I apologise for my silence over the last week or so. The housing association I rent my flat from have been renewing kitchens during the last financial year, and last week it was my turn. I have been looking forward to having a new kitchen for a while, we were supposed to be getting them last year, but as the date got closer, I started to become more stressed and anxious about the impending chaos, mess and strange workmen coming and going. What I had underestimated was the work involved in emptying the kitchen, and then putting everything back again (clean) afterwards. I am hoping by the end of tomorrow that everything will have a place, and the things I have decided to ditch will be delivered to the tip. I’m nearly there now to be fair.
In fact if I hadn’t managed to turn up for my Emotional Coping Skills course an hour early today, I probably would only have the tip run to do! Not entirely sure how I messed up so spectacularly this morning. Thank goodness for Costa at the hospital.
By the time the group actually started I had got myself in a bit of a state, feeling very anxious and agitated. I really just wanted to bolt but am trying to persevere with it, even though I am not terribly convinced that it is, or will be, of any benefit to me. I did a very similar course in the summer of last year, so don’t really feel like I am learning anything new and although I found it quite useful to manage my mood in the short term, it does nothing to address the causes of my extreme emotions in the long term. I have said to a number of people on different occasions, it is rather like sticking a plaster over an infected wound. It may cover the unpleasantness initially, but does nothing to address what is going on under the surface. Taking this analogy a little further, I sometimes feel my emotional damage will eventually cause me to die of sepsis. I’m slowly being poisoned by the hurts, fears, trauma and abuse of the past. These wounds to my soul need treatment. It was the attitude of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ that caused them to grow and fester unseen in the first place.
I was becoming increasingly angry in the group when another participant expressed how she was unconvinced about how the skills we are learning are going to help her, essentially to be told, ‘wait to the end and then judge’. I do feel it is a case of ‘this is the solution we offer, now who can we mould to fit it?’ It is not patient centred, it is intervention centred. It is the latest fad. It is a set of skills, therefore if a patient doesn’t find it beneficial, it is their use of the skills that can be deemed ineffective, rather than the skills themselves. Patient-shaming in the face of such severe cutbacks to services to individualised care is a sad byproduct of years of ‘streamlining’ mental health provision. I normally avoid politically-charged opinions, but having experienced having to fight tooth and nail to get suitable help in the last year, I am finding it increasingly difficult to stay silent.
Anyhow, I digress. After sitting in silence (but definitely not stillness!) for the most part of the group, when asked what I was taking away with me from the session, at first I struggled to think of anything. On second time of being asked, I managed to come up with, “How angry I am about so many things and how much I want to kick things.” I also realised in my agitated state, I had scratched a patch on my arm raw with my nails absent-mindedly. Great. Just as I was about to see my son, whom I’m not allowed to upset or distress.
Coming out of the toilet after the group, I got a message my CPN wanted to see me briefly. Then my taxi arrived while he is talking with someone else, and I had to leave slightly baffled whether I should be worried or what that was all about. Instant head-response says, “Sh!t, I’m in trouble!”
As today is my birthday, contact with my son was after school, rather than on a Thursday or at the weekend. My dad came round too, and it was great to spend some time with my two special guys, opening my cards and presents, eating pizza and chocolate birthday cake. A dear friend also popped in. As lovely as it all was, I noticed I was becoming tired and irritable by the time I had to take my boy back to the station. In fact, IBS was kicking in, too, and I ended up just dropping him off on the road outside rather than waving him off on the platform as usual.
Within an hour of being home I was loading the dishwasher, tidying up and getting ready for bed. I was so mentally and physically drained and could feel my mood slumping rapidly. In bed by 8pm on my birthday. Get me! Still, I will make up for it Friday when I am living it up in a hotel with seven friends on our Messy Girls’ Short Break!
Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with my psychiatrist and CPN (care coordinator). Feeling stupidly anxious already. Seem to live in fear of getting a telling off. I know I have been attempting to rationalise my impulsive behaviours recently, and on catching a glimpse of this reality from time to time, I am concerned about the person I seem to be becoming. I know my mood has been pretty unstable, and obviously this has had a huge impact on my actions, but I swing between the exhilaration of the freedom I am enjoying and the crushing shame of behaving so unlike the ‘me’ I know. It just leaves me utterly head-f*cked. And exhausted. In the last few days my mood has stayed pretty low and I have realised something else. I am willingly letting myself slip under the radar by not accessing support when I should. I have additionally identified I am now too fearful to contact the out of hours overnight telephone support, because of a number of difficult conversations with one particular practitioner. I am bottling up a lot more stuff than is healthy, and am becoming increasingly disassociated again. I struggle to cry, even it would be appropriate, I am just getting increasingly angry. About everything. And I want to kick things. Yesterday I punched a wall (actually not deliberately, surprisingly) but it felt really good. The urge to cut myself has been overwhelming, but so far I have resisted the urge. If it wasn’t for my son, I would have done it, I know. My attitude towards myself is shocking. Every time I question whether I am going to regret a particular risky behaviour, the same response puts itself forward, “Who cares?” No one else gives a damn so why should I?
Back on the subject of my appointment tomorrow I have also noticed I don’t dare have a desired outcome. I had become so accustomed to being disappointed by my previous consultant I am struggling to trust that things can improve for me. In fact I’m stuck in a rut of fear and mistrust right now. As soon as I start to trust someone with my feelings I immediately panic, terrified that again I will be hurt or rejected. I hate my own vulnerability and current lack of self-sufficiency. In trusting someone to help me, by opening up to them, I put myself in a place where I no longer have complete control and that scares me. Yet I know it is the way forward. If it wasn’t for the release blogging and tweeting offer me I would have probably had a very messy meltdown by now. Not that I totally believe that couldn’t still happen at some point anyway.
Tick, tick, tick. I’m on a very short fuse.