Wisdom

I am currently painfully teething a wisdom tooth. Wisdom is painful. I sometimes feel my depression is somewhat pandora’s box like; that it is the price I pay for greater awareness, those bouts of creative energy I used to get before the drugs ‘stabilised’ me in beige monotony, that feeling that I am seeing more of the world, that there are secrets I’m let in on, that I see things differently and perhaps deeper than others. If ignorance is bliss then is this what comes of a life seeking knowledge? Always wanting to find out more, to question? As a child I drove my mother mad asking ‘why?’ Every second and I still feel that insatiable need to question and delve deeper.
I over intellectualise things, seek meaning and connection, am I just deluded? Would I be happier if I never wanted to know? Though now I’ve opened that gate I can’t close it. Am I the cat? Too curious?

World Mental Health Day

Apparently Yorkshire Pudding gets a whole week.

Anyway I haven’t updated for ages, my mind has been blank I seem to be in an almost perpetual state of  having a bit of fluff bounce round my head instead of a brain.

I am not sure this is a price I want to pay for ‘stability’ feeling like a zombie, dead inside and beige.

 

I want my mind back. I am rotting away doing nothing. I am getting seriously fed up with every oppourtunity turning into nothing or knowing I can’t do things becuase of my health. Getting fed up of not having the ability to use my mind, seeing as it’s turned into something resembling baby food of late and as usual the concerns about it being down to my medication are pretty much ignored. Sigh.

 

On a happier note; thanks to everyone who’s subcribed, I noticed a few over the past few weeks. It really means a lot that people enjoy my rantings/outpourings of crap.

Brief Cold Turkey Encounter

I got rather freaked out by missing one day of my medication. I couldn’t sleep, when I did I had nightmares that were so vivid it was more like hallucination and I woke up in a cold sweat. Eww. I was seriosuly contemplating phoning my parents and crying down the phone and begging them to miss thier weekend away becuase I felt I wasn’t safe on my own. Very pannicy , tense and weepy.

Thankfully I managed to calm myself down a bit, take my newly replenished medication and go back to sleep for a bit.

All after one missed dose. This terrifies me. I feel like I’m an inadvertant drug addict, that if anything should happen and I can’t get my medication I’m screwed, this is after a day, after longer I’d be a wreck. I’m worried that I’ve signed up for a lifetime of strong medication, I was first put on prozzac as a teenager and I’ve been on various things since. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this, I’m not sure it does me good, but withdrawal symptoms are hellish it’s not worth even considering coming off without a supportive Psychiatrist, mine has told me I am not stable enough to even think about lowering things, maybe he’s right. Or maybe the drugs are making me madder, it’s hard to tell when the list of side effects is oddly similar to the list of symptoms of your illness (how do you tell if you;re depressed becuase of anti depressants or becuase they’re just not working?).

So yes, must be super organised in future and not develop a lack of medication induced moment of madness when home alone, which just adds another level of panic re: creaky house noises, wind, funny sounding cats in the street, omgi’mcrackingupican’tcopei’mallalone

The death of childhood

Losing my wonderful Granny has made me realise that I am also severing the ties to childhood. I no longer have grandparents, I am no longer a kid who gets money in an envelope or a chocolate selection box.

I also keep thinking about my childhood home, which got demolished a few years ago.

I know a part of me doesn’t want to grow up, I don’t want to loose that childish spirit of inquisitiveness, query and imagination. I don’t want to be ‘sensible’ and start wearing beige ( I bought into last years ‘Camel’ trend which is a worrying first step, especially as beige does not suit my complexion one bit) and talking about ‘targets’ and whatever.

I know I’m stubborn (get that from my Granny methinks) and it’s making me miserable not fitting into this world but goddam I don’t want to. I don’t want to become a lobotomised worker bee fretting about the ‘bottom line’. I still insist the bottom line is humanity, not profit.

Is there any space in this world for a mis-shape?

I love you Jarvis. I also feel very old indeed that I remember Top of The Pops when it had that logo, indeed that I even remember Top of the Pops.

Service Users, patients, clients, choice, smoke and mirrors

There’s an interesting twitter debate going on via @Rethink_ on what language to use for mental illness, those who suffer with it (do we suffer or what? ).

It is an interesting debate and I don’t think we should all be called ‘nutters’ ‘loonies’ etc. by the health service but what infuriates me more is all this ‘choice’ bollocks and being a ‘service user; blah blah disguising the fact that access to said services is piss poor. I don’t think ‘Ohh I can choose where I go (which was a choice between, somewhere near and somewhere far away so I like 90% of people chose the place nearest me, duh)  and I get a little password to go on a website, now I feel so much better about having to wait 6 months!’. It’s not that i dislike choice, I dislike the choice rhetoric being used to add a sense of false ‘empowerment’ to patients/service users/clients/customers/frustrated people, choice being used as political ammunition and being held up as a beacon of wonder in the NHS when the real problems are glossed over.

I have had to wait months at a time for ‘talking therapies’, despite all my medical professionals knowing I have suicidal thoughts, self harm issues etc. and them professing to worry about me, acknowledge my treatment isn’t working at really. That is normal, I know of someone who still had to go private for counselling after being hospitalised for a suicide attempt. Not that it’s the Drs fault, all they can do is refer and guess at how long it’ll take.

Someone could call me Fartarsewankerscumbitch or whatever and as long as I could be assured of some care being accessible when I need and for as long as a I need it; I swear half my problems come from being left high and dry after my allotted number of therapy sessions are through regardless of how I feel. Knowing your treatment is for a set amount of time adds anxiety and pressure to be ‘O.K’ within the said time limit and an anxiety about being left not O.K and having to go through the whole thing again in the future; which is less than productive when anxiety makes your depression worse. They say it’s a ‘revolving door’ system, perhaps it is as I currently feel like I’m stuck in it going round and round like a silent screen comedy caper.

Death, life, whatever

I really should update more, writing is good therapy supposedly.

Anyway I have a new counsellor I’m more than halfway through my allotted 6 sessions of NHS time, which is apparently sufficient to sort out a whole life time of fucked uped ness. Budgetary concerns trump humanity.

My new counsellor is, quite frankly, a bit crazy. In a good way, I like him. He says I am intelligent and feel out of place because I do not buy into the ‘robotic’ nature of society, I resisit. Which is all very well but how do you deal with that when you do feel so out of place? When it feels like the world operates on a set of rules that are morally abhorrent to you? Add on always being picked on for being ‘the wierd kid’ (even by supposed friend’s in thier 20s who saw fit to chastise me for my choice of eco friendly washing powder and ethical bank, no wonder that friendship ended, badly.) feeling alienated and wondering if you’ve been put here by mistake. And a whole adolescence full of shit hitting various types of cooling devices.

I’m  not sure I’ll ever feel I fit in anywhere so the key is acceptance I suppose. I’m working on it, I’m trying to meditate again; very interesting when the voices in your head are ranting on at you, I’m beginning to worry if these are more than just an inner monologue and maybe I should be worried about it, especially when your inner monologue is telling you it’s god and you should ‘look at the bread’ (am I going even crazier or do I just have an overactive imagination and hypochondria, is it ok to have longer conversations with your inner monologue? can it even be a monologue if you converse with it?). Though on the plus side ‘god’ is nice to me not like the other inner monologue folks who seem hell bent on my self destruction. Maybe I should check my meds side effects again. Or maybe I’m just a hypochondriac with an overactive imagination. I’m trying to be more connected, more holistic.

My Grandmother, my last grandparents, died on Sunday. I was there. I have never seen anyone die before, it was oddly subdued. It was peacful which I am glad of but it just seems such an anti climax really, the way death is always seen as this big scary looming thing, not something which just happens so quietly and with little fuss. So needless to say my emotions are more confused than normal. Loss is a strange thing, especially of someone who was so close yet at the same time so far. For the last few years she suffered dementia and didn’t really know who I was or where she was or what year it was  so in some ways it felt like she was already gone. Yet inheritance is an odd thing; I look so much like she did when she was younger, I have inheritied the crazy hair; which reminds me of Heathcliff, Yorkshire side of the family you see; plus it’s dark, crazy, coarse and unwilling to be tamed. Again a sign I read too much. My Granny once pulled out a lock of her hair from god knows how many years ago that she had kept in a drawer (I am  also loathe throwing things away incase they are ‘useful’ one day)  and held it next to mine to compare. It also feels like another part of my childhood dying; the house I grew up in has been bulldozed and is now a block of flats which makes me sad when I think of it. I suppose childhood was the last time I was actually properly ‘happy’, and even then I’m not sure, it fees like I’ve been dysfunctional my whole life. As Elizabeth Wurtzel puts it in Prozac Nation, it’s as if I was broken on the assembly line.

The whole thing is just so confusing, trying to ‘re programme’ myself to love and respect myself , not to self destruct and hate myself, whilst questioning the whole god/afterlife/death/cosmos/vague ‘spirituality’ thing. Also questioning the whole ‘can I really re programme myself?’ if depression is a chemical imbalance can I really just wish it away?

 

Collaspse

I’ve finnished the course at uni and have now duly collpased. I suppose now I know my body can’t cope with as much as I think it can. Though things are getting better now I’ve had a few days doing sweet FA/yelling at the Prince of Persia. The little voices and feelings of frustration and wanting to escape my own body /self destruction and general insane brain swirling thoughts that pop up when I’m tired and stressed have gone (almost) , the aches are still here, I feel like I’ve done some amazing workout; I have done 30 mins on wiifit and my pain au chocolate habit whilst on the course has now tipped me into Michelin Man midrif territory.

I also got an appt with ATOS who will probably tell me I’m fit for work becuase I can turn a tap and am mentally astute enough to question to ethics of a private company making millions from taxpayers money by doing a half arsed job, with many of thier initial decisions being overturned at appeal thus costing even more money; whilst genuinely ill people are denied the pittance of state support they get by way of  a ‘medical’ assesment by said incompetent private company, that ignores the evidence from their own doctors, all for ‘saving money’. Government logic.

Blue Sky Thinking

I’ve been doing this graduate employability course and I was struck by how eerily similar the corporate waffle nonsense speak is to the crapper end of the CBT continuum. That certainty and the belief that you can make your life all utterly wonderful if you just follow a few little exercises and spout off some acronyms. It’s not that I find this stuff devoid of any use ( I have learnt a lot, though mainly from more practical, less acronym heavy areas) but it doesn’t look at anything in depth and is thus limited in scope so much, yet this is seldom acknowledged.

It also made me think about one of the best books I have read in the last year or so ‘Smile or Die’ about how ‘positive thinking fooled America and the world’.

It all seems a bit emperor’s new clothes, it’s all so shallow and falls apart fast when applied to real life with all it’s unpredictability; yet it seems to be spreading all over the world . It seems somehow incongruous no one seems to have noticed it’s a load of bollocks but instead they spend millions on implementing ‘strategies’, ‘solutions’ and coming up with silly phrases like ‘blue sky thinking’ that have little or no meaning. Or does everyone know it’s bollocks but is too scared to admit it and instead we’re admiring the wrinkled dangly bits of an idiotic monarch?

Practical advice on what sort of questions they ask in interviews and ow to make a good c.v, excellent. Presentations on ‘creative thinking’ complete with checklists on how to check if you’re being creative , less so.

Though I now know for sure (even surer than I was before which was pretty bloody sure) that I have no desire to enter the ‘business world’ and indeed find the entire culture of it morally suspect, even abhorrent. I fear I am in the minority questioning how we can have a whole afternoon on ‘commercial awareness’ (another vague phrase no one can agree on a meaning beyond ‘being aware of things that are commercial’ but it is apparently what everyone looks for in employees) yet not once was corporate responsibility mentioned, or ethics or morals or anything in that vague area.

On the plus side I am far too tired to be depressed and have had no life apart from said course. Apart from thinking of using rude words as acronyms:

With the ‘ARSE’ technique you can easily develop your ideas/self/entire world outlook/cat in four simple steps!

Assessment – first assess the situation

Reflection – take some time to reflect, take a step back and think

Strategies – what can you put in place to rectify any problems?

Enlightenment – see how much you have gained with this new insight! How can you apply these insights?

I think with that I win at ‘creative thinking’, If you want me I’ll be outside the box.

Deja Vu

A.K.A “Not more bloody forms”.

So after an initially hopeful session of therapy where I started (please note the word ‘started’ here) getting into the issues around my depression and how far back they go in my life, how I felt as a child and all that, I’m back to ‘working on behaviours’ and filling in (or not as the case may be, it’s technically ‘homework’ so it can be done at the last minute as is proper for such things) little forms about mostly inconsequential areas of my life.

I am going to give this a try again. I have to , I have no other choice. I just wish that I could have some form of therapy that allowed me to talk about things, that tried to get to the roots of all this, as opposed to more sticking plasters that will eventually peel off and leave a sticky mess. This happened before, I had a session or two though ‘ohh this is good, I’m being brave opening up, talking about stuff’ and as soon as that teeny little gap opened up it got closed again as it all went filling in daft forms tastic. If anything it’s far more frustrating to see that brief glimpse and then have it cut off again than it is to never see it. I’ll probably get discharged again at the end of it as unless I try to sever my my own arm off in-front of someone I’m obviously ‘O.K’ and don’t need more money spent on me. I read a statistic about how a high percentage of CBT patients end up getting discharged at the end of their teeny tiny allotted time scale of treatment only to wander back in again a year or so later feeling much the same. I can see that happening to me. All in the pursuit of ‘outcomes’ or whatever, being able to fill in a form saying someone completed this course of and as they haven’t yet killed themselves or been caught trying to gnaw off their own leg they’re ‘fine’.

From what I can gather I’m pencilled in for about 6 more sessions of less than an hour. That is what I am being offered for a problem that leaves me currently unable to work and if I’m brutally honest, may leave my life at risk. A problem I have been ‘treated’ for for the last 5 (or is it 6?) years with little or no lasting improvement. In short something that’s a major, chronic health concern but may have less treatment time spent on it than a stubborn verruca.

Maybe I should write the forms in blood? Just for a laugh.

I’m considering going private, which as a someone who doesn’t really agree with private healthcare and is also utterly skint, is a scary prospect.

As an aside, my spell check did not know the word ‘verruca’ yet the computer’s dictionary did. Perhaps I am not mad but the world is?

Mental Health Services – the outpatient story

They’ve been in the news, mostly focusing on in patient care. Whilst this does need highlighting I’d like to have a rant about out patient services, or the complete and utter lack of them.

I’ve never been in in patient care, I was threatened with it once as a teenager but I can barely remember those years and ironically I wasn’t really crazy then (they saw my M.E/CFS as psychological, so I was sent to the psychiatrist from hell), they just thought I was and now I am actually going crazy everyone seems much less keen to actually treat my craziness.

My experience of outpatient care can be mostly described in one word :

min·i·mal

–adjective

1.

constituting a minimum: a minimal mode of transportation.

2.

barely adequate or the least possible: minimal care.

No 2 specifically.

I was formally diagnosed with depression (as opposed to the false it’s not M.E it’s depression mess form my teens) about 5 or 6 years ago. In those 5 or 6 years I’ve been on about 3 different anti-depressants, none of which have really worked and some of which have sent me crazier, or just not worked at all. My doubts and queries about my medication have rarely been given an answer beyond the monosyllabic, I have felt for the last year or so that my latest medication, venlafaxine (which has had the dosage raised again and again, like all the others) is leaving me emotionally dulled and deadened to the extent that it is starting to add to my depression symptoms. All I’ve been told is I am not well enough to consider lowering the dose as I am still ‘very depressed’. I need to be ‘more stable’. It’s like talking to a brick wall.

I have been referred to psychotherapy twice. The first time was useless. I had 16 sessions of CBT which I didn’t find very helpful and when I came to the end of my allotted 16 sessions I was told that was it regardless of the fact I was still as depressed as ever. It took me about 2 years to get referred for a second time; with one memorable false start of referred for counselling at my GP’s surgery only to be told a few weeks later I wasn’t eligible as I was seeing a psychiatrist and was thus too ill. That counselling wasn’t for ‘people as depressed as me’. After asking the psychiatrist and GP about 20000000 times again the psychiatrist (not my regular guy, interesting)  referred me to some ‘improving access to talking therapies’ thing. About 6 months or more after I got that referral I had my first appointment. It seems like it’s CBT again, which I have told everyone I didn’t find helpful. Though on the plus side the guy seems nicer than the other one and said there were other options available should I need them.

My appointments with the psychiatrist last about 5 minutes on average, I say I’m still depressed, go over my feelings, say when I was hurt myself or felt suicidal it all gets noted down and nothing happens. I raise the odd question it gets ignored or I just get told to go away.  I had one good one hour or so session about 5 years ago where I went over things in depth, but no more since as it was an introductory type thingy-ma-bob.

I am just given pills and sent away. I am not getting better, if anything I am getting worse. No one seems to care.

Beyond mostly ineffectual pills or short courses of CBT it seems there is nothing anyone can offer me.

The treatment I found most helpful, when I thought I might be getting somewhere was when I saw a clinical psychologist, I had more than one long session where I could talk in depth (one hour is woefully inadequate for a long history of ‘shitty stuff that fucked you up’) but that was arranged through university and I graduated last year.

I feel pretty much left to get on with it on my own.

It’d be nice to have someone who listens to me and my concerns, to not be fobbed off with more pills that don’t seem to bloody work; it’s the same pattern over and over. I get a bit better, it fades, the dose gets raised with little or no improvement till I plateau or even get worse, I can’t go any higher on the dosage so my medication gets changed and it starts all over again, or I just get stuck asking questions and being ignored. Not to mention the good few months of the horror that is withdrawal and changing over of anti-depressants , which I why I won’t just stop taking them as I am often tempted too, it’s too fucking hard to come off them without doing it properly, If I miss even a day or two I go ‘cold turkey’ (or more accurately hot, sweaty, dizzy, nauseous, headachy and roller coaster emotion turkey).

I spend more time starting at the fish in the waiting room than getting anything that can be described as ‘care’.