Not working out….

“I shudder to think what the state of my in-tray would be if I was away from work for five days!”

“Yes, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh?” said Fred.

“That was a sample of fertilizer from Norway!” said Percy. “It was nothing personal!”

(JK Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”)

 

Well, I haven’t found any dragon dung yet, but I certainly have been having problems with my in-tray.  It has really not been a good few months at work and now everything has finally come crashing down.

All my life I’ve found a kind of escape in work.  As a primary school age child, I was taught at home by my mother who suffered severe mental illness.  Achievement, excelling and perfection was of such importance to her and the only way to avoid her accusations, threats, shouting, violent distress, which would erupt when I could not do something or did not do as she wanted. It was the only way to be safe by avoiding this explosion and avoiding the harm I appeared to cause, escaping the danger and catastrophes I believed would ensue or did ensue. (This probably warrants another post at some point.)

When I went to secondary school, I physically escaped her illness for a portion of the day. Soon I worked out that if I stayed at school as long as possible (extra clubs, volunteering, staying on to do some of my homework at school rather than going straight home at the end of the day of classes) I could escape for longer. Working in my bedroom in the evenings was preferable to staying under her intense gaze, or risking conflict if I was around her. Being used to the need for excellence, I worked as hard as I could, so though I was nothing particularly special or noteworthy I got good marks by virtue of the time I put in, and this too was “safe”. It secured her approval too sometimes.

I continued to work as hard as I could and give my all in every job I’ve had.  Perhaps it’s something that comes fairly naturally to me in my character.  If so it’s a gift I am thankful for.  It is very important to me to do a good job, give my best, serve the people I am working for properly, offer my work in prayer and dedication.

It has been a way to escape from the noise in my head, the hollow emptiness and uncertainty, flashbacks and panic attacks. Focussing on work takes me away from myself, to look outside and to others, to keep my concentration on the task in hand. Although I have never had much self-confidence, I have gradually learnt there are some areas I have some strengths and where, even if I may never be satisfied, my managers at times do seem to be. So whereas pervading most areas of my life I have suffocating fears that I am going to hurt someone, that I’m bad inside really, at work at least I can hope objectively to do some good, give a good service, help someone.

All that has come crashing down in the last few weeks. I’ve been on a phased return to work since I was last off sick after being in hospital.  I’d got up to about 4 days, to accommodate therapy appointments at hospital.  For several months the pressure of the workload seemed to be increasing.  I was getting more and more stressed and though it was agreed in principle for me to go to my appointments, there was not any support in terms of managing the workload or anyone covering during my absence, so work built up, causing more stress for me and more anger from my managers.  I tried to address this, together with the general atmosphere, which was becoming more and more uncomfortable and hostile.  I did manage to have a few brief discussions with managers and was never told that there was a problem with my work and my appraisal earlier in the year was, to my surprise, good as well.

A month or so ago the pressure built up to a point I could not cope with and I insisted that something needed to change.  At this point, I was told that there is not much on, it is not busy, nothing much is expected of me, everyone knows I cannot cope with the work, and people hold back giving me work because they know I can’t cope with it. The fact I do extra hours was used as a fact to support the idea I cannot cope with the work because it shows I can’t get the work done in the standard working hours (whilst I would say there was simply too much work to get through).

There were many other things said that were very upsetting which I won’t go in to here, partly because I don’t want to say anything directly identifiable to my employer.

But basically, I was told that I’m rubbish and I cannot cope with the job an don’t get through the work, and that I am not providing the kind of service that I am supposed to because people know I won’t be able to cope with it.

So many feelings went and are still going through my head over this.  Partly anger and shock, because I had found that it was busy and was giving everything I good even to the detriment of my health.  This was so contradictory to all the feedback I’d had before – why? Then fear and anxiety. I didn’t even know I was doing so badly or that people were so unhappy with me.  I mean, I knew they were unhappy with me, and thought they think I’m stupid and don’t do what they want quickly enough, but I hadn’t realised how incompetent I actually was.  It’s even worse that I did not realise how bad I was, because I fear so much in my life that there is something horrible and bad in me which I’m not aware of and can’t control, which hurts people and I don’t even realise it, means that my family even can’t stand to be around me.

I had hoped work was one area in which I could do some good but now this is gone too.  It was what I was clinging on to and trying to keep going.  Even though I could see in a way it was doing no good to me because I was so stressed and couldn’t cope with other areas of my life at the same time (not looking after my flat, not cooking, getting mixed up over bills, so drained I did not socialise with anyone outside of work).

I know that my concentration is not good, that I dissociate for periods of time and lose track of time when I am stressed and very upset.  I know I do not work as quickly as I used to.  I didn’t realise the extent of the effect it was having.  That I can’t do my job.  That my perception of the situation should be so different from other people’s – I thought I was giving everything, I thought there was pressure, when other people are saying there is no pressure, it isn’t busy, and I can’t do it. That is frightening to me.  According to my therapist, a disconnect between one’s own experiences and other people’s, and a difficulty dealing with this, or dealing with situations in which our emotions and feelings are different from others’, is common in personality disorders.

I don’t know where I go from here.  I called a couple of advice lines and they told me that possibly I have some case to say that more could have been done to support me, with more “reasonable adjustments” at work.  I looked into this and wrote down a case around this but I couldn’t go forward with it in the end.  I doubt my own perceptions and feelings too much and even writing it for myself, I felt like a complete fraud, that I’ve invented everything and the problems lie all with me not my employer.  The voices in my head are telling me I’m nasty, disgusting, invented it, liar, fake, you’ve invented a story to accuse people of things… I just cannot cope with that and know how much more intense it would be if I actually tried to put anything in. Crazy, I know, but that’s what goes on in my head.  I’m scared in the end that I’m just bad and evil and greedy inside.

In the end, my employer has told me I’m not coping with the job and not competent and I think I’ll probably be dismissed.  Even if not my GP and specialist have told me it’s too stressful an environment.  I need to get out of this role and do something less pressured and stressful and where I can engage in the therapy I’m doing at the minute, get to appointments and get support. I agree with them.  Even if I am dismissed or do have to take the decision to leave, the one good thing I can see is that at least I am choosing to try to do something to put my health first, for the first time. Not admitting what I need to do in the past has just led to things getting worse and worse.

But it’s scary right now. I’m signed off sick at the moment. I feel empty and frightened and anxious all at once and there’s too much space for the spiralling thoughts and fears in my head.  I’m trying to focus on positive and creative things. I don’t know how to trust myself at all because even in the last things that I trusted I could do properly, it seems actually I wasn’t doing a good job at all, and everyone except me knew it. So many jobs have ended in the past  and I so want to find something that is sustainable but where I can engage with my therapy as well.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on work if you’d like to share them. Is work a good experience or a bad one for you? What kind of work you find is good for you and something where you can give your skills and abilities? If you find part time work is helpful and how much flexibility you find employers can give to be able to go to therapy appointments as well as working?

It seems like a very anxious and uncertain path at the moment.

Ginny xx

Thank you!!

Thank you!!

Wow. Thank you so much to all of you who have liked / followed / commented on here.

This is my first time blogging and sharing more freely my experiences of mental health is also a relatively new thing for me.  When I began this blog, I really hoped that I would be able to post things which are of interest, which readers can relate to and so in some way help.  I know how much that has helped me.  But I didn’t know where to start.

So, it means a lot that you have taken the time to stop by here and to leave comments and feedback. I know from personal experience when I’m struggling that it is often not easy to share or even to read something so I particularly appreciate what you do.  I’m encouraged that this is a place to find solidarity and share experiences along our paths. Thank you very very much. It has not been a great couple of weeks for me and so it means all the more to me right now to find this encouragement here.

***

On a related note, I’d love to know what you wonderful visitors to this site would like to discuss / me to post about – what topics are particularly interesting or meaningful to you. It’s often comments that friends, some of whom I meet in support and therapy groups, that spark off a new train of thought, a different way of looking at something, a discovery of an unexpected experience in common or a connection I had not made before, and I certainly find this interesting myself when I write and reflect on it.

I’d love to hear from you with any thoughts you’d like to share, questions or suggestions.

Again thank you so very much

Ginny xx

An early morning surprise visitor

It had been the most horrible night, with repeated flashbacks. I felt surrounded by danger and panicky emotions boiled to the surface and repeated self-harming had only numbed it for a few minutes at a time.

I was exhausted but gave up on going to sleep in the early hours as I knew I’d soon have to get up for work.  As it got lighter, I was in a numb state where I was not sure any more if things were real or if I was watching everything through glass (this happens to me sometimes after an intense period of distress).  I was standing staring out of the window into the communal garden.

Suddenly, the tiniest little deer (muntjack?) came walking very slowly and calmly across the lawn.  He stopped to nibble some grass and stood for several moments looking around before, just as calmly, walking on and following the path round the side of the building out of sight.  He showed none of the timidity deer often have round people and what he was doing so far into the city centre, I don’t know.

Coming after the strain of that night, it was a most precious moment.  I don’t know what I felt.  It seemed ethereal.  Just I knew I was not quite so numb and disconnected the rest of that day, and I often think back to that little deer, walking in the early morning.

There really are beautiful and unexpected things everywhere, no matter how much pain we are feeling. Perhaps the times we are startled into watching them and drawn out of the pain by their beauty, will help our recovery.

Ginny x

A shapeless piece of steel… a burn that burns much deeper – “Why do you self-harm?”

I have written this post in answer to the question I was asked of why do I self-harm and what purpose does it serve. In my opinion it definitely serves an important purpose and it is not a “cry for help” or to get attention as stereotypes hold.  It’s a coping strategy – a harmful, or “maladaptive” one, but it’s a strategy.

It’s necessary. It’s the only way to carry on. It’s a compulsion, a need, and a blessed release.

It can be almost grounding. When the voices are screaming, the guilt is exploding in me, I am crushed by anger and fear and disgust at myself and running out of breath – I know what those cuts will feel like. It’s the same every time. It’s release. I know exactly what will happen no matter what a mess everything is. I get the scissors or the razor and I know what I must do and I know what I will see as I scratch and bleed and I know what I will feel, the familiar sting, redness, throbbing. I know what that is. There it is before me and it can’t be doubted.

It’s better pain than what’s in my head and it stops the noise and hurt and racing thoughts and voices and rising anger and crushing terror and revulsion that wants to tear at my skin to get away all the bad that I know is inside me.

I can be sure that I’ve hurt myself. There it is, I can see it. It’s not good enough. I’m very weak. I need to do it more and more. But it’s something. It’s some way I can be sure I hurt myself, so I won’t hurt someone else. So I’m not such a danger to everyone else. Not so disgusting.

Sometimes it’s so that I can continue with the day.

It shuts off, for a few minutes, the frightening memory, the frightening emotion or the disgusting thoughts. Especially violent anger or the sadness that blacks everything else out and hides everything good. It literally cuts through it, a little bit, fights the way upwards.

It can end some of the dangerous dissociations where I lose time, forget things, make irrational decisions, disappear from reality into my safe escape worlds.

Perhaps sleep will come afterwards.

Perhaps numbness or quiet will come afterwards and it’s a little bit of a way to get a break.

People say it’s a cry for help. It’s not. It’s not something I threaten to do to get my own way or pressure people. It’s secret. It is the help. It is the way to keep going. If I couldn’t do it, I’d have had to die a long time ago. I’d have given in and (though it’s against every single one of my personal religious and moral beliefs when I’m in my rational mind) the darkness would have consumed everything and I’d have had to do it. I hide it from everyone, make sure I do it where they can’t see, and I very reluctantly tell my therapist about it. One of my friends says call her when I feel I’m going to do it, she’d want to know. I could never do that – I would not want to put her in the position of feeling she must stop me.

I don’t think I do it very “badly” – several people in one of my therapy groups have far worse self-harm scars than I do. It’s nothing really, it’s no danger.  But it is a way to cope.

***

“…My dreams are not the issue here, for they, the hammer holds. The hammer pounds again, but flames I do not feel, this force that drives me helplessly through flesh and wood reveals a burn that burns much deeper, it’s more than I can stand…”

(This and the title quote are from Bebo Norman’s The Hammer Holds. For some reason this song always makes me think of how I feel when I self-harm.  I know this is not anything to do with the original meaning of the song and Bebo Norman is not making this reference at all (it’s a Christian song telling the story of the Crucifixion). Yet some of the lines express how I feel when I cut.  It’s a way to bear the pain; it’s something I wish did not have to be but is absolutely needed and drives me on, it’s the only way to live at the moment. )

 

 

 

Lullaby 3 – what I can never share

Warning – this post contains some of the thoughts that I have when I am pushed to self-harming or suicidal plans. It contains mention of some of the ways in which I self-harm.  If this may be distressing for you, you may not wish to read further.

There is nowhere I fit.

The rare times I felt any safety as a child were:

  • Talking to Dad about what had happened just before Mother went into hospital, when her behaviour had become so wildly bizarre it could no longer be ignored.  At last I was heard.  My fears were heard.  This was short-lived.  As soon as she was back home, the admission of the strangeness was lost, explained away, forgotten… her world returned again, her world consumed ours.
  • When I had some academic success. Did well in a test, or an essay, or an exam. Got good marks.

Now, perhaps, it’s also “safe” if I’m “recovering” at the pace and in the way my family want.  For a while, it’s as if a bridge of some kind of expression or understanding can be built.  Sometimes they startle me with understanding and acceptance and support and encouragement and say they are there any time I want to talk.  But it’s laced with fear because as soon as I can’t keep up the progression, keep “moving forwards” – so just when I’ve started trusting, and just when I most need help (maybe I’m distressed, anxious, the voices are worse again, something has gone really wrong in my life) – they pull away, they are angry, they limit contact, I’m the problem, I just have to make more effort and try harder, I have to realise how impossible I am to be around, I’m a spoilt brat, everyone says how rude I am, on and on and on. Shift into a different gear, we don’t know anyone else who’s done as little as you, reaffirming the embarrassment and failure I am.

So the only way to cope, to avoid yet more pain of starting to trust and then yet again failing, hurting – others, and myself – is to only have contact when I can act how they want me to, present what’s acceptable and what they want to see.  That won’t be rejected.  The rest I’ll hide, and when I cannot hide, I’ll make sure I’m alone.

I do not fit in their world and I do not think I will ever be a part of it.  Constantly I am too much to cope with.  “Why isn’t it enough for you? Look what everyone has done for you! It isn’t anyone else’s responsibility to make you feel better. Look what I’ve done. It would be nice if you responded.  It would be enough for most people.  Why isn’t it enough for you?”

I hear the voices joining in the chorus and the guilt settling like a weight crushing my shoulders, fighting with the anger rising within me, mixing to a block of lead in my chest.

Why isn’t it enough for you? You didn’t say sorry! You didn’t say sorry enough!

I don’t know. I don’t know why it isn’t enough. I don’t know how to say sorry enough for the failure and rubbish and disgusting thing I am.  Some part of me wanted to show you the razor marks then, the cuts down my arm, they still weren’t enough, but that was how sorry I was – though I still couldn’t do it well enough, I was too weak.

I don’t know why it isn’t enough. But there’s this weight on my heart and on my brain, there’s a noise in my head, the voices, screaming, white noise, sucking me back into flashbacks and memories of pain and fear and disgust and hurt and desperately, desperately wanting someone to protect me and see.

I don’t know why it isn’t enough.  But I did try to tell you, and I did really want you to see my fear, back then.  But all you could see was her, and she was perfect, and I was the problem, the one that had to change, that was acting weirdly, not trying hard enough. I did try to tell you and you were there, but now you say I didn’t speak and you didn’t see.

I don’t know why it isn’t enough. But inside every part of me is breaking and crying and I’m fighting the urge to run away and not stop, hope I will freeze or collapse or die, lie down and sleep to get away, because I am so, so tired, of what the voices say to me, of being so weak I can’t do what they say, when they tell me to pour the boiling water from the kettle over my hands, to cut deeper, to take the handfuls of pills not just look at them, to actually step on the train tracks this time, it would be so so easy, you vile disgusting selfish pig, why don’t you do it? You’re ugly, you’re dirt, you can’t ever get rid of the evil thing in you, everyone will see in the end, everyone knows you’re evil. Go on, do it, cut, starve, throw up, you disgusting bitch, what right do you have to this…

I don’t know why it isn’t enough. No matter how much I wash or cut or starve, it can’t be sure to get out the evil in me, that errupts dangerously and contaminates and hurts everyone around, and I don’t ever know when it’s next going to happen, that someone gets hurt. Mother told me for long enough that I was punishing her, plotting against her, deceiving, greedy, fat, selfish, getting my own way, hurting her repeatedly, driving her to suicide, driving her away from the family, going to have them sent to prison, and nobody would ever know it was really my fault, they’d think it was hers, but really deep down I’d know it was me, and so would she. So whatever they say, I know it’s me that’s evil really.

I don’t know why it isn’t enough.

Lullaby for a Stormy Night – 2

I thought that the title of this series required some explanation – why Lullaby? “Lullaby for a Stormy Night” is a song by Vienna Teng, to which I have posted a link below.  I was very moved when I first heard it, the gentle piano music and the words promising the child acceptance, empathy, love and never to be left, seeming to answer a fundamental need for this safety that I think we all have – and showing a love that I hope I would be able to give to any child I should ever care for.

Here is a link to “Lullaby”, with thanks [please note this video is not mine, I am simply gratefully sharing]:

I very much like several of Vienna Teng’s songs and identify with the lyrics – if you like the above I think it’s worth listening to “Anna Rose” and “Harbor”, in particular.

Lullaby for a Stormy Night – 1

In therapy yesterday, we talked about having a “safe place”.  Someone asked me what mine was.  This thought has prompted me to write a series of reflections on this theme.  I think there will be 5 or 6 in total but this may change.  This introductory post to the series is poorly written, for which I apologise.  It’s hard to form these thoughts into words.

The short answer is I don’t think I have a “safe place”, certainly not an actual physical place as I’ve heard other people with personality disorder speak of, and I don’t think I really did, bar one period of my early life which I’ll talk about in one of the subsequent reflections.

Over the past couple of years, with varying degrees of strength, I have felt a longing for a home, a stable home, although I didn’t necessarily term it “safety” in my mind.  I’m not sure if I have ever actually felt safety.  That sounds ridiculous.  Yet if things were not physically dangerous there was a terrifying uncertainty and need to prevent disaster through the years of living with mother’s illness and behaviour, then – still now – the need to prevent everything I fear in myself getting out to other people.  I was in danger, and I was the danger.

I did want a home.  I felt that more and more raw longing.  I felt it when my childhood family home was sold in my parents’ divorce, even though I had not lived there for many years and it had by no means ever been safe, it was still a wrenching goodbye and a loss of something. I don’t know what. Perhaps it wasn’t a loss if it had never been there in the first place, but an absence. Absence of home.  Longing for it I tried to stay with my dad and stepmum, and what happened in that time hurt beyond belief and still feels as though it greatly damaged this family further.

***

Now I am trying to create a home and a safe place in my flat.  I am incredibly grateful to have a place that is my own, to have had support through the council to get to this stage, where I can make a flat my own rather than renting a room as a lodger in someone else’s house or in a shared property.  I never thought this would come.  It is actually remarkably hard to make this flat a real home.  Partly because I am getting used to the responsibilities of having a home – a greater number of bills, repairing things, upkeep and so on, which is all new to me although it is very late in my life for this to be new! Partly because I am so unused to knowing how to create something of my own.

***

As a child, whilst I did not have a feeling of safety, I created places in an internal world and escaped.  Now this world comes unbidden and stronger than I expect.  I have been told in therapy that it’s unusual that there are so many relationships in my internal world, rather than it just providing an escape to numbness.  I don’t know how yet, but it is connected to feelings of having different personalities and of detaching from what is happening around me.

A counsellor I saw at school towards the end of my time there understood my escapes, I think.  She realised how little, until I went to school, the outside world existed to our family and how little it crossed with mine (or rather, mother’s).  The counsellor saw clearly how she taught me at home to keep me there for her, in her world, because she couldn’t cope with going outside it, magnifying school to be a terrible threat because she couldn’t cope with me going.  And the counsellor said to me that to be able to live as I did, I must have found some way to escape and rebel.  I was surprised at the question and could not answer it, though I could begin to see what she was touching on.  I’ve returned to it at various times and now I think that perhaps my alternative worlds were how I escaped.  (Also, so perhaps was schoolwork and so was my eating disorder.)

It feels sad to realise the absence of such a place now, and it is sad to realise the efficacy and strength of the alternative worlds then, and of my dissociations now.

***

Would I even know how to live if it were safe? How do I even begin to cope with the risks involved in becoming closer to those I most care about? When so much in me is, in so far as I can really believe, dangerous, repulsive, unacceptable, a disappointment, something people close to me really cannot cope with in the end and have to limit contact with?

PD and ED – some thoughts about personality disorders and eating disorders

The majority of other sufferers of personality disorders that I have met with, as an inpatient and in the community service I go to now, have difficult experiences surrounding food, for example, having diagnoses of anorexia or bulimia, struggling with fluctuating weight, punishing themselves with food-related actions (starving or making themselves sick or bingeing, or deliberately eating foods they are allergic to in order to provoke a painful physical symptom) and so on.  This is just an observation from what I have encountered and there could be many factors involved – for example, issues around weight do seem to be on the up in the UK (or at least more prominent in media coverage?) and the majority of people I know with personality disorders are women, amongst whom eating disorders are also more common.  However, it did get me thinking and resonate strongly with my own experiences of food and disordered eating and of working in an eating disorder service.

I think food is tightly bound to feelings of anger at self or at one’s own uncontrollable emotions, and makes an effective – though it hurts to use that word – form of self-harm.  When you have thoughts like: I’m so disgusting I don’t deserve to eat / don’t deserve good food only rubbish, I do not deserve to care for myself so I only eat junk, I hate my body for making these demands [to eat], go on you disgusting bitch [I say to myself] look what you’ve done you greedy pig, now get rid of it, throw up til your throat bleeds….you’re foul, you’re disgusting, look how much you’ve hurt everyone, starve and make sure it hurts……. Those kind of thoughts; or even just being too low in the darkness to respond to the basic need for nourishment.

When my eating was the most disordered, I didn’t get specialist help or even much acknowledge the problem in the worst times, despite the efficacy of the function it was serving for me.  I was also blind to it.  My mother (in part because of how her thoughts were twisted by her own sickness) also prevented me from accessing the help that my GP desperately wanted me to get. Now I know that I was underweight enough to fall into the severe anorexic weight range where dire physical consequences were a risk.  My periods stopped and I suffered damage to discs in my back during this time.  (More on my own disordered eating in another post.)  This was long before I was diagnosed with personality disorder (my eating disorder first started when I was about 14) and it is only now, nearly 15 years later, that I am acknowledging it and can articulate what its functions were.

The other day I spied a leaflet for carers in the community service I’m part of, which discussed some of the signs of personality disorders.  “Eating disorders” was actually specifically listed as a “symptom”.  This struck me in particular because personality disorder often occurs jointly with other psychiatric diagnoses but these would not be classed as a “symptom” of personality disorder.  (For example, many people with forms of personality disorder also have bipolar disorder, but bipolar would not, at least to my knowledge, be classed as a symptom of personality disorder – it is a different diagnosis which someone may have at the same time.)

I would agree that struggling to feed myself well and at times, actions that would be classed as eating disordered behaviour, are tightly related to my emotional instability, lack of control over strong emotions or thoughts that are repulsive to me, and the need to punish and hurt myself.  So yes, I would say these are “symptoms” of my personality disorder.

I talked to two friends about the leaflet I had seen – both are highly experienced in the treatment of eating disorders.  One point they made was how much eating disorders are a sign of something else painful.  It’s often thought that once someone’s problems with food and weight are treated, they are “all better”.  However, that is very much not so.  The eating disorder is often masking, indeed a mechanism for coping with, something else.

It could be numbing, or controlling.  Overeating could comfort, suppress, bury, emotions.  Starvation, I think, ironically consumes; the hunger that gnaws painfully eats away other feelings and leaves a blessed numbness.  Thinking back to my own times of starvation, I have to admit that it was, at the very least in a significant part…. fantastic.*  I was wrapped in a protective, protecting numbness, for long periods.  (The times this cracked were utterly terrible, but the times it lasted froze me in a lighter, safer state, so it seemed.)  I will explore more of this in another post.

One struggle in personality disorders is that our emotions may, with less stimulus than it ordinarily takes, reach an unbearable high where we cannot cope or think, where there’s only fear, upset, panic, darkness, anger, sadness… or much more occasionally, extremes of joy (I am not sure why the extremes of positive emotions are so much more occasional.  Perhaps do they just trouble us less as these emotions seem more acceptable, and therefore we remember these extremes less?)  In these extreme states we can’t think, we don’t act rationally, our memory may be affected, and we may take extreme actions like overdoses, self-harm, suicide attempts, and so on.  Then it takes longer to come back down from that extreme state to “normal” – the level of emotion where it is possible to cope and function and think – than it ordinarily would take.

So I think one interaction of eating disorders with personality disorders could be this.  First, the eating disorder may serve the function of numbing emotions in the first place, so that those dangerous high extremes are not reached in the first place.  Second, it may serve the purpose of bringing us down from the extreme, with their numbing, consuming, controlling effect.  It’s similar to other forms of self harm.  When I am in extreme distress and I cut, for a brief time, it deals with the emotion or makes things feel safe again because I can be sure I’m hurting myself, not someone else.

These are just my thoughts and I would love to know more about research into this.  I wonder how much there is.  I have read quite widely in my work and studies about eating disorders but have not come across very much on this topic, beyond the fact that the two diagnoses can occur together.  It strikes me that the interaction between eating disorder support services and other support services like personality disorder teams or wider community mental health teams, is something that warrants much exploration if we are to support someone not only to recover physically from an eating disorder, but emotionally as well.

*When I was in the midst of the eating disorder it frequently did feel fantastic.  I am NOT advocating eating disorders and I know rationally now – thankfully – that it was anything but fantastic when I was anorexic.  I am thankful to be recovered and for the work of specialist eating disorder counsellors and services, GPs and CPNs who so dedicatedly help sufferers.  I urge anyone struggling with food and eating to get help.

At the same time, I am acknowledging that disordered eating does serve a purpose and function.  It is a way of coping.  It is harmful, as overdosing, cutting, other forms of self-harm are harmful and risky, but it is a way of coping, just as I believe other forms of self-harm are.  I think eating disorders are a way of coping with so much more than the thought processes I have outlined here.  It is different for everyone.

I believe – and I think the clinic the two friends I mentioned work in takes this seriously – that for it to be possible to survive recovery from an eating disorder and take the next steps, treatment has to respect that eating disorders are a coping mechanism, and then enable the sufferer to find alternative coping mechanisms, for example in this case, other ways to deal with the terrifying emotions and extreme lows and highs.

Though I never was specifically in treatment for my eating disorders, I am now very very fortunate that the service treating me now is helping me find these other ways of coping, and I think that as this is the start of dealing with so many aspects of my personality disorder, it will also restore my relationship with my physical body and its need for nourishment.

Ginny x

 

Stars, in your multitudes

Stars, in your multitudes, scarce to be counted, filling the darkness

With order and light, you are the sentinels, silent and strong, keeping watch in the night,

You know your place in the sky, you hold your course and your aim

And each in your season returns and returns and is always the same….

Repeating the lyrics of songs in my head was one of the distraction techniques I was told to try early on in my diagnosis, when I was in a highly anxious state.  Actually, it doesn’t work very well for me in episodes of the most heightened emotion but it is something that can distract me from repetitive cyclical thoughts, if I persist.  I think I learned to do it myself as a child, actually.  I do relatively often get songs “stuck in my head” and when I find one I like, listen to it over and over before moving on to another.  (This also results in certain songs becoming associated very strongly to particular times in my life, even years later.  There is some music that I like but just can’t listen to anymore because it is too strongly associated with journeys to visit my mother in the hospital 5 or 15 years ago.)

Anyhow, lately it’s been songs from Les Miserables in my head.  “Stars” in particular came to mind as I reflected on one night a few weeks ago.

Granted the song is largely a bitter and very sad quest for an ideal of justice to the exclusion of all else, yet it is in parts beautiful all the same.

I was walking home after a very long day at work and my mind just would not stop and thoughts were spiralling painfully and I was exhausted.  Shortly before home, I cross a large park and that day I was surprised how dark it was, autumn evenings fast drawing in this time of September.  Just that little removal from the street lights and there was an inky darkness and a hush of the quiet night.

I looked up and happened to see The Plough almost right above me, then I stopped and my eyes jumped from star to star, “scarce to be counted” as the song says.  “And each in your season returns and returns and is ever the same…” I remembered watching the stars as a child with fascination.  Watching them through the darkness – or equally, the lights of distant towns on the skyline as we drove in the car – somehow calmed and reassured me and I would look intently, needing them somehow, especially on drives to and from the hospital, or when signs were multiplying that the next crisis was coming.

It was the same now.  Watching, stopping, my mind too began to stop and still.  The stars told me calmly of the world outside, of the beautiful and good, of constancy, patterns, hoping.  I was enveloped in something much bigger than myself.  The turmoil and spirals in my head spun less loudly.

Javert sang to the stars for constancy, clinging to something – justice, retribution, the quest he thought he must never lay down til, by himself, he brought order and vengeance.

I cling to something too, when I go outside and stare up at the stars.  But I cling to their brightness, steadiness and the order and beauty they already show, that is far beyond any work or thought of mine.

When the panic rises and terror comes, if I can form any rational thought I try to tell myself to go outside, break the spiralling thoughts and noise by just stepping outside into something else.  And I look up and surrender and sometimes, just for a moment, it is quiet.

Here’s “Stars” sung by Philip Quast in the 10th Anniversary Concert of Les Mis, at the Royal Albert Hall:

Some thoughts on what this can and cannot be

This is a post that I think that I will revisit and update from time to time.  I’ve been wondering how to make this hang together but in the end, I decided to post as several separate thoughts, on what this blog can and cannot offer or be.  I hope this doesn’t come over strangely. These things seem important to express about what I’ll write here, though all quite different from each other.

So…

I am not a medical professional.  I am writing from my own thoughts and experiences of living with several mental (and physical) health diagnoses, including borderline personality disorder, and of caring for / about loved ones with mental health difficulties.  What I post is my personal experience and opinion only.  If I describe certain experiences, thoughts, behaviours, I am doing just that – describing them, not advocating them.  I may discuss what has and has not helped me, and again this is very personal – I do not intend this as direction to anyone else or to say that such-and-such an approach will help everyone.  This path has taught me clearly that no two people’s experiences and needs are alike no matter how similar they may seem on the surface.

I hope that what I write may help someone.  I hope that if this blog generates discussion (for example, in the comments) this will also help people.  But because I am not a health professional, this cannot be a place to find treatment for particular problems and particularly not emergency assistance in a crisis.  I hope that anyone who is visiting this site who is struggling or feeling unwell or in crisis will also be able to access face to face medical support.  Having said this, I may put together a separate post containing resources and contact details of organisations and support networks that I have found helpful in times of crisis – or indeed, at any stage of living with mental ill health.

Please bear in mind that information you share in comments and posts on here is publicly visible.  For this reason I myself will be very cautious about disclosing personally identifiable information and specifically will not divulge my full name, where I live or the specific service within which I receive treatment.  I would encourage everyone who posts here to be similarly cautious.  Having said this, I will always keep confidential anything that you tell me in a message, the one exception to this being if I believe that you are about to harm yourself or another.

The frequency with which I update this blog will vary.  This is for many reasons, including my varying mental and physical health and the fact that I work part time in a stressful job.  This also means that I may not always be able to respond to every message or post, or may not be able to respond promptly.  If I do not respond promptly, please do not feel that I am choosing to ignore you.  That is not my intention and I am very thankful for any posts, messages etc that anyone wishes to take the time to share, and I value these contributions.  I may simply not be able to reply right now.  I ask for your patience and understanding and I am sorry that I may not be able to reply as quickly as I would like to.

I do not intend this blog to have a political or religious slant.  However, I may discuss social, political and religious issues as they become relevant in particular posts.  Again, these are my personal experiences and personal beliefs.