I have a lot of headnoise. All the time. It’s never quiet in there, except when I’m sleeping – but I can’t really appreciate the quiet whilst unconscious.
It started in my teenage years – I liken it to background or ‘white noise’ – just a sort of noiseless buzzing, movement, or static. Sometimes it’s more a feeling than sound.
Over the years, and with more and more unfortunate life experiences/stresses, this evolved into a muffled noise, as if someone was having a conversation in another room. I just accepted and ignored it, as I did with my tinnitus, thinking if I allowed myself to focus on the noise it would begin to irritate me.
About two years ago, rather abruptly, the wordless conversation became proper voices.
There are three types of dialogue in my head:
Inner monologue – what everyone (hopefully!) has: the inner voice you consult and ponder with, deciding such things as what to have for lunch or imaginary arguments with people you don’t like from work.
Bonus rad picture of me and cat!
People voices – these are the voices of people I have recently encountered, but it’s not that I’m remembering their conversations; instead, their voices are used to offer a stream of random, irrelevant, and sometimes malevolent dialogue. I cannot communicate with these voices, and they are very much ‘inside’ my head, as opposed to external sound often associated romantically by the media with psychotic illnesses. My at-the-time psychiatrist asked me to record what the voices were saying as they were becoming bothersome, but I was trying not to pay too much attention to them. This is some of what they said:
14 November 2013:
“You need to tell them” (7/8yo son of my boss)
“Everything” (child I was working with)
“It was on his back” (another child I was working with)
“I’ll get you” – (male co-worker I didn’t like)
21 November 2013:
“He’s just put that there” (child I was working with)
“Because I wanted to learn a lesson” (another voice)
The psychiatrist noted that it was like they were finishing each other’s sentence. The strange thing is they don’t sound as ominous as the words they speak – they come across as jolly and friendly, so I don’t usually notice what they’re actually saying – it just becomes frustrating when I want to go to sleep.
Seb – Seb is the loudest and the closest to being an external noise. When he speaks I will stop what I’m doing and pause, momentarily unsure if the noise is real or not. I’m not sure why his name is Seb; I just ‘know’ it., just like I know he has black hair and blue eyes. I very rarely hear from him – mayhap once or twice a year – and he says things that are totally irrelevant and disconnected from the situation: at one point he said ‘let’s clean up in here’ when I was in my bedroom. I looked around, but there was nothing to clean (or nothing worth cleaning, maybe!). I’ve written in my dairy that he said something while I was in the shed making jewellery, but didn’t write down what he actually said.
Basically, I don’t have any recent art to decorate my post with…
None of the latter two voice types can hear me or ever reply back, they just make it super difficult to fall asleep with all their babble.. I just try to not pay attention to them or allow myself to stress about the noise, occasionally popping a small dose of Quetiapine to help me nod off. They become louder and more frequent the busier and more stressful life is at the time, which makes sense.
One of the reasons I love work so much is because it gives me a break from all the noise – for 7 hours a day I get a mini-holiday where I’m totally focused on my work and planning what I’m going to do next. I have no bad thoughts or memories when I’m in front of a classroom; I’m 100% present, and it’s just me and the kids. I still need the weekends to recharge, but I much prefer to be at school. Perhaps I’ll talk about how awesome this is another time…
This post was more a factual piece than a vent – I just remember doing a heap of googling years ago to try and find out if other people experienced internal voices, as opposed to external. Maybe someone will google me and find me at least a tiny bit useful?
Another random image to make this post more exciting. All hail spacefish!
WARNING: SEMANTICS-RELATED ARGUMENTS. This post is not my usual not-so-serious style.
“I’m a little bit OCD.”
I find these statements incredibly frustrating.
I understand there is a spectrum of symptoms and severity for these labels, but I feel comments like these are often said by people who have an aversion to germs, dirt, clutter, and/or disorder that can still be considered reasonable and rational; for example, liking things to be organised a certain way is not at all in the same league as scrubbing off your skin due to an incessant compulsion to wash your hands.
(In addition, OCD is not only restricted to preoccupation with cleanliness or order, as it is often colloquially referred to.)
Is it more socially acceptable to only be ‘a little bit’ of some mental illness? There’s a sense of stigma to this idea, as if admitting the solid, complete title of an illness is something to be ashamed of. I feel that casually relating an illness to a preference of value, such as liking things to be neat, misidentifies and trivialises the experiences of others.
Being only ‘a little bit’ of something could act as a defensive flexibility in a situation where another person applies prejudice to mental illness labels – ‘Oh, I don’t really have OCD’ or ‘It’s not that bad’. People shouldn’t have to feel ashamed for something they cannot control. Imagine if this shame was applied to other physical ailments, such as a cold, cancer, a broken leg, diabetes…
“I’m a little bit schizophrenic.
I’m a little bit bipolar.
I’m a little bit psychotic.
I’m a little bit anorexic.
I’m a little bit suicidal.”
An illness is not a person; we are separate entities, and must remain objective when considering them. The causes of an illness and how that affects perceived shame could be another discussion, but for this blog I would like to keep an objective perspective and focus on the illness without the source, as oftentimes an illness will come into being without any controllable cause.
Having an illness does not make you a bad person. With regard to mental illness, sometimes a person’s mood, personality, or sense of reality (psychosis) may be compromised, but if you were to take that illness away, would that person still behave in the same manner? People do ‘bad’ things and make regrettable decisions, but judging the moral character and ‘good’ of a person, in my opinion, is multilayered and more complex, and less black-and-white.
I have an illness, but I am not my illness. I understand that other people prefer to describe themselves as ‘I am X’ due to the frequency/severity of their symptoms and I respect this as it is a matter of personal experience, but it does bring up an issue of the separation of illness and person.
There is no ‘normal’, just an array of varied human experience and a bell curve portraying the state of society’s ‘average’, where the average is usually seen as an acceptable state of being.
With respect to mental health, we’re all on a behavioral and emotional spectrum, but that spectrum develops into a label when things become harmful.
So, I think this post is going to be a little difficult.
I’ve never been a particularly tidy person – at one point I was banished to the spare room for a few years because my parents thought my bedroom was too messy too often, and that I didn’t deserve the nice big bedroom.
I mean, that’s fair enough, but there’s a little more detail to that story, which I’m not focusing on in this post.
Anyway.
I’m an acknowledged ‘sprawler’ – my workspace at both home and school is usually in ‘controlled chaos’, meaning I know where everything is, but other people who observe my desk would most definitely not. I’m fine with things not being in perfect order; I’m OK, most of the time, with some clutter and rubbish here and there. Usually I’ll get a fancy for cleaning and tidy up every few weeks, but in recent years I’ve learnt to acknowledge the state of my environment as an indicator of my mental health. I think that not being a perfectionist stops me from being so upset when things aren’t perfect; I won’t get let down if I don’t care about things.
Sometimes my inside gets onto the outside: my head will be messy and buzzing and restless. It’s during the times when I am really, really low that the mess inside my head sprawls out into my physical environment. It took me a long time to connect the two, but I now realise that as soon as my house (usually my bedroom) starts to become uncomfortably untidy that something might be wrong.
I was – and still am – ashamed of this. I think I took this as a ‘before and after’ photo during a motivated clean. I lived like this for a few months.
Sometimes it sneaks up on me, as it did last year. I was living alone so there was no one to annoy with my untidiness. I wasn’t working for a couple of months, was stuck in an unknown and undirected state of being – without a job, without a determined future – and one day I looked around from my broken mattress on the floor and realised I was apathetically laying amidst and rubbish pile. There was a something-week-old takeaway container of mouldy, half-eaten curry by my head, stinking up my shoebox-sized flat; I hadn’t washed my dishes in over a month and was using the same single plate, cup, and bowl, giving it the occasional rinse, but not worrying too much at the hardened gunk stuck to its surface. I started getting creative how I served food, often using old packaging, such as a plastic wrapper or old cardboard cereal box, as a plate; I used take-away chopsticks (which I actually enjoy anyway) because it was too hard to get the dried food off my knives and forks. There was rotting food in my sink, numerous bags of rubbish I was too exhausted and unorganised to take outside (I ended up taking a total of seven hardcore rubbish bags outside under the cover of darkness – about 3am – so the other people in my building didn’t see the sheer amount of trash I’d accumulated), containers of off food, and old, half-used and expired milk cartons I kept telling myself to empty and throw away, but never did. I could barely open my front door because there was so much stuff in front of it. I couldn’t see the floor from all the empty packets, containers, cutlery, dirty clothes, and pieces of food building up around my bed. I slept without bedsheets because I was too lazy to wash them and put them back on. Whenever I Skyped my family I would make sure they couldn’t see the disgusting conditions I’d let myself get into, but I could always see the junk beyond my computer screen when I spoke with them, putting on a smile, and trying to figure out my next move in life. I wasn’t sad, but I was depressed.
I was so tired. I just kept wearing the same clothes and eating the same food. At one point someone from the letting agency knocked on my door and I was terrified – I sprung up from my mattress, where I spend most of my day, and stood in front of the door in case they used a key to get in. Luckily for me they were after the girl next door and went into her flat instead. It was then that I fully realised how filthy my flat was, and that I needed to do something about it. I was usually home – I had nowhere else to go – but I was afraid someone would come into my flat for whatever reason, see my headmess, and throw me out.
Some of my rubbish bags…
I wasn’t getting any income at the time so I ate one meal a day, which was oftentimes garlic bread and apples, but I’d occasionally visit the shop on my way home from my weekly psychologist sessions and buy a heap of cheap junk food. I was eating one meal a week and would often have not eaten anything prior to my session, which was in the afternoon, which meant I would hunger-buy things that weren’t on my shopping list. I’d then go home and eat until my stomach hurt, wait for the pain to pass, and eat some more.
Life seemed a lot brighter after I had finally been offered a new job, so I brought up this cleanliness issue with my psychologist during our few final sessions. She said that even though I may not care how messy things got, shouldn’t I still look after my external environment as a form of self-care?
I’d never actually connected the two together. Yes, getting into clean sheets and a nice-smelling house is great, but for some reason I had never though of keeping my flat clean as a kind of self-care. It makes so much sense, that feeling happy in a clean, bright, and pleasant-smelling environment would contribute to your wellbeing – and even when you’re feeling unhappy, a healthy external environment would at least not add to the mess inside your head. Not being constantly anxious about uninvited visitors or the landlord walking into my flat and seeing crap everywhere would probably help with good mental health too.
Since moving to an actual house and not a tiny studio flat I’ve kept this conversation with my psych in mind; the only room I ‘allow’ to be messy is my bedroom, while the rest of my house has to be reasonably clean – not necessarily spotless, as I know I’m not the tidiest person around, but it has to at least not smell like rotting food, rubbish and wrappers not be left on the floor, and I should have something clean to wear. Having only my room messy, for now, gives me a sense of my mess being controlled, and also gets me out of my bed for the day because it feels nicer to be outside or in the lounge room where there’s no mess. Sometimes, when I’m struggling, I give myself ‘permission’ to be messy and not clean up after myself for a certain period of time, usually on Fridays, and then clean up on Sundays. I give myself a few days to feel crappy about things that may not have gone as planned, and then after my designated cut-off I buck up, reflect on what went wrong and how I could improve it, and start planning for my next move. I also have cats now, and they give me something to care about and get out of bed for – I can’t leave food lying around because they will undoubtedly get into it, and peoplefood is not good for cat tummies.
Whilst looking for relevant pictures to post, I came across a photo of my last (and final) self-harm session, and noticed the rubbish in the background…
I feel like this is one of those darker, un-romanticised facets of mental illness – usually media focuses on things like crisis, mental illness-related crimes, and psychosis. Subjective feeling is what is focused on – and this is still incredibly important – but mental illness and mental health is more than just ‘hearing voices’ and ‘being violent’.
Mental illness makes things hard, and then it just makes things harder. My body and mind get tired. My soul gets tired.
Imagine being a partner or child with a family member like this, living in someone else’s mess, and feeling like you’re unable to get away because you’re supposed to love them, or because you depend on them to survive.
Mental illness is not just internal. There’s just so much on the inside that it overflows you and spills out onto the outside. It suffocates, and not just yourself.
But I don’t want someone to come in and clean up my mess; I want to be able to clean up myself. I want to be a self-sustaining, independent adult who can take pride in what I take care of, and what I can make for myself. I remind myself to self-care in so many ways every day. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me, but it’s nice that at least the people I care about are aware of how hard everything is sometimes, especially when I think I’m being a terrible friend or family member. I don’t need or want everyone to tell me how great I’m going, that they feel sorry for me, or how proud they are of me; I appreciate their patience when I’m not doing so well, and need some extra space or closeness. Telling someone you’re proud of them is like telling someone ‘I love you’ – you should say it when you really mean it.
I really just want to feel proud of myself.
I don’t just need exceptions; I need support.
And here I turned a pile of old boxes into something good…Symbolic, maybe?
Since a baby, I have had at least one animalfriend in my life…say hello to baby Hyph!
The year was 2013, and I was manic-pants.
Sort of – my diagnosis has since changed from Bipolar type 1 to Dysthymia and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), but at the time I was struggling with side effects from my taking Abilify (antipsychotic) after talking to my psychiatrist about ‘hearing’ voices in my head.
I was agitated and sleepless and a touch paranoid (I believe this is the week I thought a fish painted on some decorative tiles was staring at me in the shower) – and since embarking on my journey of personal growth after running away from home earlier that year I was reflecting upon how I had handled my mood in the past. I’d heard stories of people with Bipolar going on expensive spending sprees, getting into trouble with the law, being free with their adult laydowns, admitted to hospital, and self-medicating with booze and drugs. I’d always been a ‘goodie-goodie’: I had been too afraid to do anything wrong or remotely disobedient for fear of the repercussions I would receive at home. Occasionally I would do small acts of rebellion, such as hooking up with someone I probably shouldn’t, buy myself something a little expensive, or drink too much. I felt a sense of pride whenever my bio mother said I was ‘not like other people with mental illnesses’, in that I didn’t get myself into trouble or dangerous situations. I had a degree, a job, and a home; I was ‘good’.
For most of my life I have pursued this ‘good’ label, although I would not call myself a perfectionist (for most of my school-age years I feel I did very little work and spent my study-time reading or watching Black Books and Scrubs). Only in the past three years have I started retraining myself to come away from this black-and-white thinking: I was only ever good or bad, loved or unloved, useful or useless, pretty or ugly – and I almost always leant towards the negative label. I did not believe myself to have any skills or positive qualities, and in those rare moments where my unhappy mind responded to some kind of success, such as receiving a good mark at school, I would immediately feel guilty as my head automatically reminded me of all the other things I was not good at, that this one good thing should not be celebrated due to my numerous other failings, and that I would never be good enough. I did not deserve to feel happiness.
So at the age of 22 I decided to embrace my manic state, challenge my value of being a ‘good girl’, and gave my bank account a workout.
I wanted to be good enough.
I wanted to be good enough to be sick enough; I wanted to be sick enough to be good enough.
Mental illness makes you think some utterly absurd things.
I spent $1500-$2000 AUD in about two or three days, and I was still approved of because I spent most of this on art equipment rather than booze/sex/drugs/rock’n’roll (like ‘proper’ crazy people are supposed to do – I say this with intense sarcasm), and art is beneficial to me as I use it for mood management/therapy.
The lovely lady I was living with at the time, whom I affectionately call ‘Brown Sugar’, had mentioned a couple of times that she would, some day, like to adopt a kitten. I had moved in with her and brought my beloved Molly Dog, thus showing her the sheer awesomeness of pet ownership.
Mollydog! My favourite picture of her…
My memories of my Abilify days are a little blurry, and I’m not sure if I had also been thinking of adopting another animal, or if it was a spur of the moment thing – but I found myself driving to Cat Haven, a cat shelter, on my break between shifts and adopted two kitty cats – a lovely black and white three-year-old girl named Alice, and a spunky tortoiseshell kitten who would be named Zeus.
I was determined to adopt an older cat because they are less in demand than kittens. I went around to every available cat to figure out which one wanted to come home with me. There was this gorgeous mid-long haired grey girl I had my eye on, but she ran away from me when I went to introduce myself. I like to think of adopting a pet as a somewhat ‘spiritual’ experience: it’s not about how ‘cute’ or aesthetically pleasing the animal is, but the chemistry between animal and human (which may still involve some running away).
It’s about who wants and/or needs to come home with you.
I eventually found Alice and she was incredibly relaxed and affectionate, so she became the chosen one. They boxed her up for me and then, for some reason, I chickened out and didn’t buy her.
I went back to my car with an overwhelming sense of guilt, having felt like I’d betrayed Alice by making a commitment and then backing out. I’m not sure how I changed my mind, but I then decided I would buy both myself and Brown Sugar a new friend. I called Brown Sugar and asked if she would be OK with me purchasing her a kitten for her birthday; she said yes, so I went back into the shelter, apologised for messing the staff around, and told them I also wanted to look at the kittens.
I went into the kitten section of Cat Haven, and there were about five or six little fluffy things running around. I stood in there watching them run about (there was one little dude in there who kept bopping and bullying the other kittens, so I quickly resolved not to bring him home), when suddenly there was this little brown thing clawing its way up my leg to my knee. This was the chosen one.
Zeuz all grower up (I stole this from Brown Sugar). Her nose is funny.
I bought all the stuff we needed to get them settled in at home, then briefly swung by our house before going to my afternoon shift.
Now, I don’t condone animal impulse-purchases – even though I was somewhat ‘off my nut’ I still retained the self-faith that I would care for these animals, even if Brown Sugar changed her mind and I ended up with a kitten, cat, and a Mollydog. For the wellbeing of other animals, I shall state here, to my mental health community, that you should not go out and adopt an animal when you’re in crisis – or even when you’re not in crisis, but still aren’t particularly stable and/or don’t have back-up support for both you and the animal (e.g., a partner or family member who is also OK with looking after an animal). Socialising and playing with animals is a fantastic way to improve move and support good mental health – I highly recommend finding a fluffy friend and hanging out – but don’t take one on if you know in your heart and gut that you will not be able to look after him/her until the end of its days.
mmmmollydog (wearing a citronella collar – she gets in trouble for barking because she’s a ‘special girl’. I adopted her when she was 7/8 yo and apparently she not unfamiliar to death threats from neighbours due to her barking – now she tends only to bark if you leave her outside or if someone rings the door bell, and doesn’t have to wear her collar unless I know someone is going to knock at the door or I’m going to work) Mollydog is also currently on holiday with a lovely lady!
I did the new-animal-meets-old-animal introduction thing as I was directed and over a period of time, but Alice did not like Mollydog. At all.
In fact, Alice appeared to hunt Mollydog and would follow her from room to room, back her into a corner, then swipe until Mollydog was terrified.
Mollydog does not realise she is a dog; she thinks she is a small person with slightly more hair. Molly has no interest in playing or sniffing of looking at cats, as if she doesn’t quite know what they are – she even acts submissively towards them…but Alice still went after Molly.
After some persuading by my grandparents I finally accepted that, maybe, Alice just wasn’t a dog person/cat. I am ashamed and guilty and embarrassed to say that I took Alice back to the shelter. My grandparents, having many years of experience with caring for both cats and dogs, did not feel Alice would get along with Mollydog.
I cried. I was disgusted with myself and felt like a terrible human being for ‘giving up’ on a living thing. I did not ask for a refund (it felt very wrong), and I hope the shelter could use that money to assist with care and housing for their cats. I still felt like I needed to commit to adopting a cat though, and thought that, seeing as Zeuskitten had been so great around Mollydog, perhaps having a kitten grow up with a dog would be easier to handle. Again I went around to meet all the kittens and made friends with a little white and grey tabby. I initially wanted to call her ‘Gratiana’ (after my favourite poem), but ended up calling her ‘Feather’, because I noticed she looked like she had feathers when she curled up to sleep.
Feather and Zeus being sleepytime pals (I think I stole this from Brown Sugar, also)
Featherkitten and Zeuskitten became friends. Zeus was a lot more confident and adventurous and often made friends with the neighbourcats, so got over the initial shock of Mollydog in only a few days; Featherkitten took a little while longer, but Molly never got close enough to get swiped or spook Feather out too much.
Feathercat!
Feather is currently on an extended holiday with my grandparents while I’m off chasing dreams in England, and apparently she’s become buddies with my grandparents’ poodle x shitzu, Lucy.
Lucy and Feather
I regret adopting the two cats for myself when I knew I was unwell, and I’m so very lucky to have had my grandparents there to support me and to look after my animals when I couldn’t. I’m not sure how common it is for people in crisis situations, or for people with unstable (as opposed to how I consider myself ‘stable’ now) mental illness(es) to adopt animals, either because they like animals and purchase on impulse, or because they think an animal will improve their emotional wellbeing.
Well, I do believe animals are hugely beneficial to a person’s emotional wellbeing – they care for you, and they give you a reason to care about something, even when you feel like not caring at all. I like having the structure of feeding times, play times, and walking times. I like how they pester me to get up and feed them or play with them when I would rather lay in bed all day. I like how they comfort me when I’m sad, give me something to do when I’m bored, and make me feel less lonely when they’re around. I like that I can give a second chance to a rescued/abandoned animal. I like that I feel so happy when I’m with them.
PS – this has blatantly been an opportunity to spam the interweb with pictures of my beloved fluffy friends. I feel no shame for this.
The ONE time I found Molly and Feather sleeping (albeit coincidentally) next to each other.
But, from my experience, don’t adopt when you’re unwell. Don’t impulse buy. Animals cannot fix you. Find a friend with a pet, or help out at a shelter, but don’t commit to something that involves the wellbeing of something living other than you. Care for yourself first, then bring other animals – and people – into your life.
Mental illness involves a great number of people, not just the diagnosed individual.
I’m very lucky that I have such a supportive extended family – my grandparents have put up with my angst, occasional outbursts of rage, and general difficulty in functioning and socialising as those considered ‘normal’ would do. There have been many times I have become irate, frustrated, and angry whilst talking to my grandparents during the not-s0-stable days of my illness, and I always tried to explain to them that I did appreciate them helping me, and that I was sorry and aware of the times I hurt them. They have been so patient and caring, and I now refer to them as ‘my parents’ in recognition for all they’ve done for me.
A few days after adopting my Molly Dog I received two complaints about her barking (which has been an issue with her previous owner). I was so upset, embarrassed, and terrified I would have to give her back (I was – and still am – absolutely in love with her, and I’m fairly sure I self-harmed because I was so distressed), as a couple of people kept telling me I may have to, but Grannyma and Grannypa calmly came to the rescue, took her to their house for a few days, and sorted it all out with a citronella collar. About a week later I had my puppy dog back, received no more complaints, and all was right in the world.
People often forget how draining a person with mental illness can be on their friends, family, and other people around them. We all have our moments, but perhaps for certain people when not ‘stable’, these moments can be a little more frequent.
In my opinion, this does not mean you have to ‘put up with it’. If a friend/family member is being hurt and their own health, mental or physical, is being compromised, no matter who that person is, then it is OK to step back and ask for help. You are just as important as anyone else – as is your health.
My most favourite material possession, and my Grandpa made it for me!
If you are able to, supporting a person with a mental illness is a fantastic and compassionate thing to do – do not let your contributions be ignored, nor your needs consistently swept to the sidelines. It is about finding that happy balance between supporting someone who is struggling, and looking after yourself. It is totally OK for you to seek your own support, either with other friends, family, your own therapy, or specific groups – in fact, it’s even recommended. Help and therapy is not just for ‘sick people’.
Here are some links I recommend family, friends, and carers of people with mental illnesses should be aware of:
Just remember to keep the well-being and privacy of both yourself and the ill person, in regards to what you say and who you’re saying it to.
I asked my Grandma to write a piece on her perspective of when, after many years of radio silence, I abruptly came to visit them. I will be forever grateful for both my Grandma and Grandpa’s support.
“To our surprise, our much loved and first born Grandchild, came to visit us after passing her practical driving test in April 2013. We had had very limited contact with her in the previous 10 years. Prior to this, from the day she was born, we were very involved in supporting her and her Mother, due to her being a single Mother, which I feel, subconsciously, led her to get in contact with us again. We invited her back to visit whenever she wanted to visit and left it to her.
As a child she was absolutely delightful, full of life and spontaneous reactions to our cuddles, fun and games. Seeing her now we were absolutely devastated to see the complete opposite in her. She was very distant, stiff, uncomfortable and did not want to be touched or hugged and in fact told us she couldn’t remember the last time she was hugged. This was devastating to know, especially as all we wanted to do was to hug and comfort her. She felt unable to cry, feel emotions or accept affection, so of course there were lots of unanswered questions for us. In those days our Family gatherings, which she was always invited to, were very difficult for her as she found it extremely difficult be among people so we left it to her to decide how long she stayed and accepted it when she decided to leave. There was never any pressure on her from us and I said to her in the very early days, ‘If there is ever anything I ask of you that you are not comfortable with, I want you to tell me’.
Much to our delight her visits became a regular thing and we were thrilled when she started staying for weekends. I distinctively remember one night while sitting in my office with my back to the door, two arms went around my neck and gave me a wonderful hug and I complimented her on feeling like giving a spontaneous hug. She found it extremely difficult to show her feelings or affection or accept them. Her self esteem and self pride did not exist and she was always worried about doing the right thing, afraid she was always doing the wrong thing at work and getting into trouble. She was like a frightened lost animal that wasn’t sure of herself or the world, which was heartbreaking to see. She always said that animals and children were her greatest love because they didn’t hurt you. She also found it difficult to accept praise or compliments and didn’t particularly like men or adults.
Before becoming stabilized on her drugs she would phone me for support or advice, especially when something was difficult to handle at work. I felt she needed this and both her Grandfather and I were always there and if things were too difficult for her we would immediately be in the car and at her house to help, be it come down to our home to stay until she felt able to cope or stay with her at her house, take her out to lunch or dinner, take her to hospital, whatever she felt comfortable with, we were there with love for her. Occasionally she would say she wondered why we put up with her and said she was feeling uncomfortable about it and with reassurance, accepted and appreciated whatever we did. Yes there were difficult times, however we were determined to see her well and back to the beautiful Grandaughter we loved, with a future deserving of the very intelligent young lady she is and has so much to give.” – Written by my Grandma. x
Something which has stuck with me from that first PsychiatristMan was this:
When I told him I wanted to be dead, he gave me a short scenario about if a person was on a boat in the ocean, said they wanted to die, and was then thrown overboard, the person would change their mind and take back their death wish.
I understand what the old PsychiatrsitMan was trying to say, but I was still furious at him for saying this because it made me feel like he didn’t believe me, or at least wasn’t taking my hate for living seriously. I get it, and I sometimes wonder if people who jump from tall buildings in a suicide bid reconsider their actions just before they hit the ground. It makes sense –when you’re actually faced with the true reality of death, there’s a chance either regret or that innate sense for self-preservation will kick in, but when he said that little story I felt like I was being admonished.
I had wanted to be dead for a very long time. I had not wanted to be alive. It wasn’t until I started Zoloft that I actually considered the process of suicide; formerly I had just wanted my existence to end, and I hadn’t thought about actively ending my life. And then PsychiatristMan either inadvertently or intentionally implied I wasn’t serious about my claim. This, him being a man, and the fifteen minutes he spent during another session telling me about why becoming a Buddhist would be a good idea (a pitch which cost me ¾ of a $200AU 20 minute session), were the motivating factors for me leaving his practice and getting a referral to another psychiatrist.
The reason I held onto this guy for so long was because I really liked his receptionist, who was also his wife. She was so sweet and friendly, and we would talk about teaching and literature while I waited for him to bring me into his office.
Sadly, as fantastic a person and receptionist that lady was, I had to move on and find a psychiatrist better suited for me. On this mental health journey I have learnt that it is totally OK to shop around for the right doctor or therapist or psychiatrist. I was reluctant to do so at first because I’m a special person, and I don’t totally understand why I feel like I fail if I change therapists. Also, it sucks having to retell your whole story again and again to new strangers.
Again, IT IS TOTALLY OK TO SHOP AROUND FOR THE RIGHT MENTAL HEALTH PRACTIONER FOR YOU. I’ve been through five psychologists and two psychiatrists. I promise, it’s better to find someone you’re comfortable with.
And yes, it’s good to have a laugh occasionally, but would you really mourn the loss of prejudice, discrimination, stigma, emotional instability, and distortions of reality?
Imagination and creativity is great, but mental illnesses are not.
My birthday came around and I was livid because ‘everyone’ forgot. I only had three close friends, and none of them wished me happy birthday until I actively reminded them via text that it indeed was the day of my birth. My parents woke me up at 7am, ignoring the fact that I had been full of rage for weeks and was still struggling to manage my coma-inducing medication. They had me walk out to the dining table on the patio, pushed a present at me – which was a really pretty candleholder – then I thanked them and asked to return to bed. Permission was granted, and I gratefully went back to sleep.
When I woke up I had my own little party and walked to the shops to buy myself Mrs. Brown’s Boys as a present. It was a super hot Australian summer and we had no air-con so I sat on my bed watching my new show and eating fancy bread and cherries from Coles. I had no sense of humour during this time and didn’t enjoy Mrs. Brown’s Boys (but a few months later on some different medication I found that I did), so I got enraged at the world and deactivated my Facebook for a month.
Because that’s what you do when you hate humans and your soul is angry.
I didn’t talk to any of my friends or extended family for a month. All I did was eat, take my meds, work, be angry, burn myself, and sleep.
And then I went back to my PsychiatristMan to demand he put me on an antidepressant, Prozac (Fluoxetine) and lithium because I felt Seroquel wasn’t doing it for me, and my world changed again. I remember sitting in his office tearing up tissues and fidgeting because I was so agitated and couldn’t stop moving. My frustration was just increased by how calm PsychiatristMan appeared to be. I felt like I needed to prove to him that I was ‘sick enough to be good enough’.
Within a week I had calmed down, and after two weeks I was functioning relatively ‘normally’ and could experience positive emotions again. I could go to work and had mostly stopped my walking-in-circles compulsion- which is something I do/did when anxious or stressed – I was having pleasant conversations with my family and my driving lessons with my step-dad were resumed, as I was considered tolerable now. It was 2013 that I started gaining a heap of weight due to medication, binge eating, and a lack of exercise – I lost my self-hate but did not gain self-respect. I stopped taking my full dose of Seroquel as soon as the lithium and Prozac started kicking in (as I didn’t like the possible weight gain side effects), and I gradually weaned myself off the drug.
Which is incredibly hard.
As many people who have been prescribed Quetiapine will understand, it is very difficult to sleep without it. For me, my body just would not clock-off and it too my two weeks to return to a normal sleeping pattern. At one point I forgot my meds when I stayed at my grandparent’s house and did not sleep for 36 hours. I have no idea how I managed to drive home from work, and I probably should not have been allowed on the road. I think my grandparents offered to pick me up from work, but I somehow managed to persuade them I was OK.
I now use Quetiapine for the sporadic bouts of anxiety I occasionally experience (50mg), and probably 2-3 times a year when my body/mind refuses to sleep (100mg). I do enjoy my sleepy-time pill because it knocks me out in thirty minutes, but the next day I’m always nauseas and at risk of falling asleep whenever I sit down. I try to take this drug as little as possible so it works when I need it to.
Seeing as I’d been reasonably stable for a while on my new drug cocktail and had received my P plates in March I got a job at an out of school care. I wanted to work with children but I didn’t feel quite ready to enter full-time teaching. I was a little nervous about driving on my own, so for some bizarre reason, which I still don’t understand, my mother suggested I practice building my road-confidence by visiting my grandparents.
My mother does not like my grandparents. She has not liked them for a very long time. If they ever came over unannounced we would all have to hide in the house, not answer the door, and I would get in trouble if I moved the blinds while trying to peek out the window to see who was at the gate, because it would reveal our hiding to our unwanted guests.
So I did not query my mother’s suggestion and started visiting my grandparents to practice driving independently. And then I started asking questions.
Subsequently I (re)discovered my extended family, had the biggest fight I’ve ever had with my mother, ran away from home, adopted a fluffy white dog, and became an independent adult – which will be the topics for my next post.
I have created an anonymous online survey to ask the online community their thoughts on teachers with mental illnesses. Would you be comfortable with yourself or your teenage child being taught by a teacher diagnosed with a ‘stabilised’ mental illness?
What I mean by ‘stable’: the individual has been assessed and deemed ‘fit to work’ by a healthcare professional.
hyphshine 
