Month: January 2018

Voids between my mind and others’ minds

I feel so sad and I’m doubting my mind. I clashed with someone I care about. It doesn’t feel right to put the details here much as I want to. Basically I felt we need to make a fact very clear to someone we are working with, a fact that ought to have been made clear from the start. In itself the fact isn’t right or wrong but it does totally change what we are offering the person and what they will expect and it’s absolutely necessary to say it. The person I clashed with thinks there’s no need to say it, it doesn’t change anything, nothing was ever promised. I tried to explain what I believe and he said he would write off working with the person completely.

There’s more to it but that’s all I can say here.

It sounds like a tiny thing but it’s shaken me and got me lost about how I see things and how others see them and the gulf between that. What I see as a clear duty when others don’t. What I expect. How I deal with uncertainty (rather, don’t deal with it). The gap there is between my mind and the people I care about. It’s brought back the ever-near memories of people telling me I expect other people to look after me, or that I didn’t keep my word, my responsibilities, when I was doing all I could to get it right for everyone and hurting myself to punish myself for my failings and still wasn’t good enough.

I’m sad. It probably doesn’t help I’ve been ill physically this weekend.

I know this blog has been too down and negative lately and I need to change that. I’m sorry.

Ginny xxx

Coming back at 2.45am

I haven’t slept yet tonight. It’s unusual for me as my medications usually knock me out soon after my night time dosage. That sleep is one of the much needed escapes I rely on. My head is all light and floaty now but … no sleep.

I think it’s because I’m still in the process of coming back from a dissociated state that I slipped into at some point early yesterday evening. This is one of the times the process of coming back is awful and drawn out. The time for which I was gone was good on this occasion. I think it gave me some kind of release. I am not totally sure. I know the little-child-me took over. I think she was happy when I answered her at first. But she got very scared in the end. But coming back is horrible, partly because of the guilt about what I did whilst I was gone (it’s automatic before I have any evidence to know what I’ve done) and partly because of the confusing emotions I get whilst I’m coming back. Tonight the start of coming back brought this sudden switch to emptiness combined with a feeling of being bereft. Time felt distorted. Then jumpiness and feeling sure I was being watched developed as well, along with the recurring notion people were standing just outside my field of vision waiting to grab me (and do what I don’t know but it’s scary).

Suddenly exhaustion is tugging at my brain and I feel as if I’m swaying and I know I’ll sleep now. Writing it down seems to have helped.

Ginny xxx

Frozen, slipping, returning

I’ve a list of things I need to do. Call my energy supplier as my current gas and electricity plan is coming to an end. Write Christmas thank you notes (I always have them done by New Year so this is late for me). Type up notes for some admin I do to help my fiancé’s work. Read the material to prepare for a meeting on Friday. Clear up the house. Sort the TV licence payment.

Why do I feel like I’m drowning… no, stuck in a block of ice too frozen cold to move again? I can’t do any of it. Waves of exhaustion, vacancy, cold, fear, dread, crash over me even though I can’t find any immediate cause. I slip in and out of presence and dissociation. The guilt intensifies on every return.

My to-do list is an insignificant lot of things to most people, I know. I know if I told someone I am struggling with this they’d say it’s nothing and just day to day responsibilities. This brings back so many memories of times I’ve struggled before and family members have told me I have no responsibilities and I’m a spoiled brat. Here comes more guilt and fear wrenching inside.

What I have to do overwhelms me but it’s not really what overwhelms me – the waves, the cold, the dissociating and returning do. It hurts and takes all of me and if it weren’t for my fiancé I don’t think I’d be able to come back at all. I’d have no strength left.

Why now? When so much has been so good? (Ungrateful little brat, look what everyone’s done for you, why isn’t it enough – the voices scream, preventing me telling anyone about what’s happening because that’s what they’d say again.)

Is that just what trauma and depression and borderline do?

How can I try to escape from this ice and reach out and reach forward again? I know sometimes doing even the tiniest thing can make a difference at first. I forced myself to get up this morning, get dressed and put on makeup. Afterwards I was shaking and exhausted. Being more ill physically than usual doesn’t help. After some rest I made a little start on the paperwork I’ve just been sent that needs to be read for Friday. My mind was a blank for hours after that and I was gone for much of the time but at least I had achieved something not absolutely nothing. I’ll write this down in the journal I resolved to keep, to see if this helps me when I look back. I will be able to acknowledge what I did and somehow find a way to see good in this day and give thanks. Creativity sometimes breaks through the ice so I made a paper origami ball and did a few steps towards decorating the photo frame I’m giving my dad as one of his birthday presents. Then I really, really struggled with so much pain in my head and inside me, anxiety, hallucinations and unbearable voices and just… numbing cold.

I want to sleep now and I will soon and hope rest can shut off this state for a while. I don’t know if I believe even that right now. I forced myself to write this post bit by bit over a couple of hours because when I wake up tomorrow and read this, I’ll know I got through it thanks be to God, and something, however small, will be different in the morning.

Ginny xxx

Facing how much I need to lose

Warning: this post contains discussion of weight, weight loss, body image and eating disorders.

I have lost control of my eating and my body size completely. I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been. I’m disgusted at myself, expanding and ballooning. The voices love it – greedy, pig, ugly, foul, repulsive… we’ll always know how bad you really are… images of rotten evil and greed bursting out of my skin… cut it all off, cut it out… 50 kilos. Lose 50 kilos then keep going.

It’s so much and so unattainable I let the despair close round me. It’s cold and numb first, then comes the bingeing. I don’t know if it’s a result of the despair. Often it’s a result of hunger that won’t be satisfied and demands more and more, til I get rid of it by purging til it hurts so much.

I am fat and more than fat.

I want to lose 50kg. I have the idea that then I could look at myself without so much hate and disgust and then the voices might be satisfied for a while, if only I could maintain it. Objectively I know losing 50kg would be too much and would put me in the anorexic weight range. I know losing 40kg would put me at the very bottom of the healthy weight range. I desperately want this then desperately want those 10kg more, to get rid of the fat greedy consuming thing inside me. To get rid of the evil inside me. Then I could look at myself. Then I’d have control back. Then maybe it would stop. Please. Please would it stop.

Why can’t I just do it, like I always did before? Why have I lost control?

I’m trying to be objective. Trying to think about losing 20kg first. Trying to focus on goals, not specific weight targets week by week but on good things that are coming and that will be even better if I lose the weight – going abroad in February for my fiancé’s work, being able to do more of my physiotherapy exercises, our upcoming wedding, and so on. Trying to remember that my fiancé does not think I’m disgusting or greedy or bad or anything else the voices tell me, and that he loves me and does not require me to change. Yet I have his support to lose some weight to take care of my health and that’s a wonderful help.

I’m going to try to identify specific actions I can take to stop bingeing and start losing weight.

Looking objectively, why do I think my weight has gone up out of control?

  1. Greatly reduced mobility because of my degenerative health conditions getting worse. I used to walk loads a few years ago but now I need a wheelchair.
  2. My medications – quetiapine and other daily medications I take increase my appetite and affect metabolism and cause a lot of weight gain.
  3. Binge eating repeatedly on sugary foods and other carbohydrates. Insatiable hunger. Yes I frequently purge or restrict after but it can’t get rid of everything and it’s dangerous in itself.
  4. Relying more on convenience foods because I’m not well enough to cook and at times when I’ve been really short of money.

How can I change this?

  1. I can’t exercise in the usual sense of the word but I can prioritise my physio exercises and then when I’ve lost some weight, going swimming. I’m changing my daily routine to make sure I fit these in.
  2. I can’t change my medications, at least not short term.
  3. I will not keep trigger foods in the house. At first I will greatly restrict the food I have in the house so there is literally nothing to binge on. I can’t leave the house unaided because of my health so won’t be able to go and buy more. My fiancé will help me get small quantities of non triggering foods and occasional treats only. I’m amazingly fortunate to have his help. This isn’t a permanent solution but might help for the first couple of weeks.
  4. Though I still need to rely on convenience foods because of my disabilities, I will stay within a daily calorie limit.
  5. I will research any advice I can find for coping with binge eating disorder.

How can I keep the rational part of me in control rather than whatever drives the insatiable hunger? I really don’t know what drives it. When I was anorexic I had found something that shut off the hunger, but I don’t know what it was. The disgust I felt for myself then and the disgust I feel for myself now are pretty similar. In fact I feel more disgust for myself now. If disgust doesn’t shut the hunger off, what does? I think if I knew that, it would stop me bingeing.

Ginny xxx

Anger management courses – do they help?

I’m scared that I’ve become increasingly angry and less able to control it. Maybe I never could control anger. Under my abuser’s control I never felt it, except for a very few occasions where some feeling that probably was anger exploded, always severely punished. When I did start to feel it, when rebellious feelings grew, fear of myself almost always grew stronger, and so I channeled it towards myself with anorexia and self-harm. I lost control eventually, years later, but bulimia and binge eating, overdose and cutting still did well to numb my most frightening emotions. But then, and I don’t know why, I started to scream. Rage burned and exploded and my control was gone.

I did not learn, in the therapy I undertook for my personality disorder, how to control the anger.

It may not be the first emotion that takes hold of me but every difficult, unwanted, feared, painful emotion seems to work its way to uncontrollable anger that I can’t control. I still turn it against myself but it explodes outwards as well. Dissociation possibly gives me and others some protection but my “others” can get angry too and that’s so dangerous.

Recently, someone suggested to me that I could try an anger management course.

I’d never thought of this. On one level it’s an obvious thing to try. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

I’d be very interested to hear about your experience if you’ve tried an anger management course, especially if you also suffer with PTSD or personality disorder/s. How did you do the course, for example a self help course or taught? How did it help or not help you? Is there a particular kind of course that will help those of us with PTSD or PD?

Thank you in advance.

Ginny xxx

2018

I haven’t managed any Christmas or New Year posts, at least not as I wanted to. Some wonderful things happened over Christmas so far yet I feel totally blocked when it comes to writing. After intense emotion I feel exhausted and shut down, even if the emotion has been good. Then shut down leads on to dissociation and being unable to be with anyone. That’s BPD. A lifetime of experience of Christmas and New Year as a very unstable, frightening time (abuse, rejection by family and so on, continuing well into adulthood) must add to why I find this a strange time. I need to pray and act to change this for my fiancé as well as me.

I wanted to be able to write about the immense gratitude and astonishment I felt at the wonderful parts of this Christmas and to share all the hope there is for my fiancé and me this coming year. I see that I’m going to have to take that slowly as it’s overwhelming.

So instead, I’m going to share what comes to mind now that I’m thankful for in the year just past, and how I’m resolving to make more space for gratitude in 2018.

  • I started working as an “expert by experience”, sharing my experience of my mental health conditions, my life, therapy, and getting (or not getting) help. I’ve been working with medical students, researchers and clinicians. Doing this has meant battling massive anxiety and some of my symptoms temporarily being triggered stronger in a scary way. But it has been a massive positive in the end. It’s given me the chance for my mental health not to be solely something problematic – for me to be something not solely problematic. If I can help students gain an understanding of mental health, if I can contribute to shaping research materials and methods, then my experience is working to the good.
  • This is a mixed one for me. It’s about 3 weeks short of 1 year since I was discharged from the specialist personality disorder service, because I had come to the end of the treatment course they offer. It’s mixed because of the difficult relationship I’d had with the PD service and because all mental health support abruptly ending like this was really really hard. I was left without the ongoing support that several doctors all agree I still need and with some conditions (such as my PTSD) left untreated and no prospect of getting therapy for them. Despite this, during the past year I have stayed out of hospital. I have needed crisis support on a few occasions and once this involved several days of help from the crisis team at home. However I haven’t been admitted as an inpatient. And I’m still here, somehow getting by, sometimes more than getting by. Though it’s hard to hold in mind, this is a massive change from say, 4 years ago, and I owe massive thanks for this.
  • This little fluff ball joined the household and she’s brought me abounding snuggles, purrs, laughs and love (as well as her fair share of moody or mischievous moments).
  • My greetings card making has very gradually taken off and it has been so great to see that other people enjoy and appreciate my designs.
  • I’ve discovered a relationship I never thought I could know in my fiancé’s care for me and his love that continues constant through all the things I’m ashamed of and hate about myself. Never did I imagine this kind of relationship, this kind of life together, could be.
  • Every week I look forward to the Day Centre where I go to keep elderly people company and lead art and craft activities. There I am “okay”. There I am part of the team and I am deeply thankful for that. We pray together. We are strengthened together. We share a little of how we really are that day and it’s okay. We find hope not the need to hide. We find creativity we often deny ourselves. The voices that crowd my head sometimes leave for a time as I’m engaged working for our elderly people’s happiness.
  • This year 2018, I want to really notice gratitude – preserve time each day to notice what has happened, what I’ve done, what I can give thanks for and to record this. One of the ways I do this will be keeping a handwritten daily and weekly diary, not much, just a few lines or words some days, but enough to maybe stop everything slipping by so fast, to help me to be present here and now. Too often dissociation means scary voids behind me when I try to remember the day or week just passed, whilst my physical and mental exhaustion mean overwhelmed panic at the next day and the future. Neither fosters gratitude or being present for my fiancé – or for God. I’m going to protect time each day to reflect and give thanks.

I’m praying for blessings of hope and for time to notice the good for you as we step into 2018.

Ginny xxx