Category: On the borderline

A Very Hungry Caterpillar finds a home

I found this little guy when I was sweeping my patio. I thought he’d prefer a nice leaf to curl up on, rather than the paving stones.

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I am trying to tidy up my patio garden. It isn’t big at all – I have a patio door that opens onto a very small paved area and then a small flower bed beyond. I haven’t given this little space the attention I should since I moved in, largely as my physical challenges make gardening tiring and painful. Plus I’ve never particularly enjoyed it!

This week I’ve made the promise to start caring for it better. It is a blessing that I have this little outside space. I didn’t expect it at all and living in a flat it’s a privilege to have any garden. It’s a help for everything from being able to hang out washing to getting to sit outside, breathe, pray, ground myself in all the sensations of outdoors, and feel less isolated when I’m not well enough to walk far – I don’t have to stay totally indoors.

So I want to behave more thankfully for my little garden and take care of it and find ways in which, just maybe, I can create something pretty. It can be part of learning to give some time to creating a permanent and stable home, which I’m really not used to having, as until I came to this flat I was living between different kinds of shared and temporary accommodation where most of the time I stayed shut away in my one room, too scared of interacting with other people and too locked into my obsessional thoughts and hallucinations to leave it unless I could fulfil my compulsive behaviors and unless I could be sure I’d see no-one. I’ve had to leave so many places when I lost jobs, couldn’t make the rent, broke down mentally and was so disturbed I’d be asked to leave by the people I was living with.

Some level of security (though I’m not without financial problems) is a new thing for me and it’s hard to build on it. Any home I have, I expect to lose. Actually, for some strange reason i haven’t figured out yet, having a home and taking responsibility for it frequently fills me with panic. I feel like I’m losing control or can’t manage it, I’m out of control with everything I’d want to be in order (paperwork or cleaning etc) or other times I’m not sure what I’m scared of; something to do with I’m not allowed my safety, knowing it’ll be taken away, fears of being attacked or watched by my abuser and flashbacks associated to particular places in my flat. Having said that, I can feel safe in my home and I even have a place within my home where I surround myself with comforting and grounding things that help me stay safe when I’m dissociating, having flashbacks, the emotions are too much, and the like. I thank God for that. It’s so important for me to learn how to build on this otherwise I ignore the goodness of everything I have. Giving myself permission to trust in having security and knowing how to create an ordered home that I care for and give thanks for, is a new thing to me. I’m trying to take some little steps towards it, with my garden and trying gradually to bring more order to each room in my home.

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(Thanks so much to Cathy and her lovely blog at  https://cathylynnbrooks.com/ for reminding me how nice it is hanging out washing in the sunshine 🙂 – and as ever encouraging me so much to appreciate the beauty of the present moment in the little things. )

Ginny xxx

A much bigger loss than they realise

When I signed up to the programme of treatment I am in at the moment, it was to include weekly group MBT therapy, fortnightly individual therapy, monthly care coordination and support available from a duty team.

With no warning, monthly care coordination has been stopped and changed to quarterly. Having expected to see my care coordinator yesterday as we’d previously booked, this was cancelled and my next care coordination is not to be until the end of September, which will be about 4 months since my last appointment.

I could write a lot about how badly the actual communication of this decision has been handled. Actually I did but I deleted it. It probably doesn’t do anyone any good, not me or the service or anyone else, to shoot off into an angry tirade. I’ve been trying to process this through since we (ie all of us in the therapy programme) got letters telling us a few days ago. My emotions are pretty out of control and shooting to extremes at the moment independent of this which is making things harder – ironically, partly because there is so much going on all across my life and I can’t hold it all together; I could have really done with some help from my care coordinator. I’m trying not to just rant in anger here. However, I do think that some of my feelings are shared by other people in the programme and I do think this reduction in appointments is a much greater loss than the hospital realise. There is a huge gap in care here and it’s getting wider.

We weren’t involved in the decision. We were informed afterwards in an impersonal letter. We were informed that this would be best for us. There was nothing personal about the decision. Surely everyone’s needs in terms of care co-ordination may be different, at different times in their therapy, according to what’s going on in therapy, their health across the board, and all areas of their life? The approach being taken isn’t responsive. It’s just a blanket decision.

My views are certainly being influenced by what I observed and experienced when I worked in mental health services in the same mental health trust in which I’m now treated, but I wonder if the source of this reduction in appointments is actually largely to do with funding cuts and staff shortages? Conversations I’ve had with my care coordinator have given me more than an inkling that my suspicion is correct. If this is so, it would have hurt a lot less if this explanation had been given plainly, rather than it being couched in claims that the service think it’s better for us to have less coordination of our care.

Leaving this aside, nobody actually discussed the matter with us whilst deciding what would be best for us. We didn’t get to give any input about why care coordination is important for us, the help we need, the effect this withdrawal of support would have, what our needs are and how they might best be met. We committed to the therapy programme expecting one thing and now this has been changed. We’re expected to stick with the programme and commit to it but they are free to change it how they choose. This is by no means the first time this has happened and what we have trusted in has been changed or taken away. Support we desperately needed, which was insufficient anyway, has now been withdrawn further.

All these things combine to make us feel hurt and powerless and unheard by those we should be able to trust and undeserving of support. I posted yesterday about how when I discussed the changes on the phone with my care coordinator (after I’d chased several times for any explanation of how the decision was made and what’s happening in practice with my appointments going forward) he told me the service thinks this is the best way to challenge us to be more independent, and how much this hurt and how little the service we should be able to trust actually appreciate what we are facing.

Separate from the emotions this brought up, the withdrawal of these appointments doesn’t just affect the appointments themselves; by the very nature of what care coordination is meant to do, it will have an impact on our wellbeing across the board and I think this is where the proverbial baby well and truly has been thrown out with the bath water. It seems the clinicians who have made this decision do not realise what a loss this will incur.

First, on an immediate practical note, it will have a knock on effect on our therapy appointments. We have been told that the clinicians have decided it is most appropriate for us to get help in therapy appointments rather than care coordination. The focus of a care coordination appointment is utterly different from a mentalisation-based therapy appointment . Therapy appointments focus on emotions and interpersonal situations, looking in depth at particular relationships and specific interactions, our emotions and thoughts and our understanding of what is in our own and each others’ minds. It’s not so much about events and information and our circumstances as focussing in depth on our emotional experience and thought patterns. This is totally different from what is covered in care coordination – such as building a care plan, reviewing mental and physical health, looking at input that may be needed from other health professionals or support workers, looking at social and financial problems and stability, monitoring risk and safety issues, communicating with the range of professionals and others involved in someone’s care… the list goes on. If this is now to be squashed into the therapy appointments, either the time for therapeutic work will be greatly reduced or the problems we needed care coordination for won’t be addressed.

This is all the more important since the length of time for which one can be seen in the service is now strictly limited. The service was set up to be a lifelong service, recognising the fact that we may likely need help outside of particular therapy programmes across many years. Now this has been stopped and after we have completed a particular therapy course we are discharged whether or not we are coping or safe or recovered. When time is limited and so soon we will find ourselves alone again or at least without specialist support, whatever state we are in, it’s all the more important that whilst we are with the service we can get help pulled together across all the areas of our life that our mental health affects and that affect our mental health.

And these areas are broad.  Several of us in my therapy group, myself included, have multiple mental and physical health diagnoses. Most of us have many unmet needs at any one time.  Some of this is because of rules that you can only be seen in one service at one time. I’ve posted before on how unfair that can feel – for me one thing this rule means is I’m not allowed any help with my PTSD and trauma following the abuse I’ve been through, because I’m being seen in the PD Service. I know other people who were forced to choose between being treated for their life threatening eating disorder or their personality disorder. Multiple mental health diagnoses are often closely related but I, and I’m sure many others, have had big difficulties trying to find the way through the care and treatments they need and I’m regularly promised help that is then the next minute taken away. Someone needs to pull all this together and make sure communication happens and that help promised is actually delivered. It is too hard to do this on your own when you’re seriously ill and all too often you are bounced between different services, each telling you that another service is meeting your needs when actually nobody is.

Physical and mental ill health tend to cause disturbance and instability to a lot more than health. Just a few examples from my own experience – and all these are shared by other members of my therapy group – are losing your job, being made homeless or having to move from your secure home, having nowhere stable to live, having no money to meet essential expenses of food and rent and bills, falling into debt, trying to navigate the system to claim sickness benefits or help with housing costs whilst working part time – and being met by mistakes and delays at every turn and waiting weeks on end to receive any money, consequent trouble with utility companies, landlords, over or under payment of tax and Benefits, filling out form after form, having less and less contact with friends and having no resources (financial, or in terms of emotional strength) to keep in touch with the little positive things that can keep you well, relationship breakdowns, addiction, crises, losing control and ending up in trouble with the police or other involvement from emergency services… I could go on and on.

It just isn’t possible to sort out all of these things on your own especially when you’re struggling with the daily pain of the BPD itself. You desperately need someone to get you access to help and guidance, to be familiar at least to some extent with the systems you’re struggling through and to know what help is available and refer you there. This help has never come, for me, from the PD Service, and with so little care coordinator input going forward, it’ll be even scarcer.

Yes, a lot of these things are parts of everyday adult life but the fact is by the time most of us eventually get seen in a specialist service like mine, we have struggled without the help we need for years upon years and are very near the end of the road. (Potentially, very near ending our lives, or already having reached that point because there is nothing but pain, dark, utterly spent, utterly trapped, self disgust, I could go on…) Yes, we have to be able to function independently. But we are silently screaming how right now we can’t. We need help. We desperately need to be heard that we need help. Every time we have tried the very hardest we can and there’s yet another loss, obstacle, more and more piled on us, our risk increases and we are less and less able to be independent and more and more locked into our compulsions to overdose and self harm and try to numb and control the utter desperation and silence the painful scream for help inside us. If someone hears us, guides us, gets an understanding of what is happening across our lives, pulls the pieces together and gives some continuity, as our care coordinator could, then we can start to gain strength and start to find some kind of stability that might eventually allow us to heal.

I am incredibly fortunate that I have a support worker (from a local social service, not from the NHS) who is helping me with so many things that I’d have hoped my care coordinator and/or support workers from the PD Service would have done. The response from the PD Service was to brush me off saying everyone has to deal with these things and I did not qualify for any help and one appointment with a care worker who did not know anything about most of the areas in which I needed help. Thanks to my current support worker, I have not been evicted by my landlord, I have been helped to fill in the complex application forms for disability benefits, I have had support to go to assessment appointments, I have had help learning to budget, I have been able to access the correct advice and information from all the services involved (housing benefits, the council, the Jobcentre, disability services etc), I have someone on my side who understands the difficulty I’m going through at the moment in the police investigation into my abuser, and I have some social support which will help me use my time constructively to keep getting better and eventually learn how to get back into work.

In no way did the lack of recognition, lack of coordination and lack of support I received from the PD Service make me better or more able to function. In no way has having a support worker made me less independent or worse. I am now self harming much less and have not overdosed for weeks. I’m able gradually to do a little bit more and then more, because I have some sense of stability and safety and someone who believes me. With his support I’m not alone going through the things that distressed me to the extent that I couldn’t cope and could only hurt myself.

This support is desperately needed. It is very sad that it is so hard to find. Given that the therapy programme is so good, and I know it is such a privilege to be able to undertake it, it is sad that the support towards staying safe and being well and stable, is so lacking. It is much harder to grow and make use of the therapy from a place where you don’t feel safe or heard.

Perhaps I’m overreacting. Perhaps I’ve had an unusually bad experience with my care coordinator or when I’ve been in crisis. Perhaps I’m incredibly dependent. (Well, I think I definitely am.) Probably I should focus more on the fact I have the support I do. I know many services have much less support available. It just seems to me like a big and widening gap and that things could so easily be different.

If I recover enough to ever work or volunteer in this field, I’d like to work on trying to bring together patients’ access to the support that’s out there and bridge the gap of all the unmet needs that are stopping us from having a stable life whilst we’re working through our therapy programmes. I’m sure this would increase people’s security in their recovery.

Ginny xxx

What you aren’t allowed to admit – the shameful secret that I want to be cared for

The service where I am in therapy at the moment has suddenly (from our point of view as patients at least) changed our care coordination appointments from monthly to quarterly. Less than quarterly, in practice. I was supposed to see my care coordinator today. The appointment has been moved to the end of September. This will be 4 months since my last appointment at the start of June. This comes at a time that I desperately needed care coordination and when everything feels on the edge of fragmenting.

I am furious at how this change has been made, for myself and for other people in my therapy group. I’ll post about that next.

I spoke to my care coordinator about it on the phone and one of the most hurtful things that he said was that this has been an “ongoing clinical decision over several months” and they think this is the best way to challenge us to have more independence because instead of having a care coordinator we’ll have to take the initiative to sort out our problems. I’ll set to one side for the time being the hurt caused by having been kept in the dark, not warned, let alone involved, in the “ongoing decision”; the apparent total lack of awareness of why care coordination is needed; the assumptions about knowing what is best for us….

One thing that really really hurt and I wanted to scream and felt utterly betrayed again by the people supposed to help me and understand me was – we do not need a test, or a challenge, or to be forced to be “more independent”. We desperately need to be heard and to get help. I have been in this service since November 2014 and I am still screaming inside and falling to pieces and trying to be heard over the same issues as when I first came to the service. We have always been on our own. We have had to do everything with no help and knowing everyone will leave us. We just start to trust this service and dare to think perhaps they’ve understood a tiny bit of what it’s like, and then we get proof it was all an illusion. Never in my whole time with the service have I felt safe, been kept safe.

And here comes the thing it’s so very shameful and not allowed to admit. Sometimes – even a lot of the time – I don’t want to be independent. I want to be heard and I want to be cared for. The abused and terrified and frightened child inside me has never ever been heard or believed and has never been cared for. I have fought and fought on my own and I cannot do it anymore. I need help. I can shut up the child for so long by cutting and starving and drinking and overdosing. But there is a point of breaking. And I’ve passed it. I’ve never been safe. Never been safe from my abuser. Never been safe from what goes on in my mind, the pain, the hallucinations and flashbacks. 

I know these feelings aren’t allowed. We have to take responsibility. We have to be independent. We have to be adults. We have to function.

Is it so very wrong to want to be kept safe? To want someone to hear and know how utterly painful it is? To want someone to care for us? To want someone to stick to what they agree to and not trick us, not tell us they understand but then leave us alone when we most need help? If I am not independent is that really the most important awful thing? Why should I not be allowed the help I need because it’s so desperately important I be independent? Nobody kept me safe as a child. Nobody cared for me. Over and over again my abuser tricked me and left me powerless. The service I should be able to rely on now in my treatment, to understand and help me, makes me feel the same. In no way is it an empowering kind of being made independent. It’s being pushed away and tricked and all the cuts made deeper still.

I’m ashamed to admit it but I want someone to care for me. Before I can start to get any more ability to cope on my own I desperately need someone to understand how loud I’m screaming and how much it hurts and not to leave me, hold me and stop me from falling to pieces, stop me from losing all grip on reality because the pain and terror is so utterly consuming, hold me and allow me not to be okay. Then maybe I might be able to take very gradual steps to take back responsibility for one thing at a time. I don’t need to be tested, tricked, pushed away, not believed, not heard, used over and over again and taken to the most vulnerable desperate point then what tiny little things we hoped in taken.

I am full of anger and pain and rage at being tricked and used all over again.

G.

Laundry, hot dogs and tiny steps….

It is a day full of heat and summer. It’s a day of struggles inside my head too and it took me hours to force through the distress in my mind and even open the door and stand outside. I did it with the help of God. Perhaps it’s ridiculous that leaving the screaming and hurting going on in my head and the temptations to overdose and the fear of everything that is just too much and too forbidden to feel, had such a hold on me that it took the better part of the day to leave the one safe zone in my house. It may be stupid to anyone else but right now that’s how things are and the Lord took me in His hands and have me strength. For today that’s a little victory. I stepped outside. I smelt the grass in the sunshine, watched the flowers in my neighbour’s garden swaying in the breeze; I pegged out the washing and made myself concentrate and really feel the texture of the damp cloth, the warm stones under my feet and the air on my skin. It really is a beautiful day.

And that little victory continued and I have managed to walk down the street very slowl and come grocery shopping. I have promised myself to choose nourishing and healthful foods and not continue to punish myself with the binge-purge cycle that could numb some of the feelings I’m so afraid of now they don’t go away.

Right now before I do that, I’m just sitting with a cold drink and writing this to make my promises firmer. I’m watching the people passing in the street and letting this awareness ground me and draw me a little further out of my fear.

In the middle of all this I’ve actually smiled too, at happy children and at this chilled-out (though rather warm)guy waiting for his owner outside the health food shop. Seems they do their own hot dogs:

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So I guess what I’m saying in this strange rambling post is, it is very hard but I am trying to choose thankfulness and presence – thankfulness for feeling, presence with our God who does not leave us for a moment – rather than fear, self-punishment and numbing escapes. One tiny step at a time I’m asking God to give me strength to continue to look outward and be present, however much it hurts.

Ginny xxx

 

The pain is no longer numbing

I’m finding this physical crash really hard. I feel useless. I’m scared by the pain though I don’t know exactly why. I can’t face going outside. I don’t feel safe. At home feels slightly safer. Outside is too much and I’m tired so quickly. I’m not frustrated, I don’t think, but I do feel sad and the pain is scaring me. I don’t know why. Nothing bad is going to happen just because of the pain. What am I scared of exactly? I don’t know.

I’m sure when things were this bad last time, a few years ago, I dealt with it “better”. I got on with things better. I stayed on more of an even keel outwardly and kept going. It didn’t affect me so much emotionally. Last time it actually shut my emotions down more. The pain felt safe. It was a bit like my self-harming. It was as if, though the pain from my physical illness wasn’t self inflicted or chosen, it absorbed some of my emotions and deadened them and the voices in my head said that was safe because it stopped me being a danger to other people. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t feel so shaky and tired and vulnerable and exposed.

Now the pain and physical disability doesn’t seem to be swallowing up my emotional being and numbing me anymore. This must be something to do with changes the therapy is working in my mind and the fact that I have stopped self harming.

It’s quite scary to admit that this change and separation is occurring. Physical pain no longer equals safe and numb inside my head and not a danger to other people.

Now in my current physical struggle I feel the fear and vulnerability and even heightened emotions. Now I just wish someone were here to hold me. But at the same time I know I have to find out how to do this when I am on my own. Because that’s the day to day. Because I can’t ultimately depend totally on another person – in the end that puts an unfair weight on to someone else and puts me at risk if I can only go on depending on someone else every moment needing them always to protect me, allow me to to feel, allow me safety…. I don’t mean that I want to be isolated or want to reject other people. I really don’t; I long for the opposite. Just I meanthat I have to learn how to exist and experience physically and mentally for myself. This probably doesn’t make much sense yet. I’ll try to explain in better in another post.

In trying to learn some kind of ability to exist alone, exist without total dependence on others, I can trust totally in the unchanging love of Our God. The God who says fear not, for I am with you; the God who loves us first so that we can learn to love Him; the God we can count on as our hope just as surely as daybreak follows the night; the God who comes into our darkest, poorest times when we are lost and delights in us as His children.  In times of pain and alone-ness His presence is often now all the clearer to me and gives me hope that even when I fail totally at simple things and fear I disappoint everyone by being able to do so little, my life is not too little for Him. He loved each one of us before He even brought us into being. That has to mean HOPE.

Ginny xxx

The freedom of the sea

This weekend I went to visit family on the Sussex coast. I’ve wanted to do this for months and been battling with fears about the journey, being away from home, how my family would find being with me and how interactions would go. I’m so pleased this time I was able to do it, with the strength God gives and the care and support of my therapy group -and my family themselves.

As I cannot stand or walk for long at all at present, I was anxious about the journey and crossing London but it went as smoothly as I could ever have hoped.

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(Thanks to http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2014/04/03/photo-of-the-day-underground-overground-wombling-free/)

Sussex is a beautiful county. Here is just one of the lovely views we took in:

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I especially like being near the sea. It’s just 30 minutes or so from where my family live. The beaches tend to be more pebbles, rocks and shells than sand. I collected this simple stone from the beach a few years back. As well as serving as a paperweight, I like to use it as a grounding object. Something about the cool surface is soothing. It’s one of the items from my Rescue Box  though more often it’s beside me on the bookshelf rather than in the box.

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In Sussex it’s still quite easy to find peaceful areas of coastline where you can listen to the gulls over the chalk cliffs and the waves, feel the salty wind and run your hands over little stones smoothed and polished by their journey back and forth over the beach and in and out with each fresh tide.

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I love walking beside the sea. I’m not looking for the baking hot days for swimming and sunbathing – not that I’ve anything against that (and being in the water can actually bring me some relief from the pain)! I like being there and letting the sea calm me and assure me of the Presence of our loving Creator. The waves and the tide soothe me and tell me of a Heart much, much greater than mine and an eternal Spirit that speaks to each of us and whispers a hope unchanging, an order in the apparent chaos, whatever storms we are facing right now. In my journey at the moment I often feel very lost and overwhelmed, like one of the little pebbles on the beach tossing in the waves, sometimes scratched and roughly sanded against other stones, feeling very insignificant. But perhaps each motion of the waves in our lives is part of our preparation and refining, it smooths and polishes us to perfection, so we no longer resemble rough stones but bright and shining jewels that delight our beloved Jesus, who sets us right in the perfect place that He needs us to be.

Ginny xxx

 

 

Is this pain real?

WARNING: this post contains brief mentions of eating disorders and self-harm.

Which is harder to deal with: physical pain and physical disability / ill health, or mental pain and distress and poor mental health? Is there a difference for you? Does one seem more real than the other?

At the moment my physical health is poor and my physical pain and limitations have been worsening fast, in particular in the last couple of weeks. Any standing or walking is painful and shaky. I need to use my walking stick again, having had 5 years or so not needing it (apart from one time for a few weeks).

Physical health problems can be tangible and visible in a way that mental health isn’t. People can see that I’m using a stick or that I need to rest often. They can’t see in the same direct way when I’m having obsessional thoughts or hearing the voices. I’ve posted before on how many people I’ve met who have Borderline or other mental health problems, feel a shame about their mental health condition and support needs and a guilt for needing help or “not being normal” or not being able to cope. Many of these people, again myself included, have physical health issues too, and the common feeling seems to be that these are more allowed and acceptable (in others’ eyes and also our own thoughts) than the mental health needs. Often that does ring true with me and I’m sad so many people find that. I’ll post on that topic more separately.

Just now I’m struggling to trust that my physical pain is real and allowed too rather than being something I’ve invented, is my fault, not real…

Physical pain is still subjective. Nobody can objectively see how much, say, my back hurts or there are weird numb sensations then burning pain in my feet. Anatomic problems can be seen and measured on scans and tests but what our experience of pain and weakness is, can’t be.

I have been desperate for more visible and concrete proofs of what I experience physically. I have some, for example, a scan has showed some degeneration in my lower spine, the GP performed various tests which diagnosed they inflammatory condition in my knees, and so on. However much of my physical struggles aren’t documented in the same way. You can’t see nerve pain or nervous system inflammation, painful joints, muscle spasms, poor regulation in the autonomic nervous system (well not directly anyway, although some tests can show disrupted adrenal or thyroid function or high white blood cell counts)…

The lack of physical, external evidence of what I’m experiencing is a real problem for me. If i let myself think on it the voices get loud. I think I must be going mad. It must be my fault. It must be my invention or my imagination. I should just get on with it and push through. I’m weak. The worst thing is the thought I must be a fake. I hate using my stick because of it even when I’m in more pain and more unstable without it. I’m deceiving everyone, the voice tells me. Look. Everyone knows. Everyone’s looking at me. Everyone’s talking about what a fake I am. They all know nothing’s wrong with me really. I’m terrified it’s all made up and I’ve faked it all without realising. I’ll never stop it but my whole life I’ll be a fake and at the end I’ll be judged and punished for it. Other voices tell me I’m doing it for attention to make people worry about me. Don’t you know how much upset you’re causing, they ask…

In the past I’ve felt I’ve deserved physical pain. That it’s safe if I have pain or cause myself pain. It means I’m being punished and suffering and that’s safe. It means I won’t be so bad. I won’t be so dangerous. I’ll be weak and that’ll be safe. That was how I thought during my anorexia. That was how getting thinner and thinner and more ill kept me safe. It is/was part of how self harming was safe too because it punished only me, just only me, stopped the evil emotions as I saw them getting out. I say “was” because I’ve managed not to self harm for a month and I’m grappling with the feelings that come to be now I’m not doing it.

The physical pain from my illnesses that I can’t control is different. It is overwhelming. It isn’t safe. It might show my badness (because I’m fake). It’s overwhelming and can feel inescapable but I feel I don’t have the right to think it’s real.

It interacts with my mental control too. When the pain is bad part of my mind freezes. I cannot be warm or present for other people. Trying to interact at all is a fight. Sometimes I want to hide and sleep. Being around anyone can be too much. I panic and want to be safe at home in my secure place. I mix up words and sounds and can’t get a simple sentence out straight. The all encompassing nature of emotions and especially anxieties and fears and psychotic thoughts increases. I feel shut tighter into the world of my Borderline.

I doubt the reality and truth of my physical and emotional experiences. The only pain I knew was real and undoubted was the pain of self harming or starving. The rest of my experience I doubt, as though the real me that’s bad really, angry, fake, deceitful, will be found out in the end, but I can’t escape from it/her. I only just realised that in writing this post. Trying to stop self harming is going to change a lot, I think.

Ginny xxxx

Blank and falling

I was sent home from work today because I got to the point I just could not stand up anymore with the pain and altered sensation in my legs. I had to get a taxi home. Walking was so painful and my mind felt totally out of it and like I was ready to fall asleep or faint. I was trying to take steps but it literally was not working and I felt I was coming to pieces.

I’m scared. Things have crashed so fast. Though it isn’t fast really, as I’ve known for months that physically things were getting worse. But it feels fast, how quick I’ve gone over the edge to not coping.

The mental effects are as frightening as the physical loss of strength and all-encompassing exhaustion. I feel the room is swaying. On the verge of a panic attack for ages. Other times my mind feels frozen. My words get mixed up, the words that come out aren’t what I’m thinking or wanting to say, some stupidly substituted word or mixed up syllables comes out. People talking seem far away. I hear sounds but I cannot piece the words they are saying together. It’s scary, overwhelming noise. Thinking and speaking myself feels like struggling through thick water. The worse the tiredness and pain is, the worse it gets.

Then the worse the anxiety, hallucinations, obsessional thoughts and panic about what is in me and what everyone thinks…

I’m scared how far I’ve crashed so quickly. I’m hoping I’ll be able to find the way forward soon. Maybe with rest in a couple of days my head will feel different. I’m scared I’m going to get all shut away in my head again and lose the benefits people tell me therapy has brought me and that I was starting to see in what I can express or hold in mind.

The state of my mind right now makes me feel more vulnerable than the physical effects.

It’s weird the interaction with the pain and the cognitive struggle to keep a grip and the disconnection from reality, either shut off from emotions, drowning, or feeling too overwhelmed by being scared.

There’s so much I want to ask but can’t articulate.

Everything is slipping and I’m trying to hold on to the fact that even though I don’t have control of my mind right now or control over what’s happening to my body physically, I have a loving God, who will not leave me, whose love is perfect when we are weak; I have family members who care and some good friends who are still there now things are hard.

Ginny xxx

Crashing

This is a hard post to write.

I have not been coping physically with my job for a long time. I have really tried to ignore this. Since I started it made my pain levels worse and ever since they have kept increasing. I kept hoping it would at least stop getting worse and maybe that I’d get better at coping with it. I wanted to be able to do it. Be some kind of normal. My job sometimes helps me mentally, engaging in something creative and focusing on helping customers and giving the best service I can. It takes my focus outward which I’ve long believed is really important in staying well. The tactile aspects of my work, handling the different fabrics and trying to create attractive displays, can in themselves be grounding and soothing. Additionally, it’s an area where I can try`to do some good and not feel useless. (I know that’s something I need to work on, how connected my sense of worth is with others’ outward perception of me, but I can’t deny it helps for the time being.)

Now I’ve come to the point of crashing completely. In the last 3 months in particular my pain and physical weakness has increased faster. Since around the time of my operation I guess marked a real down-turn physically and it was to be expected really that  my fibromyalgia symptoms will be worse for a while afterwards. Everything is worse really, my back problems (I had a slipped disc years ago), arthritis…

I know I haven’t really talked about it so maybe this sounds weird. Whenever I talk about my physical health I worry it all sounds stupid, nobody would believe me, I’m a fake and I should just get on with it and everything’s my fault. (There’s a lot I have to work on there too, I know.)

I feel like I’ve crashed suddenly. Gradually it has got harder and harder to – move, to put it bluntly…  Getting harder to get through the day….harder to be able to get home, having to sit and rest, and crumpling as soon as I get in, lying down most of the evening… Today I have had to spend most of the day lying down. Pain and shakiness in my legs makes any standing and walking really hard. My legs are cramping and jerking out of the blue. I can’t feel in my right foot normally and at the same time the pain is really bad through my lower back and hips, worst on the right… I’ve had all this before although not as bad, but I am very scared right now. I feel scared and shaky and lost and so tired. I slept a lot today too. My support worker came this morning and I was so tired I was struggling to literally get words out.

So I find myself admitting again that I am probably going to have to leave this job. The physical deterioration from trying to meet its demands is too much. I have tried to look into reducing my hours but it does not look as though this will be possible. I;d have to massively reduce them in any case. My manager has been kind and understanding in her approach but has to follow the sickness absence procedures set down by the company. Since I have been off sick 4 times within a 6 month period, this is flagged as a problem. I can well understand that it is not fair to colleagues to be off too frequently and I know myself that I am struggling more and more with daily tasks, which is increasing my anxiety and in turn my psychotic thoughts and my fears about what colleagues are saying and thinking about me and making it harder to cope with the hallucinations and all the mental struggles of every day.

Outside of work the effect is great too. Not only are the pain and mobility problems an issue, but I have no energy or coping resources left to manage day to day tasks like keeping my house clean, keeping in touch with people, doing positive things to bring a balance to life outside work, or perhaps most importantly right now, giving the energy to therapy and recovery that I need to. The months I have left with the PD service are precious and working on making use of my individual and group sessions is demanding. I want to be mentally “present” for it, not shut off protecting myself because I’m desperately trying to cope with pain and utter exhaustion.

I’m going to be referred to Occupational Health so I await to see what they will suggest.

ergonomic occ health

I also have to follow my doctors’ and my support worker’s advice. I believe they would all prefer me to reduce my hours. My support worker definitely thinks so.

The one thing that ironically, in a twisted way makes this situation possibly not quite so bad, is that I may actually not be worse off financially working fewer hours or not working at all. I want to talk about this more in a separate post shortly. It’s a bizarre situation that doesn’t sit well with me. At the moment I am struggling in pain and making myself physically worse every day, working part-time, earning just above the minimum hourly wage.  I receive less than £10 per week help towards my rent, I am not entitled to any help at all with things like council tax*, and although I was initially assessed as eligible for a small amount of tax credits, this decision has now been changed and I have been told that I am not entitled to any.  Now, I strongly believe that it is morally right to work as much as I can and not to expect to receive handouts when I could be earning myself. However, what I cannot get away from is that on my current earnings whilst I am working as many hours as I can (well, I have to admit now, more than I can) I cannot live. I do not have enough to cover basic bills and simple living costs and I would not be getting by if it were not for regular help from my family and even occasionally my very good friend who has lent me money for grocery shopping when money has been tightest.

Not only can this situation not go on – I am over 30 now and I simply cannot go on needing financial help from my dad; I have to support myself – but the cost of this job physically is just too much to go through to still not be able to live. It is painfully ironic that because if I were not working or were working fewer hours, for example for a few months or so whilst I complete my therapy, my financial situation would actually be more stable because of the greater help I would get towards rent and living costs. That makes me really really uncomfortable and it isn’t right. Yet I have to be able to live.

It isn’t the main factor that has led me to this point. If I were coping physically I would keep going and if I could I would see if I can increase my hours. But I’m forced to accept that just isn’t so and physically things are not good right now.

I feel really worn out and vulnerable right now. The last time I was so low physically, about 7 years ago, I didn’t feel so afraid or sad. I wonder why that change has come. Perhaps I feel more responsible now. Perhaps I am sadder about potentially leaving my job because there are aspects of it that I genuinely like this time. Perhaps I feel more of a failure that this has happened again.

I need to focus on the good things that could come out of it if I do have to leave. My health problems are not life threatening or anything that serious and so many people are going through much worse, much more medically severe, perhaps without friends to help them and understanding doctors. In moments I can see that there can be ways that in the next few months I can try to turn things around.

I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me. Tonight I just needed to get all this out and admit that I’m scared.

Thank you for listening. I can’t imagine where I would be right now without this blog and the support of you lovely people who read and care and comment. There’s so much more I should say on that. I hope you know how much you mean to me. Hugs xxx

Ginny xxx

(*apart from the 25% single person occupancy discount. For non-UK readers, council tax is a roughly monthly fee payable towards local government spending like policing and other emergency services, refuse collection, some elements of care for vulnerable people, etc. Most working adults pay council tax. The amount payable depends on the value of the property you live in.)

Image not mine, sourced on the ever useful Google – I am afraid I do not know the artist (it says in the top left I believe but I was not able to expand it to read it.

To blog anonymously or not…

When I first started this blog, I was certain that I was going to keep it anonymous. By “anonymous” I mean, for example,  I don’t use my full name, I avoid posting anything that would indicate the town I live in and I do not post photos of myself or my loved ones. Recently, I’ve been wondering whether I might change my approach slightly, for instance, disclosing a little more about me, or sharing photos sometimes, or no longer refraining from talking about local groups, services, activities etc that might give away where I live.

It’s a hard decision. I was talking about it with my friend S who suggested “Why don’t you ask other bloggers what they think?” I thought that was a great idea.

So, I’d like to ask you a question: what do you think about blogging anonymously versus revealing personal details? Was this a difficult issue for you? What led you to choose how much you reveal and whether you write anonymously? If you started your blog anonymously but later decided to share more about yourself, or vice versa, what led you to that decision? If you’d like to make any comments I’d be very grateful. Thank you.

I’ll share a few of my own thoughts on the decision I’m trying to make.

Ironically, it’s partly because some of what I post here about my emotions, experiences and relationships is so very personal that I refrain from sharing personally identifiable information. Many of the experiences I talk about are very painful and intimate, especially those from my childhood. If someone I know as an acquaintance or colleague (rather than a very close friend) came across my blog and learned what had happened to me then I might feel really uncomfortable to say the least. At the start of my blogging, anonymity let me write more freely. Also, I didn’t know what kind of reaction I might meet with. Allowing myself to be identified could have made me vulnerable if I encountered unpleasant or harassing “followers”. In fact this hasn’t happened at all; since I started my blog I’ve been very blessed to have caring and supportive visitors to my pages who have become friends and that’s a huge gift.  THANK YOU! It’s now partly because you have become friends that I’d feel comfortable sharing, and indeed would like to share, a little bit more.

However I also know that if I were to be identified my blog might affect not only me but my friends, family and the professionals who care for me.

I’ve written about relationships breaking down and hurt I feel. I’ve shared sensitive experiences that involved others, such as my childhood abuse and relationships in my family when I was growing up. When I mention someone else I never give their name, only an initial sometimes, but if I were to be identified through my blog by someone who knows me (say, through work or a friend of a friend) then other people I’ve mentioned in my posts potentially are more likely to be identifiable too. It’s a small world, as the saying goes, and I don’t have that many friends! 😉 My friends and family may not want to be identified, or they may be upset. The anonymity of the internet does not give me the right to be horrible about people and I try hard not to write personal things about other people or things I wouldn’t say to the person directly. However I’m inevitably only writing my own experience and perception. In another person’s view it may not be balanced. On the flip side of this, I try to write positive things and express gratitude about the good friends I do have in my life and it would be nice to share more of that.

As well as considering my friends, I have to consider the hospital and my doctors and the therapy programme I attend. There aren’t many specific personality disorder services in the UK and if I say where I live, which hospital I attend will likely become clear to anyone else vaguely local with knowledge of PD. I might worry about anyone making a judgment about the hospital or therapy on the basis of what I write. It’s just me, after all.

Equally there is a lot about the support I get that is great and I would like to share this to help others. Having experienced at least 15 years of mental health issues, slowly I’ve come across sources of support and services that can really really help, some in times of crisis and some day to day. A lot of them are not easy to find. I’d love to write about them and how they’ve helped me, in case this in turn helps others and because I think they deserve recognition. So far I’ve held back so as to avoid revealing my location. Perhaps that is over-cautious of me.

You get the picture that I’m in two minds about this at the moment!

Ginny xxx