear a crown).
In simpler times your daily activities may have simply comprised of getting some water from your well, milking a few cows, doing a bit of hoeing out in the fields and then perhaps settling down by the fire with a nice bowl of homemade stew, (it is my understanding that in the olden days people ate nothing but stew). Nowadays however, the list of tasks one must perform to get through the days are endless.

Instead of walking out to a field there are specific buses you have to run to catch for work, computer programs that randomly malfunction and delete all the work you have done for the past week (something that never happened when “work” mainly focused on hoeing), specific coffee orders you have to remember for your boss to avoid being fired over a missed shot of espresso in their large cappuccino, bills to pay, TV shows to catch up on, appointments to make, social events to come up with excuses for, washing machines to fix, ironing to do and earphone wires to untangle (SERIOUSLY WHO IS TANGLING ALL OF THE EARPHONE WIRES WHEN I AM NOT LOOKING AND PLEASE CAN YOU STOP IT). It is exhausting and when in crisis, you need to delete it all and focus on one thing.

Triangles.

I am not talking your equilateral triangles, your scalene, or even your isosceles. I sneer at your Bermuda triangles, love triangles, even your 3D Egyptian pyramid triangles, for no triangle is better in a crisis than the great “Maslow’s Triangle” (toast triangles are a close second for being helpful in time of a crisis though, because you can have peanut butter or marmalade on them).

“What is this mysterious Maslow’s Triangle?” I hear you ask? Well I’ll tell you!

Basically there was once this psychologist named Abraham Maslow (I hear he was quite the dude), and he came up with this list of things needed to fulfil humans and reach “self fulfilment” or “self actualisation”, aka “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” (that is the official term in all the text books but I am calling it Maslow’s triangle because it looks like a triangle, that is a catchier name and it meant that I could sound smart in that first paragraph by talking about other kinds of triangle which are now irrelevant to this post…calling it this also gave me the opportunity to mention toast triangles which are tasty, so I went with it and now here we are).
These needs are pretty much all Maslow thinks you need to become a whole and happy person and who knows, he may be right, but right now it doesn’t matter if he was right or not because to be honest, survival is what we want and aiming for his idea for self actualisation is a bit of a stretch at this moment in time/any moment in time during a mental health crisis. As I always say, we need to learn to waddle before we can fly.

“What does this mysterious Maslow’s Triangle look like?” I hear you cry! Well I’ll tell you that too (and may I say you are asking a lot of questions today…)
So here it is:

YayMaslow

As you can see, all of these “needs” are prioritised in order of importance with the most important on the bottom and the least important/ones that will make you happy but are not essential for purely physical survival, on the top. It is like a pointy version of Jenga, you have to have enough of the blocks to make up the bottom or else it doesn’t matter what is going on at the top, that pyramid is going to fall and there will be sand EVERYWHERE.

In times of crisis, I think people (by which I mean I), try to keep going with all the busy things of modern life that make up the entire triangle and in doing so get overwhelmed, miss out some of the more important things, and consequently make myself/my health worse. For example my magnifying glass and entire life focus is pretty much entirely zoomed in on the second from the top level, “esteem needs”, and because I hate myself oh so very much and thus have very low supplies of the “esteems”, I forage for these like a bear who is late in preparing for hibernation, without caring about anything else because in my eyes it is not as important. In my head, I need to feel worthy of and deserving of life before I can do all the things people need to do to actually survive…and yeah…it doesn’t work like that, hence why my pyramid has fallen, leaving me in hospital, in crisis, and trying to pick sand out of all the crevices (like I said, it gets EVERYWHERE).

In every situation I will sacrifice the bottom sections as I claw for that esteem level. When I am worrying about something like my blog/don’t feel productive/like I have accomplished or achieved “enough”, I ignore all other levels of needs until that achievement feeling has been somewhat reached (I say somewhat because, as I am sure many people can relate, no matter what I do in anything, it is never enough). Need to write a blog post but don’t have any time? Better cross “sleep” off the to-do list. Haven’t drawn that pesky diagram of the triangle you need to insert into this blog yet? No food or drink until that triangle is drawn! Not posted on Instagram and need an “outdoorsy” photo but it is freezing outside? Get out there and Valencia the hell out of some greenery even if you freeze to death in the process!
That is exactly what I do, what I think a lot of people do, and that is why mental health crises often get worse and spiral, because we are focusing on the wrong things when trying to survive and get through the day. Self actualisation is great and all that and we can work on getting to that eventually but if you are in a crisis, the most important thing to do is get your Maslow’s triangle out (and toast triangles if you are feeling peckish), and focus all your energy on the bottom levels. No “I should be doing this” or “I need to be doing that”, no, you are in crisis, it is time to prioritise, remove the stress and simply focus on basic survival. Only when you have got that covered can you start building all the other things on top and if you don’t, even if you work really hard at the achievement stuff, eventually it is going to crumble and remember what happens when pyramids crumble…SAND EVERYWHERE.

When you are in a mental health crisis you need to cut yourself a nice bit of slack. If it is necessary, take a mental health day off work to go to an appointment or get some rest, because without the rest you won’t be able to stay at work very long anyway. It is necessary to focus on keeping yourself hydrated (BUT NOT TOO HYDRATED REMEMBER THE SODIUM) and get yourself a cup of tea before sorting out all the ironing (which in the long run is not necessary at all…I don’t see ironing on the triangle…), and it is necessary, nay fundamental, to nourish yourself and give yourself a good supply of food at meal times before worrying about all the other things on your to-do list (I REALLY need to work on this one). In times of mental health crises it is OK to strip things back and take a step back from the things at the top of the triangle so that you can look after yourself and build your way back up to that self actualisation tip. Focus my friends, on the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities, forget about your worries and your strife, I mean the BARE necessities aka the bottom layers of Maslow’s triangle (I think a bear even sang a song about that whilst dancing around in a jungle with a half naked child in orange pants but that might have been one of those weird hallucinations I have been having lately…they are wherever I wander…wherever I roam!)

So, why is it important to focus on triangles in times of mental health crisis? Because my dear friends, in times of crisis, you need to allow yourself to simply focus on looking after yourself, keeping yourself physically well and safe so that you are strong enough to survive that crisis and work your way back up to the top of your Maslow’s triangle with the fun, self actualisation stuff going on. Forget the other shapes, hold onto your triangles, and if those triangles happen to be made of toast, eat them with some jam and a nice mug of warm tea.

As always, take care everyone. x

CoolTriangles

Psychiatric Unit Themed Halloween Parties And Why They Are Always A Bad Idea

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 16 Comments

So tomorrow is Halloween, and though not exactly my favourite holiday as I may have mentioned in my Halloween themed post last year (…ahem…Why Halloween Can Be Difficult For People With Mental Health Problems…) it is a time that a lot of people celebrate and get rather excited about. Some even have Halloween parties with houses decorated to fit in with some Halloween style theme from haunted mansions to circus tents and unfortunately, insane asylums.
Being actually in an insane asylum for Halloween this year then, you would think I would be in the ideal position. Why decorate a place to look like a mental ward when you are on a real mental ward? My job is done. I don’t have to worry about a costume this year either as simply getting out of bed and putting my normal clothes on will qualify me as an accurate representation of a patient in a psychiatric unit. I don’t even have to bother with face paints or drawing spider webs on my face with black eyeliner which then doesn’t wash off for three months, meaning I have to go to my best friend’s wedding with an arachnid adorning my cheek. Think of the time I will save…I can use it instead to have a nice cup of tea with my feet up. Bargain!

Rather appropriately, Halloween this year falls on the same day as ward round on our unit, aka the scariest event of the week (because you have to sit in a room with a lot of intimidating professional people staring at you making scary decisions, not because there is always a ghoul wailing in the corner…he is there all year round and we are all pretty used to him by now…his name is Derrick.) Other than that spooky coincidence however, there is, rather disappointingly, nothing very Halloween like about Halloween in a real life psychiatric unit which might disappoint some people, but it is important to note if you are planning a party with the “asylum” theme, because trust me when I say this is not the ideal setting for your festive frivolities.

From that opening, you may very well assume that from here I am going to send this post in the direction of a serious “why you shouldn’t set a Halloween party in a psychiatric unit theme” rant, highlighting and raising the awareness of the fact that these parties promote stigmatising ideas of mental health problems that are already far too prominent in society. You may think I am about to get all up in your faces about people needing to be politically correct, plead for you to see us patients as mere troubled folk rather than fodder for a costume idea, but you know what, today I am not even touching any of the politically correct important serious issues with mental hospital themed parties this year. Nope, instead I am going to raise awareness of the far more important fact that, aside from being insensitive and offensive in a million different ways which I should probably talk about but won’t because others have no doubt done it before me, celebrating Halloween with a “mental hospital theme” is simply impractical and will not involve any of the fun games and activities people associate with Halloween.

Think about it, what are the common things people do to celebrate this time of year? Number one on the agenda: pumpkin carving.
Pumpkin carving? I am supposedly in the ideal setting… but how the hell am I supposed to do that? Do you really think I would be allowed a knife in here? I don’t even have the wrap around belt for my dressing gown! Do people have any idea about things that are and are not allowed in a psychiatric unit? You can’t go carving root vegetables with machetes when you are in hospital and if you can’t do that then a Happy Halloween party is pretty much impossible. I mean you can try but a Happy Halloween without a pumpkin? Forget it.
Anyway, where am I and all of these “crazed deranged loons” supposed to be getting these pumpkins? In the supermarket? In my homegrown special organic vegetable patch at the local allotments? I can’t leave the ward!
Unless Cinderella’s fairy Godmother is planning on turning up any time soon, pumpkins are another no go item (although admittedly pumpkins are not specifically mentioned on the list of things staff search your bags for upon admission…they are more focused on things like knives and razor blades…shiny silver things mostly…I have a theory that all of the staff are secretly magpies…).

Aside from pumpkin carving then, what else do people do at Halloween to celebrate the holiday at parties and create merriment? Ah, apple bobbing!
Surely that is possible in a mental health hospital? Surely a party in a real or with a mental hospital theme could celebrate via that classic game? NOPE.
Again party planners, think about the impracticalities! I am on an Eating Disorder ward for goodness sake! Food is scary and hard enough as it is without adding the obstacles of a black eye due to a violently bobbing Granny Smith and the potentially fatal risk of drowning mid meal time. Do people think staff allow patients to go submerging their heads underwater like that? OF COURSE NOT (that is unless the staff have a chance of patients retrieving something shiny for them from the bottom of the pool of water…Magpies the lot of them I tell you.)

How about a Halloween party ghost walk? Sorry. No ghosts.
What ghost would decide to haunt a mental hospital? If you get the opportunity to spend eternity in the location of your choice are you really going to settle on “psych ward” as your idea of a forever home? Of course not! If you ask me it is far more likely there will be ghosts haunting more enjoyable places like a beach in the Bahamas or the local pub. Me? Well, keep it on the down low because I don’t want to give everyone else ideas and end up with my chosen location being overcrowded with the wandering souls of the deceased, but personally if I get a chance to come back to hang around earth for a bit longer, I have my eye on Disneyland. No queuing for Thunder mountain and a chance of bumping into Mickey Mouse every day? Sign me up good Sir! Ok, when it comes to the specific mental ward I am on, we do have Derrick in ward round so I guess I could try celebrating with some kind of ghost walk but like I said…he isn’t really that scary (or clever to be honest. Like I said nobody with any sense would decide to spend eternity in a mental institution. Why is Derrick here you ask? Yeah, turns out he is lost. Broken sat nav. Was aiming for a Broadway Theatre so that he could watch all the musicals he wanted for free every night. It is pitiful really. Sometimes I try to cheer him up by singing Cabaret and doing a bit of a tap dance but alas it just isn’t the same.)

Seriously, throw any Halloween party activity idea or game at me and I will be able to prove my point that realistically, trying to play that game in one of the top rated theme setting type places of a mental hospital is simply not a good idea. Playing with a spooky pet rat or a creepy horror movie style jump scare of a black cat leaping around every doorway? Yeah, good luck getting that around infection control. Pin the bone on the skeleton? WHAT DID I JUST SAY ABOUT SHARP OBJECTS AND STAFF LIKING TO CONFISCATE SHINY THINGS. Huddling up to tell scary stories at midnight? Cancelled. Your anti psychotics will have you asleep by 9pm before you have even had a chance to say “Once upon a time on a dark and stormy night”.

See what I mean? Aside from all that serious nonsense about being politically incorrect and damn well offensive, setting your Halloween party in an insane asylum is simply not a good idea because it is impractical when it comes to celebrating with any of the usual activities. Of course don’t let that stop you, if you feel ultra compelled to promote the stigmatising stereotype that people with mental health problems are terrifying lunatics to be feared, then be my guest. Just thought I should warn you that if you do that you really aren’t going to have a very happy time if you are doing the setting/theme accurately, aka without the obligatory activities pumpkin carving, apple bobbing and other Halloween classics. My advice for your Halloween party theme this year? Go with the haunted mansion plan or vampire lair. Trust me, as well as being less offensive, those ideas will provide a lot more fun…I hear some vampire lairs even come with their own poisonous bats, with no infection control getting in the way and neat vegetable patches supplied with organic, perfectly round pumpkins, ripe for the carving…Hoorah! Happy Halloween!

Take care everyone x

HalloweenInvite

Things You Will Need When You Are Admitted Into A Psychiatric Hospital

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 16 Comments

Before you move house, you need to pack your life into a van. Before you go on holiday, you need to pack suncream and the inflatable dolphin into a suitcase, and before you go out rambling in the wilderness, you need to pack a picnic in a picnic basket (preferably one of those wicker ones with a gingham tablecloth and lots of little boxes inside…one must never go out rambling unless one is accompanied by a picnic).
There are however some things that are a little less fun to pack for, those being admissions to a hospital or inpatient psychiatric unit, which is nowhere near as much fun as a picnic (and involves 100% fewer wicker baskets…By God I love a wicker basket).

When I decided to write a blog about this topic I was therefore going to call it “Things you will need to pack for an inpatient admission” but as I have started writing I realised that sometimes when it comes to mental health hospital admissions, they are not planned like a two week cruise around the Mediterranean, and there is seldom time to “pack”. Even when an admission to a unit has been planned, you are going to be so nervous about it the night before that you forget to pack anyway, so instead here I thought I would offer a little help to all those who find themselves in that situation by providing a list of things that you will need during an admission to a mental health hospital.
It doesn’t matter if you are making a list of things to pack the night before or simply things you now need to start begging family/friends/online delivery people to bring to you because you were not prepared and only came onto the ward with a one way train ticket to Exeter (trust me, it happens…). Whatever the situation, this blog post is here for you, so lets get on and start this fabulous list of things you will need during an inpatient admission to a mental health hospital (things you will need if you have fabulous taste like me that is…)

BASIC LIFE THINGS: You may think that this is a rather obvious logical point to make but remember, mental health admissions are stressful times where “obvious logical things” turn into “I like ducks”, and you would be surprised by the number of people who turn up to hospital without a toothbrush (warning, this may make teeth angry and cause them to phone the tooth fairy emergency helpline for immediate assistance. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) So yeah…I am not going to list all the miscellaneous nonsense you may use every day, but as a general note to start off with, when you are in hospital, you are probably going to need a lot of the general nonsense you use everyday (toothbrush/toothpaste/underwear etc.)

MOTIVATION: Of course I mean this point in the emotional sense of the word, but when you are isolated in hospital it can be easy to forget why you are there and what you are doing in this inpatient bubble, so practical pieces of motivation to get you through are also essential. Things in this category can include photos of friends or family, motivational books about people who have been through recovery for your disorder, quotes or even little prompts to give you a little boost when your brain refuses to do the boosting for you (e.g taking something like a list of things you want out of life to have at your place at the table on an eating disorder ward to help at meal times). I have known a lot of people to go all out with motivation and to bring enough cards/quotes/photos to decorate their entire room into a cave of inspiration (if that is allowed on your unit and you are not in a stripped room that is), so if that would help you, do that. Personally though, I prefer not to put up too many decorations because I am always so hopeful about leaving that I refuse to accept the idea that I should settle because I may be there a while…

THINGS TO DO: When you are in a psychiatric hospital it is likely that there will be things going on. On the week days there may be things like therapy groups, 1:1 sessions and opportunities for visitors, but aside from all of those things and the “spare hours” that will be taken up by things like crying hysterically, you are still going to end up with a fair bit of free time, especially on weekends when it is quieter and a lot of patients may have leave. Keeping yourself occupied therefore is going to make time pass quicker and distract you (a bit) from what is going on. For example on my ward there is a current craze with origami and people are making paper cranes faster than I can count (I tried to get into Origami too and managed to unfold one of these aforementioned cranes into a normal square piece of paper again but apparently that “isn’t the point”). There are also patients who knit and live in giant balls of wool, people who colour with crayons, draw, and there are patients like me who get through the day either by writing or by tossing reality out of the window and reading to get lost into alternative fictional worlds (This week I read “The Secret Garden” a book I highly recommend for times in hospital when you cant go outside and see a real garden yourself.)

COMFY CLOTHES: The first time I ever packed for an inpatient stay, I put all of my nice going out clothes into my suitcase and took them to the hospital ready to co-ordinate my outfits every day so that I would “look nice” for the other patients. I also wore mascara to a place I was highly likely to start crying in upon arrival. I was an idiot.
Listen, I get it, people like to look nice both for themselves and for other people but let’s be real, a psychiatric hospital is not a fashion shoot (cameras are not allowed), and after five minutes neither you nor anybody else is going to care what anyone looks like because you are all too busy being caught up in fighting your head demons and managing general anxiety. Even if you are not worried about what you look like or what people are thinking of your sense of style, “nice clothes” are simply not practical. When you are in hospital you are going to want to be comfy. Imagine you need to curl up on your bed for a good sob or find that you are so anxious that you start having panic attacks and problems breathing. Maybe things have got a little bit out of hand and staff need to carry you somewhere, carry out a quick blood test or give you an injection to calm you down. All of those things are going to be a hell of a lot more pleasant (as fun/pleasant as being injected in the rear can be at least), and a lot easier/more comfortable if you are wearing comfortable clothes rather than a corset and, skinny jeans.
Don’t get me wrong, if you want to dress up because it makes you feel better/more human then feel free to do so. I know a lot of patients who still like to wake up, wear a fancy skirt and put make up on in the mornings because that is what works for them, makes them feel less “mental hospitally”, more normal and lifts their mood (I am not one of those people…) However, even the people with the nicest most fashionable clothes will need a onesie and a lot of baggy trousers for “those days”. I would also add slippers to this both because they are comfy footwear and make a nice slip slop sound as you walk down the corridors. Trust me, stiletto heels are not a good idea (they tear the evacuation slide…or am I getting psychiatric hospital attire confused with ideal footwear for planes…)

TACTILE/FIDGETTY DISTRACTION THINGS: When people get anxious, their bodies get filled with adrenaline, and to calm down, that adrenaline needs to be released. Often this can happen via what the professionals call “unhealthy coping mechanisms” and that is not ideal because…well…it is unhealthy, and therefore you need other practical tools you can use to keep your hands busy releasing adrenaline whilst the rest of you remains safe. These things are different from the “things to do” category because they are not things that require any particular concentration, brain power or coherent thinking, these are for the times when your head is so loud that you cannot remember the alphabet and just need something to cling onto. I personally have what is called a “Tangle” (this weird thing that can be bent into all different kinds of shapes), and a fidget cube. Other things people may use include stress balls, squeezable spikey rubber balls, fidget spinners and putty. Sometimes things like a pebble to hold or little pebbles to pass from one hand to the other can also be helpful, but I will leave that up to you to decide because some people may not find those items to be safe to be around in a stressful situation.

And now to the final category, the most important thing you will need for an inpatient admission to a psychiatric hospital…

SOMETHING TO CUDDLE: Enough said. I don’t care how old or cool you are, everyone needs a cuddle once in a while/all the time so pack a damn teddy bear for the love of God.

So there you go! All the things you could possibly need to survive an inpatient admission in a psychiatric hospital. Obviously feel free to take other things as well, but as a basic guide I would say this list is a good one to start with.
I should point out before I finish here that as well as a list of things you will need to take to an inpatient unit there is usually a list of things that you should not take (like sledge hammers…mallets are ok though), so on the whole as a final tip, when you are packing, stick to things that are softer and squishier than a pick axe. If you are currently in an inpatient admission or are approaching one I hope this list helps, and if you are not then thank you for coming along for the ride anyway! I am thinking of and supporting you all, wherever you are, you are not alone in your fight.

Take care everyone x

InpatientPacking

The Mental Health “Spot The Good Things” Challenge

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 7 Comments

This week, when I sat down to write my blog post, I was determined to try and make it about something positive. Over the past few weeks I have gone on about drowning kidneys, an exploding appendix and suicide, and there is nothing fun to read about there. Admittedly, this is a blog about mental health so things aren’t going to be all fun and games (except for on Wednesdays when we play snakes and ladders…I say we…it is just me…talking to the green snake on the board…nobody else ever wants to play…not that I mind…*Sobs in a corner whilst rolling dice pathetically*).
Still, I have lovely people reading my blog, and as much as I want to talk about all that deep important stuff, I would like to think that people enjoy reading it a little bit, and enjoyment is seldom found when one is talking about exploding organs.

Therefore, determined to write a chirpier post, I sat down today, opened my laptop, placed my fingers upon the keyboard…and wrote nothing. I so desperately wanted to say something happy, but when you have depression that is quite the challenge, and suddenly, as the word challenge arose in my marbleless brain, I became even more determined to succeed. If there is one thing I love nearly as much as penguins and Helena Bonham Carter, it is a challenge (as long as I win of course), and so it was that an idea came to me for a challenge that I would like to invite you all to join me in today (it is a team challenge so we can all win don’t worry.)

I think one of the most frustrating things about living with depression isn’t just the suffocating sadness and inability to feel positive emotions, it is the fact that those things feel so infinite and you cannot imagine an alternative.
If we knew our suffering was temporary, depression would be an easier ride, get through the storm to reach the nice happy place kind of thing, but depression doesn’t let you think that, it tells you that it is here forever and that because you cannot feel or appreciate good things, those good things do not exist. This, as recently proved by an intense and vigorous lie detector test on the embodiment of depression itself, is a lie.
Just because you have no apples left in the fruit bowl, it does not mean that all the apple trees in the world have perished, and even if those apples are incredibly difficult to find and maybe you can’t even taste them when you find them, they are growing somewhere.

In Harry Potter, the Dementors that guard Azkaban/suck people’s souls out/generally float around in shapeless black sheets that Gok Wan would surely improve by accessorising with a nice belt, make you feel like you will never be happy again, much like depression, and the only way to get them to go away is to whip your wand out and throw animals at them made of good things (J.K.Rowling explains it better but that is the gist). It was this that gave me the idea for this challenge, the challenge being to write a list every day of at least three good things to look at as a reminder that good things do exist when depression is sucking the life out of you.

Now you may be thinking “Katie, this is not an original idea, I have seen people make lists of things that they are grateful for or things that make them happy and it doesn’t work.” Well no, in my opinion those lists often don’t work, but this is not one of those lists.

I myself used to keep a list of three things I was grateful for every day and it has been an activity suggested to me many times over the years in my battle with depression. However, as great as it is to feel grateful about things (and believe me when I say I really am), I found that writing those things down sometimes made me feel worse. For example if you are having a really bad day and then you write that you are grateful to live in a house with running water, you can be pleased about that yet then become frustrated and angry at yourself for being so lucky as to live in such conditions yet STILL not be happy. It is like when people say things like “I know you are sad but just be grateful that you don’t live in North Korea”, and of course I am grateful that I don’t live in North Korea (I hear the weather is terrible), but reminding someone of another person’s pain doesn’t take their pain away and is more likely to make their pain worse by making them feel guilty about complaining.

Similarly, I have struggled with the “three things that made me happy today lists” because when you have depression, a lot of the time you simply CANNOT feel happy, even if you know you should. Someone can give you a hug and you can mentally register that that person is a lovely person who is showing you kindness and that it should make you happy, but the logical identification of “this is good” never reaches the emotional sensors that are being held captive by depression, so you never FEEL that good. You could watch a film that you know is your favourite and feel totally numb, hear a joke that is funny yet be unable to laugh, and writing down things you should feel happy about but don’t is yet another miserable and fairly disheartening activity.

This list involved in this challenge however, is not a list of things that you should be grateful for or that you should feel happy or any other emotion about. It is not subjective or about feelings at all, so you can do it even when you are as numb as an anaesthetised turnip, because you are writing down the things that are objectively good, not to make you feel better, but just to remind you that they can exist.

After my post about suicide, I received such lovely comments reaching out to me with hope and kindness, and though it didn’t cure my depression, it served as a reassuring and helpful reminder that that hope and kindness is there. People told me how they or friends and family had been in similar situations but had made it through and though I may not be able to see or believe that possibility for myself right now, it shows that that possibility DOES exist, and for me, that was a very good thing. When I went to sleep that night I still had no apples in my tummy, but I knew that somewhere there was an apple tree growing, and right now, knowing that is enough.

Now, as someone who has been doing this challenge for a week now, I will admit that it is incredibly hard (hence the word challenge) because depression is so good at the whole black and white worldview that “EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE”, and finding good things on some days has taken me hours. Some days I have even written my list and thought screw it I don’t even care about those good things, and a lot of the time you won’t, but again it doesn’t matter if you care or not or even if you hate all those good things, this is not a list about how you feel, this is simply a reminder to the objective factual part of you devoid of any emotions.

Things on this list don’t have to be big at all, you don’t have to win the lottery or suddenly gain the ability to fly, it can be ANYTHING that is objectively good even if it doesn’t affect you.
For example one day I was out shopping and saw that a popular shower gel was half price. I do not buy that shower gel so the half price offer was going to have no impact on my life, but I knew that objectively that offer was good for someone and I liked to think that someone who used that shower gel would come into the shop later, appreciate that good thing and maybe even make more good things by spending the money they saved on a hot chocolate to take home.

Maybe you were so depressed that you weren’t able to leave the house that day, or week or month, maybe you couldn’t even leave your bed, but still the key is to force yourself to think of something good even if you have to kind of make it up or get really creative. Even if you were under a duvet and didn’t see the outside world, you can be pretty sure that the sun rose that day and objectively that is good because somewhere a nice hedgerow enjoyed an afternoon of photosynthesis (unless it rained and was cloudy…which is also good because then the hedge had a drink…).

One day, one of my positives was the fact that after taking one of my medications that is absolutely vile, I only wretched uncontrollably over a bowl four times. Why is that good? Because the previous day I had wretched at least five times, and today I already know that one of my positives is that I did a big sneeze (I flipping love sneezing).
Admittedly a lot of the time during this challenge you are going to feel like you are sieving for gold and only finding dirt which you are then painting to fool yourself is gold and maybe that is true, but I still think it is important because even little bits of dirt painted like gold are somewhat of an argument and challenge to the overriding emotion that EVERYTHING is dirt.

So that is my challenge to you if you struggle with depression or indeed if you are reading this blog at all. If you can think of three things that actually made you feel happy then do that, but if that is a bit of a stretch right now as it is for me, just write three things that are scientifically objectively good, even if you feel absolutely nothing positive about them whatsoever. Then at the end of the week when you are feeling useless and like you have just wasted another seven days staring into the abyss, you will have 21 tiny examples that things DO exist outside of that abyss. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe them now, the main thing is that you see them, acknowledge them and simply know that they are out there. Seeing good things isn’t as good as feeling them, but if seeing is believing, then my dears, we are at least a step along the way.

Thank you so much to everyone who has been sending me endless and wonderful support at this really rough time. You are all of my good things and I hope that this week, this hopefully less morbid post/challenge can partly repay you for all of that kindness and be a little support and help for you too.

Take care everyone x

GoodThings

Is Suicide Selfish?

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 26 Comments

Whenever the topic of suicide is discussed, several adjectives will magically appear depending on the speaker’s opinion on the issue. Over the years I have heard it described as “tragic”, an act of “desperation”, something “incomprehensible” to those surrounding the victim, something “unexpected”, and all of these are valid words to use. One of the adjectives that I hear come up that I strongly disagree with however, is the idea that suicide, and thus the people who “commit” suicide, are selfish.

Obviously I cannot speak for everyone who has ever struggled with suicidal thoughts, attempted or committed suicide, but for me, when I am feeling suicidal, it is actually the idea of continuing to live that feels like the selfish option (I am not saying that this idea is right and that therefore people should start killing themselves all over the place…DON’T DO THAT…I am just being honest and saying how it feels.)

Depending on how well you know me, whether you are a casual blog peruser, an online pal or friend/family member in real life, you may or may not be aware that I am currently in what all the professional psychology people around me may call, “in crisis”, although I personally prefer the term “in one hell of a pickle”. “In crisis” might be more professional and accurate a term, but if I am going to be in the state I am currently in, I would at least like the silver lining of naming it something a little less frightening than “in crisis”, and a little more related to the process of preserving some kind of food by anaerobic fermentation in brine or vinegar. As you can see I am all about finding the fun where I can/describing myself in ways that make people think of cheese sandwiches.

I don’t want to freak anyone out or make anyone panic by what I am going to say in this post and I want to reassure everyone that I have a hell of a lot of people on my pickle like case at the moment. Professional people keep phoning me (not that I answer because I am terrified of phones but they try anyway), I am having appointments all over the place, meetings are being held, I am never left alone and my mum has even been sleeping in my bed a lot to keep me safe on the really bad nights where I am really out of control. Therefore whatever I say in this post, please REMAIN CALM AND KEEP YOUR ARMS AND LEGS INSIDE THE VEHICLE AT ALL TIMES.

So, I don’t really know what exactly has sparked off my predicament and has caused things to get worse than they already were (it isn’t just the recent appendix thing…I actually wrote this blog post before all that and am editing this bit in now…hello!), but truth be told, a lot of the time I have been feeling like an outsider watching my own life and my actions in it.

You know when you have been reading a book for a really long time, flicking through the pages without really noticing until you suddenly stop and realise that you only have one chapter left. When you read that last chapter it sort of feels different to all the chapters that came before it because you know that this is the end. It doesn’t matter how many cliffhangers or revelations are being whipped out by the author, you are holding the book and you can see there are only a few pages left. It doesn’t matter if there are still mysteries to solve, if the monster hasn’t been vanquished yet, you know it is the end because you can FEEL it and see it just as you can see the handful of pages that is left.

That is how I feel when I look at my life. I feel like a reader on the outside of my story knowing that of all the mental health crises I have had before, this is the last one, the one the story is going to end on. No matter how hard I look, I cannot see any pages past this, any way around it, this time it is all too much, the pain is just too intense. Sometimes when I have been in difficult situations and have been extremely suicidal in the past I have been able to see it as something that I will eventually get through, I might know that it is impossible to feel that any emotion is forever, yet somehow this time it feels different. I feel different.

I am having a dramatic breakdown practically every day and rely on medication most nights just to keep me safe. Being conscious is currently so unbearable and overwhelming that I have been napping for hours each day just to get through them, the small tasks I set myself for the day have mainly been reduced to “just try to keep breathing” rather than anything productive on top of a task that most people take as fairly mandatory. Even that task however is getting harder by the day, and to be blunt, I physically cannot do “this” much longer.

I am putting all of my effort in and trying so hard, but there is only so much effort, only so much that one person can physically take before they crumble. Every time you drive over a bridge there will be a road sign telling you how much weight that bridge can take to warn you that if your vehicle is over that limit you might want to find an alternative route. It isn’t because the bridge gives up or isn’t trying when something that heavy passes over it, it is because it physically can only withstand so much.
Due to all of this, my family, friends and professionals are putting a LOT of effort in to try and help me through it and I appreciate it more than I can say. I can hand on heart say that I would not be here if it weren’t for the insane amount of support I am getting from the people around me, yet that is what is prompting me to think that actually the unselfish thing would be to just get on with it, end things and stop them having to put in so much of their time.

Even if they love me, even if they want to help, in concrete, factual and unemotional terms, it would be a lot easier for everyone if I wasn’t here anymore, and rather than suicide feeling like the selfish option, it is forcing people to carry on putting all their efforts in to keep me alive that feels selfish. When I am struggling with suicidal thoughts and the feeling that that is the only option as I am now, I am not thinking “screw everyone else I am in pain and I am going to end it whether they like it or not”, I am thinking “I really think this is the only option. The best thing to do for ALL of us.”

Like I said I am so incredibly grateful for all of the love and support I have been receiving lately, but at the same time I can’t help but feel incredibly guilty. My parents are constantly on tenterhooks (I don’t know what a tenterhook actually is but they are certainly on them), they are scared to ever leave me in a room by myself and they are called into my room increasingly frequently by me screaming in my sleep due to some nightmare. My therapy team are having to make extra appointments, extra meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page, texting me, phoning me, and generally suffering under an increased work load simply because I am unable to manage right now.

I have amazing and wonderful friends taking the time to visit me at my house when I do not feel able to leave it, they read my texts at 4am, tell me they love me when all I can see is hatred, they send me letters in the post, cards, even parcels containing amazingly wonderful things like books about penguins who have a tendency to worry a lot (if you have never heard of the “Worried Arthur” books then good God you need to look into them because they are FABULOUS), cuddly penguins and a myriad of other wonderful things that I am so grateful for and touched by, that saying thank you doesn’t do justice to what I think.

Think of how much effort that is for people to be worrying in the middle of the night, reassuring some lunatic who will only worry about the thing they are being reassured about again in half an hour even after great advice, spending money on presents and letters. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW EXPENSIVE POSTAGE IS? A FIRST CLASS STAMP IS 65p…AND THAT IS JUST FOR A LETTER. For a parcel you are talking £5.70 and again, that is only if the parcel comes from within England! If it is from another country it is even more than that! You can’t just whack a crown on your head, snap a selfie, print it and stick it to a letter pretending to be a stamp, (trust me that doesn’t work…not that I have tried it myself…ahem…*removes crown and smiles sheepishly*), you have to pay if you want the postman to carry your parcel to someone, and that is then more effort for the postal service! I AM FORCING THE GOOD HONEST WORKERS OF THE ROYAL MAIL TO CARRY PARCELS OF PENGUINS TO MY HOUSE. They could be at home with their families! And £5.70 for a parcel stamp? You could get six two litre tubs of vanilla ice cream for that price and you would have 18p left! You could get 1120g of chocolate buttons and still have 30p left jangling in your purse! I AM DEPRIVING PEOPLE OF ICE CREAM AND CHOCOLATE BUTTONS. DEAR GOD I AM A MONSTER.

As you can see then, rightly or wrongly, when suicide is the only option I can see, the only way out of this utter hell of a brain situation, it is not because I am selfish and don’t care about how that might affect other people. Indeed it is the benefit my disappearance would be to everyone, that is actually one of the arguments my mind throws at me in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep and I am too afraid to close my eyes incase I see the things that make me scream.

Like I said, I am not saying in any way that I think it is selfish to not kill yourself and I am NOT ADVOCATING SUICIDE IN ANY WAY AND WOULD ADVISE ANYONE WHO IS IN A SIMILAR SITUATION TO REACH OUT FOR HELP. If you do not have a therapy team and family around you I will put a link below to some of the charities out there who can help you, I am just writing this post to try to explain to the people who may think that people who commit suicide are selfish how it feels for some people who really are struggling with suicidal thoughts.

If you are one of the people who is currently supporting me I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I am really sorry that I am putting you through all of this stress, worry and effort. I promise I am trying. I promise I am looking for pages that could make a next chapter. I really hope that I find them. I wish I could be better for all of you. You deserve so much more.

I love you all so very much.

Take care everyone x

SelfishSuicide

Phone Helplines:

Samaritans – National freephone number: 116 123. They are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

SANEline –  National number is 0300 304 7000. They are open 6pm–11pm, 365 days a year.

The Silver Line – If you are over the age of 55, this service is open 24 hours a day 365 days a year and their number that you can call from anywhere in the UK is 0800 4 70 80 90 (freephone).

CALM – Helpline for men experiencing distressing thoughts and emotions. Their national number is 0800 58 58 58. Open from 5pm–midnight, 365 days a year.

 

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

Why It Can Be Scary To Take Medication For Mental Health Problems

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 8 Comments

Recently, my psychiatrist prescribed me a new medication to help me with some of my mental health problems. I am on various medications already with a variety of different purposes and have been for some time, but in terms of what these new tablets are “supposed to do”, the aim is for them to reduce some more of the anxiety that my current medications are allowing to linger long after they have done their jobs. Ironically though, despite having had this packet of anti anxiety medication on the kitchen worktop for over a month, I am too anxious to take them.

I think being scared of taking medication for a mental health problem is extremely common and to be fair it would be weird if people weren’t a little afraid of whatever tablet their doctor has recommended them to take. A big reason for this is of course the long list of side effects that comes in any box of medication from Calpol to Morphine, although when you think about it there are no medications that have side effects, there are only effects.
Tablets do a lot of different things and it is the scientists/elves (I am not sure who makes medicine these days but I am sure it is one of the two) who decide which effects to put in the “Purpose of tablet” column and which go in the “side effects” column, aka the effects that are harder to advertise. For example, for some people Paracetamol can have the effect of giving them yellow skin so that effect is categorised as a side effect because that effect is less easy to advertise than the more attractive “this will help take your head ache away” effect (unless of course you are dealing with someone who wants yellow skin so that they can look like a Simpson, in which case I suggest body paint which is probably a lot safer).

I think mental health medication is scarier to take than “normal” body medication though, because there is a fear that it will fundamentally change you as a person, your characteristics, interests and identity. When you take a physical medication that may turn your skin the colour of a freshly picked banana, there is a separation there between you and the skin. Ok the skin is your skin, but aside from holding all your body parts together your skin doesn’t affect who YOU are and no matter what the colour of your skin, you will be the same person you were before and will be able to react and interact with friends and family in the same way as you did prior to your sudden transformation into a Simpson. The skin is just the irrelevant wrapping paper on the more important gift. If you wrap a new video game in white paper and then colour it yellow, you will still have the same present inside.
With mental health medications however, they are designed to interfere with how your brain works and the side effects of that can feel more personal. By changing your mind, it feels that they are changing an integral part of you, so that one second you could be a lover of Julie Andrews dancing round your kitchen belting out “the hills are alive” and the next you are on some uncontrollable rampage to burn every copy of the Sound of Music and Mary Poppins
I think we can all agree it is infinitely less stressful to take a tablet that might change the colour of our wrapping paper rather than one that risks turning the games console under the Christmas tree you have been waiting months for, into a sardine which in comparison is about as much fun as…well…a soggy sardine.

Indeed, I know from experience that medications can change fundamental parts of my personality. When I was a teenager there was one medication that practically turned me into the incredible hulk. I was filled with rage all the time, a rage without reason, and I became violent and out of control. I am really ashamed of a lot of things I did during that time of constant fury, as it changed my character so dramatically that I ended up doing a lot of things I wouldn’t normally do like kicking through a glass door.
As well as medications that have changed my character, I have experienced medications that have simply had mental side effects that were unpleasant such as one tablet that pretty much knocked me out and left me sleeping twenty four hours a day. I guess it did its job of reducing the number of OCD rituals I was carrying out, but that was only because I was a comatose zombie who could barely lift a duvet let alone shower for several hours.
I have also been on a medication that gave me hallucinations (if the police are reading this I would like to make it clear that these tablets were prescribed to me by a medical professional and were not in any way purchased in a dark alley from someone in a rather large coat). This was yet another unpleasant side effect, and every day I found it even harder to tell the difference between what was real and what wasn’t, what had happened in reality, and what was just a figment of my imagination. Luckily, during this time I was in hospital so there were nurses around constantly to help me distinguish between the two or sit with me through the scary ones, and though a lot of that time is a blur, looking back I find it easier to separate events that actually happened during that time from the more fantastical fictions written by my dodgy brain chemistry, based on what things are most likely to be true. For example nowadays I reason that it was most likely a hallucination when one of the nurses danced around my bed waving an assortment of Hawaiian shirts but obviously real life when I was awarded the Nobel prize for literature and rode around the country on an ostrich…I just wish I could find the prize money…and the ostrich…

It is also scary to take a mental health medication because the same medication can affect two people in completely different ways so it is impossible to hear of someone else’s experience with a particular tablet and know what to expect when you swallow it yourself, so you sort of go into it blind like some medication Russian roulette. Will you continue dancing around the kitchen singing “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” or will you wake up next day to a smouldering pile of ashes in which you can vaguely make out the image of Julie Andrews dressed as a nun.
Indeed I have friends who have taken the same tablets as I have but with completely different results, and the medication that turned me into the Incredible Hulk (a medication I was swiftly removed from), is the same medication as the one that my friend has been taking for years because for her, the effect is far more calming than the urge to kick through the conservatory door.

With this medication I have been prescribed most recently though, the fear I have isn’t actually one that is related to the fear that it will change my brain chemistry and me as a person. To be honest things are so difficult at the moment that I wouldn’t give a curtain wrapped Von Trapp child if the medication changed me as a person (please forgive me Julie Andrews).
No, this time, the fear is more about the physical side effects listed in the instruction manual, most specifically the one that says “possible weight gain”. I know that whenever medications put this as a side effect it generally means that the tablets may increase a person’s appetite, consequently leading them to eat more food and gain weight because of that, rather than directly from the medication itself, so as someone with an eating disorder who eats the exact same rigid meal plan and amount every day without taking heed of hunger cues, that reason for weight gain would not happen to me. However again, as someone with an eating disorder, the fear of risking a random weight increase because of a tablet, even if I don’t change my diet, is terrifying. If that were to happen I would feel totally out of control, more anxious and likely to restrict my diet more than I already do. It is a difficult thing to balance, on one hand I could take this new medication and it could help me with anxiety, and on the other it could simply make things worse.

I know that medication is not always the answer, neither does it solve all your problems (a topic I really want to come back to sometime if you are willing to stick around as a reader of my blog…I will give you cookies…), but right now I do think that I need to give this medication a go considering the fact my brain isn’t responding to any of the other therapies/attempts to sort it out. In a few weeks time my psychiatrist will ask me how the new medication I have been taking for the past few months is going and at the moment I will have nothing to tell him because all I have done is look at it and I can wholeheartedly confirm that staring at the tablet has had no therapeutic benefit to me whatsoever. I really am determined to try it…at some point…possibly…definitely…I think…It is just the case of taking the first one and getting over that hurdle, cracking out a pot of maple syrup – going with the grand advice that a spoonful of sugar will make the medicine go down and not my weight go up…Good lord, where is Mary Poppins when you need her eh?

Take care everyone x

WheelOfFortune

Mental Health Problems In The LGBTQ+ Community

/ bornwithoutmarbles / 10 Comments

This is just a little note to say that this post mentions incidents involving self harm so if that would trigger you, I thank you very much for joining us today but maybe go and treat yourself to a good cup of tea and biscuits instead. Safety first pals!

I once had a psychologist who, during a talk about my mental health and how broken my brain is, asked me if I thought any of my issues “were because of being gay”. I was appalled.

“How dare you!” I replied. “What homophobic nonsense is this? I am deeply offended! You think people who are gay must also be mad because nobody with common sense would be queer? For-shame! A plague unto you and your ancestors! Watch me flounce out of this room waving my rainbow flag in a fury! Watch me flounce I say!” (please note that this was what I replied in my head…in reality I think I just squinted my eyes a bit and formed a quizzical expression).

At the time I didn’t see what being a member of the LGBTQ+ club, had to do with my mental health at all, but after a little bit of discussion, research, and no actual flouncing, I realised that this psychologist was on to something.
Turns out, rainbow folk in general show higher levels of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts than heterosexuals, so seeing as it is Pride month in the UK this month, I thought I would use this post to think about why that might be. It’s like that old saying, “if you are gay and you have mental health problems, it is your duty to mush those experiences together and write a blog about it.”

In my experience,I wouldn’t say that for me personally, being a member of the LGBTQ+ community has been THE trigger that led to all of my personal mental health problems, although I know that for some people, it can be.
Often I think it can be things like homophobic bullying and external discrimination that are the reason people who are LGBTQ+ might go on to suffer problems, and in that respect, I have been very lucky.
I have never been bullied for my sexuality, my family have always been very accepting (my mum to the point where she is basically a walking gay pride parade all year round and always gets very excited/becomes a fan every time any celebrity comes out as a homosexual), and I live in a country/time period where it is safe for me to be “out” without fearing arrest.
The only discrimination I have ever had has been the odd homophobic slur shouted out of a car window at me as I was walking down the street, but this has never really bothered me as I don’t have that much respect for the opinions of people who shout abuse out of car windows… I might admire their ability to project with their vocal chords out of a moving vehicle, but when it comes to their judgements on who I fall in love with, frankly, I don’t give a damn.

However being LGBTQ+ has certainly affected me because of discrimination, it is just that all of that discrimination came from my own head and in the early days of my queerness, led me to feeling very ashamed.
Nobody in my external surroundings was telling me I was weird or shouldn’t be gay, but my head was, and consequently I was scared to tell anyone about it incase they felt the same. Indeed I decided that rather than tell anyone, I would start a grand “make Katie straight” mission so that nobody would ever have to find out. You may wonder how on earth one goes about “de-gaying themselves” as surely to do so is impossible, and in that assumption, you would be right. Little old me however, was convinced otherwise.

The idea came to me whilst watching a television program which funnily enough, was about a straight woman seeing if she could undergo treatment to turn her gay…Good lord they show some weird things on TV these days…
Anyway, in the program, this woman was told by some mad scientist to use this machine that would give her electric shocks every time she thought something heterosexual in an attempt to recondition the brain to stop thinking those things. The theory was that if your brain experiences an electric shock every time you think about something, it will stop thinking about that thing (either that or your hair will stick out all over the place forevermore and you will run up one hell of an electricity bill).
Unfortunately, I did not have an electric shock machine. I did however, have access to a lot of sharp things around my household, and I think you can guess how things went from there without me providing any more detail. As part of my “make Katie straight” plan, I set about trying to literally cut the gay part away from me, a futile pursuit considering “gayness” is not an extra body part or a long fingernail you can clip away at until it is gone. Unsurprisingly, that plan didn’t work, but it did get me into a cycle of self harm that I couldn’t get away from and still struggle with to this day.

Admittedly, my struggle with self harm is not about being gay anymore, but the whole situation introduced the idea of self harm as a punishment, a coping mechanism to try and remove guilt or shame I was feeling about anything in life.
Rather than being a punishment for being gay, it has become a punishment for things like bad marks on a test at school, or saying something mean in an argument, and I actually used to keep a little notebook in my pocket throughout the day to keep track of my “crimes” so I knew how many “punishments” I deserved later.
At first I was only doing a few things “wrong” a day, but because I was scared to talk to any of my psychologists about it as that would involve telling them how self harm started, and though I was ok with being gay, I didn’t expect everyone else to be. Consequently the notebook of punishments escalated and got so out of hand that after a few months, every action was considered a crime deserving of punishment, from using a “large blob of toothpaste” (which would use up the family tube sooner and lead to money needing to be spent on a new one), to “not smiling well enough at my friend in the corridor at school”.

It wasn’t until my mum found some blood soaked clothing in my bag which I had been trying to smuggle into school to wash in the school sink before she could see it in the laundry, that the whole self harm as punishment thing came out, and even then I wouldn’t tell people how it had started.
By the time I did tell people that I was gay, I had already been in therapy for 8 years or so and had been through two admissions to psychiatric hospitals, always keeping that part of my identity hidden. Like I said, being gay has never been a cornerstone in the almighty Jenga tower of my insanity so I don’t think that keeping that part of me a secret severely hindered my treatment. I was still able to talk openly and honestly about the depression, OCD, BPD related problems and anorexia in therapy, yet although it isn’t the source of my mental health problems, when I finally came out to professionals it did serve as some kind of relief. Whether it had been important to OCD or not, I always had to watch what I said in sessions incase I accidentally let a possible clue slip like “I LOVE HELENA BONHAM CARTER AND I WANT TO MARRY HER IN A BIG GAY WEDDING WITH A BIG RAINBOW CAKE BECAUSE I AM A BIG GAY MYSELF”. Being able to talk openly without worrying about that certainly made a difference and made me feel more connected to my therapists, because I think if you are ever keeping a secret from anyone, you are automatically reserved around people even when that secret isn’t being discussed.

As you can see then, compared to some members of the LGBTQ+ community with mental health problems, being queer hasn’t had anywhere near the impact on me that it has on other people. In essence, being gay is the vanilla extract in my giant cake of insanity rather than the flour of which the majority of the cake comprises.
That said there are a lot of LGBTQ+ folk out there who struggle so much with their identity either due to judgement from outside sources or internal judgement on themselves, that being LGBTQ+ can be a direct cause of certain conditions like depression or anxiety and it is for these people that we need to talk more about this kind of thing in the hopes that they will be able to seek help themselves. If shame about your identity leads you to having mental health problems, it is likely that shame will prevent you from seeking help for them, and as we all know that is just going to make things worse.

In this post I do not want to do a shoutout to all the LGBTQ+ people out there who are hiding in the bushes and tell them to run about telling everyone about their identity, because I understand that for some people in certain families or countries, that might not be safe for them.
All I want to say is that if you are struggling and feeling like there is nobody to turn to, you are not alone and I can promise you that there are people out there who understand (I am one of them. Hello, it is nice to meet you. My name is Katie and if you bring me penguins we can be best friends). If being LGBTQ+ is causing mental health problems and it is not safe for you to speak to people around you, there are hundreds of LGBTQ+ mental health charities out there for every country (I will link a page recommending some existing in the UK below), and if you can, I would encourage you to reach out to them for support.
I am not going to demand you just get a rainbow flag and feel proud because it is pride month, as I understand it is not as easy as that, but I do hope to offer some sense of reassurance that being LGBTQ+ is NOT something anyone needs to to be ashamed of or punished for, no matter what that voice in your head tells you.

Take care everyone x

RainbowBlog

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/lgbtq-mental-health/useful-contacts/#.WV0XKlKZPVo